by Jana Spivey | Jun 9, 2026 | Blog
NIVA's State of Live report named marketing the top challenge nationwide. Here's why it's true, why it's been true for a while, and what's genuinely starting to shift.
The NIVA State of Live report identified marketing and audience-building as the number one challenge for independent venues nationwide. When I first read that finding, I wasn't surprised.
Independent venues are structurally disadvantaged in marketing in a way that has nothing to do with effort or intention. The teams are small, budgets are tight, and the expertise required to navigate a landscape that includes paid search, organic SEO, AI visibility, social media, email, and ticketing platform relationships is genuinely broad. Nobody expects a two-person venue marketing operation to be excellent at all of it. The problem is that the industry hasn't had a good answer for what to do instead.
THE CHALLENGE RUNS DEEPER THAN MARKETING
There's a specific dynamic that makes venue marketing harder than marketing for most other local businesses. A restaurant can build a consistent audience because its product is consistent. A venue's product changes with every show. You're not selling "the venue" over and over; you're selling a different event every night to audiences that may have significant overlap or almost none, depending on the genre and the artist.
That variability makes algorithmic discovery harder. Social platforms reward consistent content and growing engagement; venue content is inherently episodic. SEO rewards stable, evergreen pages; venue events have a shelf life measured in weeks. Email works well when your list is engaged, but venue email lists often have dormant subscribers from past events who don't care about the next one.
I worked with a client last year that had a professional practice with a consistent offer and a defined patient profile.Even there, with every possible marketing advantage of consistency, the attribution and discovery challenges were significant. I spent months building their campaign analysis, tracking conversions manually because the CRM wasn't capturing UTMs reliably, and untangling what was actually driving new clients versus what the platform wanted to report as success. For a venue with variable events and a wider audience profile, those challenges are compounded considerably.
"You're not selling the venue over and over. You're selling a different event every few weeks to audiences that may have almost nothing in common."
WHY AI CHANGES THIS EQUATION, AT LEAST PARTIALLY
For all the uncertainty surrounding AI, I believe it has the potential to solve some of the challenges independent venues have faced for years.
First, AI search is better at nuance than keyword search was. A fan asking "where can I see indie folk music in a small venue with good sound in Denver" is describing a venue specifically. Keyword-based search struggled to match that level of detail; AI handles it naturally. Venues that are genuinely distinctive now have a better chance of being found by fans who are a genuine fit, rather than being drowned out by larger venues with bigger SEO budgets.
Second, the infrastructure changes that improve AI visibility (schema markup, citation consistency, accurate platform listings, a readable website) tend to be one-time investments with compounding returns. You build it once; it works for every show after that. That's a different economics than paying to boost every event post on Instagram.
Third, the playing field is more level than it looks. The big venue operators haven't figured this out either. Most of them are sitting on the same Squarespace sites, the same JavaScript-heavy event widgets, the same inconsistent citation profiles as the independents. The venues that move first on AI visibility aren't competing against a polished incumbent; they're competing against collective inertia.
SIX THINGS THAT ARE ACTUALLY STARTING TO CHANGE
- AI discovery rewards specificity. The niche venue, the one with a distinct identity and a genuine community, is better positioned for AI citation than a generic multipurpose space.
- Platform consolidation is creating clearer infrastructure. Bandsintown's expanded reach into Apple Music, Spotify, and Google means there's now a single platform that distributes to most of the surfaces fans use, and venues can access it directly.
- Schema markup is getting easier to implement. WordPress plugins handle most of it; even Squarespace has limited support via code injection. The technical barrier is lower than it was two years ago.
- The antitrust verdict against Live Nation opens a door. If the states' remedies push succeeds and ticketing exclusivity contracts are limited, venues will have more flexibility in how they distribute and promote events. That flexibility matters for marketing.
- Owned channels are having a genuine moment. As algorithmic platforms get noisier and less reliable for reach, venues with healthy email and SMS lists are finding that direct communication converts better than it has in years. Fans who opt in want to hear from you.
- The knowledge required is becoming more accessible. A year ago, almost nobody was writing practically about AI visibility for venues. The information exists now; acting on it is the advantage.
The marketing challenge is real and the NIVA report is right to name it. But the conditions that made it so intractable for so long are shifting, and the venues paying attention right now are building an advantage that will be harder to close in two years than it is today.
by Jana Spivey | Jun 8, 2026 | Blog
Bandsintown, Google Events, Eventbrite, Songkick: here's which platforms are actually feeding AI your show data and which ones aren't doing what you think.
Your website is one place AI can learn about your events. It's not the only place, and for a lot of venues it's not even the most effective place, especially if you're on a JavaScript-heavy platform that AI crawlers can't fully read.
There's a whole ecosystem of platforms that feed event data directly into the search and discovery tools your fans are using. Some of them are obvious. Some of them have changed significantly in the last year in ways that make them more important than ever. And at least one of them has a ChatGPT integration that sounds more useful than it actually is.
Let's go through the landscape honestly.
