Once you've submitted your enquiry, you're ready to begin managing your booking. Here's how it works:
1. Receive applications
- Once you've submitted your enquiry, you'll be taken to your Enquiry page - this is your unique webpage from which you'll be able to manage the booking from start to finish.
- You'll then shortly begin receiving applications from available musicians.
- You can then compare your applicants by:
- Listening to their recordings.
- Viewing their Encore profiles.
- Creating a shortlist of your favourites. Click here to learn more about creating a shortlist.
2. Communicate with your musicians
- Though recordings and musician profiles do help when you're deciding who to book, you'll want to get in touch with your favourites before making your final decision.
- On your Enquiry page, you can send messages or request phone calls with musicians.
- Sometimes after negotiating with a musician, their original quote might need to be changed. Learn more about updating an artist's quote here.
3. Book your favourite
- Once you know which artist(s) you'd like to book, click the green "Book now" button on their application card and complete the form which pops up by entering your payment details. This will send a message to the artist asking them to confirm that they are able to commit to this booking. Learn more about sending a Booking request here.
- Please note: no Encore booking is secured until you have sent a Booking request.
- If you would like to book more than one artist, simply click the "Book now" button on your chosen musician's application cards.
4. The artist makes the next move...
- The artist will then be prompted to accept or decline your booking request.
- Once the artist has accepted your booking request, your payment will be taken and held securely by our industry-standard payment provider, Stripe (learn more about security here). This payment will then be released to the musician three working days after your event.
- If you book more than a month in advance of your event, we take 30% of your total fee as a deposit and transfer the remaining 65% closer to the time of the event.
- If you book less than a month in advance of your event, we take your full fee upfront.
- At this point, the contact details of you and your booked musicians will be automatically exchanged, so you can keep in close contact right up until the gig.
- You'll also automatically receive an invoice. To find out where you can download your invoice click here.
5. Enjoy the performance!
- Make sure you stay in close contact with your booked musician right up until the event. You can find our guidelines on how to manage musicians at your event here.
- Sit back and relax - all payment will be transferred automatically by Encore after the gig so you don't need to worry about cash in hand or writing cheques.
6. Review your musician
- You'll receive an email prompting you to review the musicians you booked.
- Please review them at your earliest convenience by leaving star ratings and a short note describing your experience of their performance. Learn more about reviewing your musician(s) here.
- Note: reviews are very important to our musicians and help ensure that the Encore platform remains a trusted and transparent service for booking musicians.
That's it - if you follow these six simple steps you should have no problem at all booking musicians through Encore!
To book again, simply head back to encoremusicians.com. We hope to see you again soon!