How to Find Gigs With Google Alerts

By David J. Hahn
New York, NY

As I wrote in my best of 2008 article, I just started using Google Alerts last year. It’s changed the way I use the internet. Instead of searching and surfing the internet for information important to me, I have Google search it for me and bring me what it finds. I use Google as my personal assistant.

For example, have you ever been to the musician community section of Craigslist? It’s hard to find the listings that relate to you with all the noise on those forums. You go there looking for an opportunity for your band and what you find is ***PHSYCEDELIC CRAZY BEATS**** PRO STUDIO WILL RECORD YOUR VOICE AND MAKE IT SOUND LIKE A LION!!!!! – or whatever.

Surely there is a better way. Try my method.

Say you are a bassist living in LA and you are looking for a new band. Put this into Google:

site:losangeles.craigslist.org bassist OR bass player wanted

Click on it to see what comes up. Isn’t that amazing? Google will sift through all the nonsense on the LA Craigslist site and finds just the listings that are seeking a “bass player” or “bassist.”

What I like to do is this search:

site:newyork.craigslist.org keyboard OR piano OR pianist OR accompanist

This search gives me a lot of noise – piano movers, pianos for sale, keyboards for sale – but it gives me a lot less noise than the normal Craigslist ads. At the very minimum, all these results at least have something to do with pianists, and they often include some kind of “pianist wanted” or “accompanist wanted” listing. Perhaps more importantly, it lets me see how (and how much) other pianists are advertising themselves on Craigslist. That’s also a good thing to know.

But what about all the other sites that list musician wanted listings? There’s the Village Voice in NYC, the Reader in Chicago, and others you probably don’t even know about. What I like to do is create a search like this:

“pianist wanted” OR “accompanist wanted” “New York”

That will give me all web pages (not just Craigslist) that include a mention of “New York” in addition to “pianist wanted” or “accompanist wanted.” The results aren’t always perfect, but the times they are make it worthwhile.

In order to make your own search like this, go to the Google Advanced Search page and fill in the fields you’d like to use. It won’t take you long to figure out how Google works and how to make your own searches from scratch. Try a different searches until something works. Think of all the different ways someone might post a job listing for your instrument, i.e. guitarist, guitar or “guitar player.”

Ok – now that you know what you’re looking for, you can make it a Google Alert. Go to www.google.com/alert, sign up, and enter your search string into the provided field. Once you create your alert you can have all future webpages that match your criteria automatically sent to your email or RSS reader.

Here’s a little secret. Have you been to our Musician Jobs page? The job listings there are compiled with Google Alerts and promoted on our site through RSS feeds. You, too, can make listings like those and have them sent directly to your inbox.

Tomorrow we’ll talk about how to monitor your scene with Google Alerts.

About the author

David J. Hahn is a music director and pianist in New York City. He co-founded MusicianWages.com with Cameron Mizell in 2008. His writing have been published in the International Musician, union trade papers and featured on the Huffington Post and About.com. Find out more at his website and follow him on Twitter.

All posts by David J. Hahn | Forum Profile

Hi Dave–Thanks for the idea. I host songwriter showcases in the Central Coast area of California, every Tuesday in San Luis Obispo and every Wednesday in Santa Maria. I’m always looking for new talent to add to the lineup — each show has a featured act (plays 45 minutes, paid by pass-the-hat), up to 9 others playing 3-song guest sets. So I posted a Google alert of songwriter “San Luis Obispo”. Would that do the trick? Or do you have any suggestions for other ways I can find performers? I find some by searching the shows section of myspace, too. Your fellow musician (and former New Yorker) — SK

Steve Key
1/6/2009

Great advice, Dave. I am enjoying your articles … keep ‘em coming. Happy New Year!

Ken Jones
1/10/2009

Thanks Ken! Good to see you here, I hope you’re well!

David J. Hahn
1/16/2009

Great advice as always Dave! I’m always telling everyone, “Google Knows All!”

Madalyn Sklar
1/19/2009

Wow, that is incredible. The internet is like wildfire. I literally and sent an email to someone, they posted it on their blog and not even a second later I got an alert of that post on their blog. I am not kidding you. I had a few before, but..Wow, just wow.

mevdev
1/22/2009