About Gig Pledge
Why gigpledge.com?
In these times of change, technology in music can both be an ally and a foe. It can make recording easier, things that used to take weeks take moments. During the same time we have moved from Vinyl through CDs and downloads to the stream, with each progression we find less revenue for the musician. So if you can’t make money from recording then the onus moves towards live music, but venues and bands are fighting for the meagre funds that are available and full houses are often hard to come by…. so how can the artists, the venues and the music lovers find a new way of working together.
For a long time now this has been our ideal. We realised that people were often limited by the system. There has to be a better way to make live music work.
The key to pledging is Community. The artists join gigpledge, they in turn inform their fans and friends (the music lovers). Between them they fill their pledge destinations and then the final piece of the jigsaw is contacting venues to arrange the show. The pledge method means that audiences get to see more of the shows they want , in the towns and cities of their choosing. The artists get to play more, happy in the knowledge that they will play to larger crowds and get paid. The venues will work closely with the artists and share the proceeds of their endeavours.
We hope you enjoy your times here with us at gigpledge.com and we look forward to your thoughts and ideas as we continue to grow.
John, Barbara and the gigpledge team
John Young is a Composer, Keyboardist and Singer from Liverpool, England.
His first major tour came in 1985 when he auditioned and became part of Uli Jon Roth’s band (ex-Scorpions). After the World Tour, John spent his time doing studio and session work with artists as diverse as Steeleye Span and Bon Jovi. John went on to play with the MTV band in London, during which time he met John Wetton who asked him to join Asia for two European tours. Shortly afterwards he worked with legendary Free vocalist Paul Rodgers in a band called The Law.
John joined Bonnie Tyler in the mid-1990s and has since worked with her all over the world. In 2001, he joined forces with the Scorpions for a world tour to promote their Acoustica album. In the same year he was co-writing the Fish album Fellini Days with John Wesley. John has worked as part of the regenerated Greenslade and has also recently worked with the Strawbs and Jon Anderson (Yes).
John works with his own band The John Young Band (JYB) and new rock project Lifesigns who have been topping Amazon rock charts around the world this year. Just to ensure that the pressure was never off, John also writes instrumental music for television. This varies from semi-classical to jazz and ambient to world, and is often heard on programmes such as CNN’s coverage of the war in Iraq, the BBC’s Coast, The Jay Leno Show and the Obama election campaign.
Barbara Ann May is a marketeer and sound engineer with a strong IT background based in London.
Barbara is passionate about music, technology and IT. She is German-American and pursued her interests in music (keys, guitar, sax), attending schools in the US, UK and Germany. She first studied Music and Musicology, Physics with a focus on Acoustics and Technology and later, as her career in marketing developed, she added credentials in that field, a Postgraduate Diploma from the Chartered Institute of Marketing and an M.Sc. in Marketing with a focus on Digital Media. Barbara also trained in advanced web technology (IBW) and as a video journalist (RTL Group).
She worked/works as a studio and video engineer, live engineer (FOH and monitor) and equipment engineer starting as a technician while at school and mainly in Europe, especially Germany and the UK, at van Geest’s studio, Utopia, Unit 4, MR Sound Services, Blizz Musiklabor and other studios with various artists and composers such as Vienna Philharmonics, Franz Brüggen, Jon Alberts, … and corporations listed below. Barbara works as a writer and co-producer with Fizz Records.
At the same time Barbara pursued a career as a marketeer. Barbara has worked for more than 15 years in different marketing functions including public relations manager, marketing communications manager, generic and B2B Marketing, business development with a strong focus on digital media with companies such as SeeBeyond, BT Syntegra now BT Consulting, Sun and Oracle; and in regional and EMEA roles heading a team of up to eight. Barbara is a Senior Manager at Red Hat managing a marketing team for the Nordics, UKI and Eastern Europe & Russia.
Barbara is a member of the CIM and a Chartered Marketer. She is also a member of the AES.
For more info visit: https://www.gigpledge.com