THE LAYER MOST VENUES DON'T THINK ABOUT
BANDSINTOWN PRO
This is the one I'd start with if you haven't already. Bandsintown is the underlying event data feed for an extraordinary number of platforms. Apple Music, Spotify, Google, Shazam, Microsoft Bing, and YouTube all pull live event data from Bandsintown.
As of early 2026, Spotify ended its 13-year partnership with Songkick and switched its event listings to Bandsintown. Apple Music just launched a full concert listings feature powered by Bandsintown. That's a lot of surfaces where your shows can appear automatically once your venue is in the system. Bandsintown Pro is the venue-side product; it's how you manage your listings and get them into that distribution network. The interface isn't the most elegant thing you'll ever use, but the reach behind it is real.
GOOGLE EVENTS
When Google can read your event data, whether from your own site's schema markup, your Google Business Profile events, or a platform that feeds Google directly, it surfaces events in a dedicated "Events" unit in search results. This unit appears for searches like "concerts near me this weekend" and can show your venue's shows alongside ticket links. It's distinct from the AI Overview and the local pack; it's its own format, and it pulls from structured event data. Venues that have Event schema on their site or post to their GBP events regularly are eligible for this placement.
SONGKICK
Songkick is artist-facing rather than venue-facing; it's owned by Warner Music Group and is primarily a tool artists use to manage their tour dates and notify fans. Venues benefit indirectly when artists listing shows at your venue keep their Songkick profiles current. Worth knowing about, but not a platform where venues have direct control over their listings.
EVENTBRITE
Eventbrite events are generally crawlable by search engines, because Eventbrite builds its own listing pages with static HTML rather than the widget-only approach. That means a show listed on Eventbrite has its own URL, its own page, and its own chance to appear in search results and AI answers, independent of whether your venue's site is readable. If you're already using Eventbrite for ticketing, the discovery benefit is a side effect you may not have been taking advantage of intentionally.
TICKETMASTER AND THE CHATGPT INTEGRATION
Ticketmaster added itself to the ChatGPT App Directory in early 2026, which generated a fair amount of coverage. The practical reality is more limited than the headline suggests. The ChatGPT App Directory requires users to be on a paid plan and to deliberately connect the Ticketmaster app to their account. It doesn't activate automatically in searches. In our own testing, searching for venue recommendations in ChatGPT didn't surface Ticketmaster results; it surfaced Bandsintown, local blogs, and editorial sources instead. The integration exists and will presumably improve, but it's not yet a reliable discovery channel for most venues.
"Bandsintown is the underlying feed for Apple Music, Spotify, Google, Shazam, Bing, and YouTube. That's not a niche platform. That's most of how events get discovered."
WHERE SHOULD YOU SPEND YOUR TIME?
You don't need to be on every platform. You do need to be on the ones that feed the tools your fans actually use. Given the current landscape, that prioritization looks something like this:
- Bandsintown Pro, because of its distribution reach across Apple, Spotify, Google, Bing, and Shazam
- Google Business Profile events, because Google is still the dominant search platform and this is direct input into both traditional and AI results
- Event schema on your own site, if your site is accessible to crawlers, because it feeds Google Events directly and supports AI Overview citations
- Eventbrite, if you're already using it for ticketing, because the discovery benefit comes essentially for free
The thread connecting all of this: every platform where your event data lives accurately and consistently is another place AI can confirm that your venue is real, active, and worth recommending. It compounds. The venues with three well-maintained data sources are more visible than the ones with twelve inconsistent ones.
Post 9 steps back from the infrastructure to ask a harder question: what does any of this mean when more than half of searches never result in a click at all?
by Jana Spivey | Jun 8, 2026 | Blog
Independent stages are disappearing. Not all at once, and not without a fight, but the forces working against them are real, and the marketing landscape is shifting in ways that compound the problem. JAM Agency exists because someone needed to stand in the gap and build specifically for the people keeping live music, comedy, theater, and the arts alive.
AI-powered search is changing the way people discover events like yours.
And, unfortunately, that's not just a theoretical. When someone opens ChatGPT and types "live music venues in Austin," what happens? Where does that answer come from? Which venues show up and which ones don't, and why? What's the difference between a venue that gets cited in an AI Overview and one that's invisible to it entirely?
These aren't mysteries anymore. They're questions we can answer and I've spent a lot of time studying how search is evolving and helping businesses adapt to it.
That's a big part of why I started JAM.
Search Is Changing. Fast.
For more than two decades, we've been taught to think about search in terms of keywords, backlinks, and rankings. Those things still matter but AI-powered search adds a new layer. Instead of returning a list of links, tools like Google's AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity are generating direct answers. And to decide whose information gets included in those answers, looking at a broader set of signals to decide whose information to trust.
Your venue's website structure, schema markup, Google Business Profile, the way third-party sites describe you, and the consistency of your citations across the web now all play a role in helping AI systems understand who you are and whether you're a credible source.
