Artist Booking in Boston

Artist Booking Market Notes for Boston

Direct artist booking in Boston means routing a touring act — Punjabi, Bollywood, South Asian, or English-market — to either a public ticketed show or a private/corporate engagement, with the metro's heavy academic and biotech corporate calendar generating significant non-public booking demand. The biggest annual flows through Boston are East Coast Punjabi tours (Diljit Dosanjh, Karan Aujla, AP Dhillon, Shubh have all played MGM Music Hall at Fenway or Agganis Arena in recent seasons), Bollywood concert tours (Arijit Singh, Sonu Nigam, Atif Aslam routings hit Boston when they include a full East Coast leg), and rising Punjabi-American crossover acts. Boston typically packages into a routing as New York to Boston to Washington DC to Atlanta, meaning the window to lock an artist for a private Boston show is usually 6-12 weeks before the tour announces. Private and corporate bookings — Harvard SA alumni galas, MIT and BU community events, Cambridge biotech holiday parties, large Burlington and Westborough weddings, financial-district diversity mixers — work on a different cycle and can pull artists outside of public touring routes for premium fees. Fee bands in Boston: rising touring acts (300k-1M monthly listeners), $7,500-$30,000 private; established mid-tier (1M-5M listeners), $30,000-$120,000; top-tier headliners (Diljit, Karan Aujla, Arijit Singh tier), $200,000-$1,200,000+ for a private show. For international artists, we coordinate P-2 reciprocal exchange or O-1 extraordinary-ability visa filings (60-90 day USCIS lead time, petitioned by the US agent/promoter), the IRC §1441/1442 30% non-resident performer withholding, and the Central Withholding Agreement (CWA) with the IRS that reduces the effective rate under US-India tax treaty Article 18. Massachusetts state income tax (5%) adds a planning layer on top of federal — we handle the full filing in coordination with the artist's US and India management.

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