A house concert is a great way to make extra money, pick up a show in a location without a suitable club, or give your fans a different, more intimate experience than they'd get in standard, public venues. If you're looking to maximize tour income and create deeper relationships with fans, house concerts are a great option.
Over the weekend, I attended a house concert hosted by (and featuring) Jennings. Here are her tips for hosting a house concert:
1. Provide great sound.
This can be easily achieved with a small PA system. You want your house concert to be able to compete with good venues and, in order to do that, you need great sound. Volume needs kept at a decent level and not become too loud or too quiet. Also, since it's an intimate setting, keep the music intimate. I recommend keeping the music acoustic (without loud drums and huge amps).
2. Provide ambience.
Make sure the lighting is right, there are comfortable seats, and the temperature of the room is right. Again, this needs to compete with venues so you need to make sure the rooms feels and looks right. You want everyone to be as comfortable as possible.
3. Serve something.
There's no need to get crazy but if people are going to stay awhile, there needs to be food and beverage. If you are on a tight budget, make it BYOB, potluck, or put a tip jar out for food.
4. Don't overplay.
Since this is such an intimate setting, people are going to come in, sit, and listen. Make sure that they don't get restless.
Regardless of how many artists play, I would recommend having no more that 90 minutes of live music. Also, make sure to give them a brief break in between sets to get food or use the restroom. I recommend a 10 minute intermission (at most) because you don't want people to leave.
5. Have an email list.
A person attending a house concert is the person most likely to attend additional house concerts. Give those who like house concerts a chance to attend others. In addition, getting contact information from attendees will allow you to followup with photos from your event, which will deepen the relationships you've formed.
6. Keep everyone together.
If you have a bigger house, shut off the extra bedrooms, the upstairs, etc. You don't want to let people have the opportunity to go to other parts of the house to chat or hang. Keep them in the area of the performance. They are supposed to be there to listen.
7. Be a good host.
Even if you are the one performing, make sure that everyone has what they need. Also, it is your responsibility to keep people quiet during the other performances. In such a comfortable setting, it is easy for people to start chatting, etc. You don't need to be rude, but it can be a good idea during the performance, as well as breaks, to remind people to keep it down. You want everyone (attendees and artists) to be happy at the end of the night.
A house concert is a great way to test new material, encourage word-of-mouth marketing, and build relationships with fans. Because every venue is different, every experience is different. And because house concerts are promoted, for the most part, via personal relationships, it is much harder to oversaturate an area.
Regardless of your genre of music, I encourage you to add house concerts to the way you promote and make money from your music. They are simple enough that you could book one today and have a successful performance tonight, yet scalable enough that you could make a fulltime living playing nothing but house concerts.