The irritation became so great that Geir decided to solve the problem himself

– But there is only about NOK 200,000 in the account, so we won’t get rich anytime soon, laughs Geir Johannessen.

He has been a musician all his life along with his full time job. And one thing in particular was understanding that it was unnecessarily difficult.

– Do you know how much time passes from the moment a request comes until a concert is completed and paid for, he asks.

And not only that: Johannessen realized that it could be difficult and time-consuming for ordinary people and companies to find, communicate with and book musicians.

– Big, established artists have the tool. They have a recording company and a manager who fixes everything. But everyone else, the regular people who want to play a bit on the side, or the highly trained musicians who don’t have a record label, have a really hard job of reaching out.

A lot of time and money

So Johannessen decided to create an Airbnb for the music industry.

He built an online marketplace, called Gigplanet, where his goal is to bring people and artists together.

To date, they have over 600 artists and bands on the website.

– Everything from troubadours, soloists and musicians, to cover bands and big bands. We are talking about very good people, he says.

Since the website is fully automated, they currently have no salary costs. Therefore, all the income went to further develop the concept.

However, there have been many late nights for Johannessen, who runs this as a small side project alongside his full-time job at the scientific college VID.

– I have spent an incredible amount of time and money on this, admits Johannessen, who has never thought of giving up.

– I think the biggest problem we have is that very few people have heard about it, the Bergen admits.

Size must be increased

– There is definitely a market for this. Anything that helps support artists’ chances of creating a business around their music is a good thing. But they are not alone in this market, points out Terje Colbjørnsen, associate professor of creative industries management at BI Business School.

Gigplanet has competition from, among others, Artisthuset and Norsk artistformidling, to name a few.

However, Colbjørnsen believes that Gigplanet’s platform model, which can be operated with minimal staff and minimal expenditure, gives them an advantage.

– They need to scale up for this to work well. It cannot be a small special service. If this is going to be successful, they need to increase traffic on the platform from all sides; both those who give and those who collect.

Hard market

They are now celebrating ten years, and according to Johannessen, they have had a turnover of NOK 15 million since December 2014. The next step is to grow nationally. Then they want to go abroad. Sweden and Denmark are two countries on which they spin.

Johannessen accepts that it will be a side project for now, and that it will remain a full-time job.

For the artists, they don’t pay anything for creating users on the website, but Gigplanet will take ten percent of the revenue from the show.

The income from the concerts, as well as NOK 750,000 in support from Innovation Norway, is currently used to develop the website and market the company.

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They have had several discussions in the board about how to increase earnings, but Johannessen is a bit cynical.

– It is very difficult to be a musician now. Spotify has been a crisis for artists. When the CDs disappeared, a large part of the artists’ income disappeared, he explains.

Therefore, it will not take too much of the income of the musicians.

The hope is to get investors into the company, but Johannessen doesn’t want growth at any price.

– I am very afraid of investors who just want to make money. We need to understand the daily life of the musicians and the challenges they face.

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