The challenge is that AI visibility can be difficult to measure. With traditional SEO, you could search for a keyword and see where you ranked. Today, many venues don't realize they have a visibility problem until attendance slows, traffic drops, or competitors begin appearing in places they don't.
I'd rather help venue operators get ahead of those challenges than react to them later.
WHAT JAM ACTUALLY DOES
JAM Agency is a specialized division of Emery Marketing, my digital marketing agency.
Between Emery and JAM, we've spent years helping organizations improve visibility through SEO, paid search, content strategy, and digital marketing. Along the way, I noticed something that never sat right with me: too many agencies focused on reporting marketing metrics while losing sight of the outcomes that actually matter to their clients.
Marketing should support business goals. It shouldn't create more confusion. JAM was built to bring that philosophy specifically to the live events industry.
We help independent venues, event organizers, and live experience operators:
- Understand how visible they really are in search and AI-powered discovery tools
- Identify the issues that may be limiting their visibility online
- Strengthen their digital presence so they're easier to find and easier to trust
- Build sustainable marketing strategies that support long-term growth
- Stay informed as search and AI continue to evolve
Most importantly, we believe in making marketing understandable. No jargon, no mystery, no bloated recommendations designed to justify a retainer. Just honest assessments, practical recommendations, and strategies tied to real outcomes.
JAM is also a Google Certified Partner with three active Google certifications. We manage over half a million in Google Ads spend across active client accounts, and our SEO (search everywhere optimization) clients have seen results ranging from 350% traffic increases in six months to 6,250% growth over five years. The credentials exist. But the reason JAM exists is simpler than that: independent stages matter, and they deserve marketing built for their world.
ABOUT THIS BLOG SERIES
We've published a series of 21 blogs exploring how AI-powered search works, what venue operators should know about it, what actually influences visibility, and where I think people are getting distracted by hype. The first one is entitled, "Finding Your Venue in the AI Era."
Some topics will get a little technical but don't worry, most won't! Everything is written with busy venue operators like you in mind: the people who don't have time to spend hours digging through SEO blogs hoping to find something useful buried halfway down the page.
My goal is simple: help you understand what's changing, what matters, and what actions are worth your time.
I'll share what I know, what I'm watching closely, and where I think the industry conversation is headed.
Let's get started!
by Jana Spivey | Jun 7, 2026 | Blog
This is where we write about the thing most venue operators don't have time to research but probably should: how AI-powered search is changing the way people discover venues and what to do about it.
When someone asks AI for a wedding venue or Google serves an AI-generated answer for "outdoor concert spaces near me this weekend," the venues that show up aren't just the most popular ones. They're the ones whose digital presence is built in a way that AI systems can read, trust, and cite.
That's a learnable thing.
It's also a fixable thing, for most venues, without a massive budget or a full marketing team.
We write here for the independent operator, someone running a real venue who wants honest, practical information without the agency pitch attached to it. Everything here is free. We share what we know because we think you deserve access to it, and because the venues that do this work well are going to be in a very different position two years from now than the ones that don't.
Start anywhere. The series builds, but every post stands on its own.
SERIES NAVIGATION
01 | The foundation
What JAM is, why AI visibility matters for venues, and what this series covers.
- Why JAM Agency Exists
02–16 | The education
How AI search works, what venues need in place, and where most operators have gaps.
- Google AI Mode Isn’t the Future. It’s What Search Became Last Month.
- Fans Are Using AI to Find Their Next Show. Does Your Venue Rank?
- Is Your Squarespace Site Invisible to AI? Probably.
- Local Search Changed. Is Your Venue Ready?
- Schema Markup: What It Is, Whether Your Venue Has It, and Why AI Cares
- The AI Citation Problem: Why Consistency Across the Web Matters More Than Ever
- More Ways to Show Up: The Platforms Actually Feeding AI Your Event Data
- 60% of Searches End Without a Click. What Now?
- Google Ads Is Probably Losing You Money. Here's What to Do About It.
- How to Challenge Your Marketing Agency on Monthly Reports
- Marketing Is the #1 Challenge for Independent Venues. It Doesn't Have to Stay That Way.
- The Live Nation Lawsuit Verdict: What Independent Venues Should Be Watching Next
- AI Tools Your Team Can Use This Week (Without a Tech Background)
- Your Email List Is the Only Marketing Audience You Actually Own
- What I'm Still Watching in AI Search: Google AI Mode, Preferred Sources, and the Bing Question
17–20 | Going deeper
A three-part deep dive into each strategic layer, with frameworks you can actually use.
- Deep Dive: Website Visibility, AI Crawlers, and the Event Calendar Problem Every Venue Should Know
- Deep Dive: How to Build a Digital Presence AI Actually Trusts
- Deep Dive: Writing Event Content That Gets Cited, Not Just Indexed
- We'll Be at NIVA 2026 Conference on June 10. Here's What We're Going to Say.
- NIVA Attendees: Your Post-Conference Punch List
Guides | Downloadable resources
Checklists and frameworks to work through with your team, at your own pace.
