I missed a gig because nobody told me, and that is how VAIBN started

I am opening the VAIBN Journal in a very personal way, to tell you how the platform came about.

Three years ago I missed a gig by one of my favourite artists, without meaning to. Not because I had anything better to do, but because I never heard about it. I did not follow them on social media and nobody mentioned it to me, so by the time I found out, it had already happened.

It left me with a feeling I still struggle to describe. More than regret at having missed it (though there was that too), it was surprise. We live glued to our phones, with notifications for everything, with algorithms that supposedly know what we like better than we do ourselves. And even so, I had missed something I would have loved to be at.

I am a lawyer; I work in intellectual property. The truth is that my job is tied to the music industry from its most boring side — contracts and paperwork — and although I studied music as a child, I am not an artist. The upside is that this perhaps lets me see things from a different angle, and in any case, I am very much a music fan.

At the time, I let it go. But to this day I am left with the same questions: why is it so hard to discover new music, when the only acts with any visibility are the ones that already have it? Why is the only route for emerging or independent artists to pay for ads on social media, or to wait for the algorithm to decide that today is their turn?

So, to answer those questions — or at least to offer some kind of solution — here I am, fully committed to this project. VAIBN was born out of all of them, and I genuinely believe it can help build a community of artists who want to be discovered, venues and promoters who want to fill their events, and people who want to find new artists without paying 100 € for a ticket.

If you run a venue or you are an artist and you want to be here, create your account. If you are one of those people who go to gigs and want to discover what is happening near you, come in and have a look. And if it simply sounds like something that makes sense, I am glad you made it this far.

One last thing. If you are an artist and you want to tell us what this looks like from the inside, or you manage a venue and have something to say about what it means to programme music today, or you are simply a fan or otherwise involved in this industry and have a story to tell, you are absolutely invited to be part of this Journal. I would love this space to be a meeting point for every voice in the music community, not just mine.

Thank you for reading.

Julia Martínez