Travelling Bands Problem

March 6, 2005 11:15 AM

My friend is (foolishly) trying to start up a record label. He wants to be able to schedule various bands at various venues, and optimize the bands' schedules to minimize travel cost. How would he do this?

Is there software to already do this, perhaps based on the mileage between cities, or perhaps the plane ticket cost between cities?

From a different angle, this seems to be a time-constrained variant of the "Travelling Salesman Problem". I'm not aware of any research into this aspect of it, although it seems a good candidate for AI Planning or Search-space optimization algorithms. If I try to write such software myself, what kind of work am I in for?

posted by sandking to computers & internet (12 comments total)

Before I read the [MI] I was going to say this looks like an example of the Travelling Salesman Problem, which as you know is NP-hard. Good luck.
posted by grouse at 11:37 AM on March 6, 2005

well, if you want to write something yourself, you need to look for "finite domain constraint programming". you can either grab some library to use in your own favourite language, or use a language that directly supports such things. you might start by reading this introduction for oz, which is a language with features specifically intended for solving this kind of problem.
posted by andrew cooke at 11:47 AM on March 6, 2005

Yeah, the standard answer you'll get around here is that this is unsolvable or something but the real answer is that, although it is unsolvable *exactly*, for your purposes, and for most peoples purposes, an aproximation which gets you most of the way there will do.

First figure out what you want to minimize: travel cost, travel time? Then, yeah, it becomes a TSP. This page lists several pieces of software that may be helpful.
posted by vacapinta at 11:48 AM on March 6, 2005

hmmm. i think vacapinta's solutions are going to be faster than mine, but less general. if your problem really reduces to just tsp, then use those.
posted by andrew cooke at 11:51 AM on March 6, 2005

Thanks for the suggestions. Does anyone know how people accomplish this task nowadays? I am under the impression that band-schedulers don't care much about the travel cost.

Amusing fact: My original question is not rhetorical, my friend is really concerned with optimizing travel costs for future musician clients. Is he just being overly anal?
posted by sandking at 12:29 PM on March 6, 2005

There are several large companies that make a living doing this.

I think your best weapon is experience, and common sense.
posted by nitsuj at 1:08 PM on March 6, 2005

I think nitsuj pretty has it, plus, considering that it's a new label, the bands will be scraping to get into pretty much any venue, so there's a good chance they'll have to take whatever they can get and whereever they can get it.
posted by drezdn at 1:42 PM on March 6, 2005

Booking a tour is more an art than a science. One hard-to-quantify variable is that high travel costs can be justified if an individual gig is of sufficently high-profile. Another is that all days of the week are decidedly NOT equal in clubs.

sandking, this specific problem your friend is talking about is one that faces a booking agent, not a label. Sometimes a label can help a band get gigs or book a tour; but that's not common in my experience. More power to him if he can wear both the agent and the label hats at the same time...but both are pretty big jobs.

My $.02 is that as a startup he would be better off concentrating on being a label = making and marketing great records. A gig or a tour tour is a band's best marketing opportunity -- doing the publicity to help make that gig/tour successful is the label's job.
posted by omnidrew at 2:20 PM on March 6, 2005

To comment further on what omnidrew said - he is right, booking a tour isn't typically the job of the label, but that doesn't mean that the label can't do it. It just seems to me that a label, especially a start-up, will have a lot to worry about without having the burden of booking a band on a national tour.

If the band is good and a booking agency takes notice, they'll act on it and sign the band to their roster. What makes booking through an agency so much better than solo booking is the mass amount of contacts a good agent has.

For instance, if Joe Blow wants to book Band X at the club I work for, there's a strong chance it won't happen unless I think Band X is a really, really good band.

But, if an agent who I do business with on a regular basis contacts me to book Band Y, who I've never heard of, I'm much more likely to work with him because I have a history with the agent or agency.

The better the agency, the more contacts and experience they have. They have millions of routing paths to work with, and they know a large number of promotors throughout the country, which makes routing bands much easier.

I agree, concentrate on a label. If he wants to make sure his bands get the proper treatment on the road, market their albums to agencies. Try and get them to represent the bands on the road.
posted by nitsuj at 4:16 PM on March 6, 2005

This thread might help. The attributes of nodes and vertices in Arc/Info can be anything - distance, time, cost, bladder capacity. But, I would agree unless the label becomes huge then a software solution is overkill, and premature overkill at that.
posted by Rumple at 11:59 PM on March 6, 2005

I call being overly anal, or at least engaging in entertaining pie-in-the-sky thinking.

I've booked a few tours, what nitsuj said is right. It's really a question of experience, not software. Realizing how hard you can push a band and how to handle things once the fun stops. Walking the line between over spending to keep people happy and spending too little and having band members get arrested just to get off the tour. The main trick with touring at any level is staying sane. Its logistics meets emotion.

There's a reason labels traditionally stay out of it. They generally deal in something resembling a professional business world, touring has little to do with that. Its scum bags all the way, the guys at the booking agencies are just scum bags who've gone pro. IMO, the best tour managers are either built like line-backers and know how to intimidate or even better super aggressive 30 something women who can do the same on personality alone. Someone who can handle collecting from a coked up promoter and their hangers on at 4:30 in the morning and still get the band on the road by 8am for the drive.

In my experience anyway, coordinating travel is generally the least of your problems.
posted by Leonard at 6:46 AM on March 7, 2005

It'll also involve variables that software can't deal with. What kind of band is it?

Some people don't mind driving 8 hours to the next gig, some do. What are they traveling in - bus, car, van? Is a band member driving, or do they have a driver? If they have a driver, routes can be longer, as the driver can sleep during the gig. Tour bus travel can generally route longer because there's a dedicated driver, they drive faster, and stop less. Are they carrying production (ie: PA, lights, whatever)? Does this involve carrying a trailer?

I could go on and on. This is where experience comes in to play. It wouldn't matter what a piece of software told you, IMO.
posted by nitsuj at 7:13 AM on March 7, 2005