A sharpied paper sign rustles in the wind, taped to the side door of an Allston basement. Microphones reach toward the low ceilings and wires snake across the floor as an eager audience filters in. Entrance is $5 cash, and the bill lists three college-aged bands ready to make some noise. Boston’s DIY music scene is covert, creative and saturated with aspiring bands looking to dive into the community.

However, getting gigs and building an audience isn’t easy. Beyond the music, bands must handle outreach and booking, building connections and growing a following to find success. Starting a band is the first step, but where do musicians go from there?

“We’re starting to kind of tackle with the realities of like, okay, it’s really fun to play, that’s always still fun, and it makes doing all of the other work worth it … but the question of how to build an audience and how to promote yourself on social media is definitely really difficult,” said Danny Rollo, a Northeastern master’s of computer science student and singer of the band Music Farm.

Music Farm played its first live show at Dedham Porchfest and started with basement shows before entering the bar scene. More recently, the group played Boston and Cambridge venues The Jungle, Middle East and The Burren.

“Every first gig after that we’ve gotten has been almost exclusively from reaching out via email or social media,” Rollo said. He emphasized the importance of outreach and persistence when seeking shows.

“The artist needs to think of themselves as artist, management, agent, promoter — they need to think of themselves as all those things,” said Jeff Dorenfeld, a retired music business professor at Berklee College of Music. “There’s always something you should be doing to promote your career.”

Prior to teaching, Dorenfeld worked in the music industry for over 25 years with notable artists including Ozzy Osbourne and Sammy Hagar.

The indie music scene in Boston is heavily connections-based, and building those relationships can be difficult early on. In Rollo‘s case, he was connected through Hillside Bistro, the DIY venue he and friends ran out of their basement. However, the shows were discontinued when Hillside fell victim to a widespread crackdown on basement venues following a fall 2023 Boston Globe article uncovering the scene.

House shows can violate Boston’s noise and venue-licensing regulations. Following the publication of the article, law enforcement began to take notice across the city.

“It was a tough time, and everyone kind of just closed their doors,” said fifth-year Northeastern human services major Maddy Westcott, one of the collaborators on Hillside Bistro. “It was a real struggle for artists … people couldn’t congregate and have fun at a show together; it was really rough.”

This wasn’t the first time that house venues have faced challenges with law enforcement, and it probably won’t be the last. The DIY scene is unpredictable, but when it thrives, bands can capitalize on its resources and accessibility.

Back in 2010, indie rock band Pile experienced a flourishing Boston basement scene very different from today’s. Now, 15 years later, Pile has just completed an international tour, having found the success out of Boston that current young bands are searching for.

“We ended up finding a really vibrant community through playing at people’s houses,” said Rick Maguire, Pile frontman. “That was a big part of our development as a band.”

Music Farm, alongside other aspiring bands, has had a different experience, but bands said the shift away from house shows wasn’t necessarily career-stifling.

“One of the biggest long-term effects is that people who had been involved in promoting DIY shows, or people who were inspired by DIY show promoters, started going legit,” said Northeastern music industry professor Andrew Mall. Mall’s research focuses on the resilience and challenges of DIY music scenes, with his recent publications including an article on the revival of vinyl and a book on the niche market business of Christian music.

Westcott, Rollo and the other band members transitioned Hillside Bistro into a booking agency to connect bands with venues, preserving their involvement in the scene without running DIY shows themselves. Many artists and booking agents had to do the same.

“It was hard at first, because, you know, we had this experience and we knew what we were doing, but proving to the small bars and venues that we will have a turnout, it was definitely an adjustment,” Westcott said.

Even as the DIY music scene returns to local culture, new bands have to focus on small venues, bars and basement shows to find an audience. Booking looks different for every location, but the process is similar across the board — emails, DMs, resume building and promotion until bands finally get a reply.

“Being the artist is going around and you’re like, ‘Hey, can I please play, can I please play, can I please play,’” Rollo said.

In this industry, the more persistent and shameless an artist is with their promotion, the better.

“Danny is that person; he’s always reaching out on behalf of his band, and it’s done wonders for him,” Westcott said.

Outreach has been effective for Music Farm so far, Rollo said. However, as bands grow, management and booking agencies start to come into the picture more and more. It is possible for independent bands to find success, but the obstacles are greater with bigger venues.

“It’s definitely interesting to see — we’re now kind of just hitting the edge of [management as a barrier] because we’re being very ambitious about where we want to play,” Rollo said. “The big beacon on the hill is over the summer playing a festival somewhere.”

Rollo and his bandmates have made their rounds at local bars and venues in Boston, so they have started to push into nearby cities to further grow their audience. However, Music Farm still operates independently, and Rollo continues to handle much of the networking and booking.

“Getting on a festival is really not easy,” Dorenfeld said. “Every agent wants their baby bands to be on a festival.”

Fortunately for Music Farm, management is not a requirement for success.

“You don’t actually need a manager until you have more going on than you have time to deal with,” said Mark Kates, founder of artist management agency Fenway Recordings. Kates has been in the industry for decades and has worked with bands including Mission of Burma, the Beastie Boys and MGMT.

“Artists think that we have magic wands, and that, you know, they can’t do things [on their own],” Kates said.

Pile, for instance, has self-managed successfully. The band has almost entirely operated on its own over its 16-year career.

“When hearing about a manager, it’s like, well, they’ll do the spreadsheet stuff and they’ll think about all these things, but it’s like, I can think about those things,” Maguire said.

Although he takes on managerial responsibilities, Maguire emphasized the benefits of using booking agents, particularly on larger tours.

“Booking our own shows for the first eight years was exhausting,” Maguire said. “Once we switched over to an agent, they were able to secure us deals financially that were very helpful.”

Working with booking agents and managers can be advantageous for bands in Boston, especially when looking for a foot in the door or a connection for growth. However, given the city’s quickly-evolving music scene, the most important thing for artists is to be adaptable, proactive and persistent.

“I think these days you need to find your audience anyway and anywhere you can,” Kates said. “I applaud anybody who finds a way to operate these days.”

Young artists in Boston must navigate management and booking decisions, promotion, networking and outreach in an ever-changing music scene. However, within this convolution, what remains most important to many musicians is the depth of community that Boston provides.

“Young people really need the opportunity to make their own culture, so that itself hasn’t changed,” Mall said.

The challenges are steep, but when artists put in the work, the outcomes can be rewarding.

“It takes a lot of initiative to get started, but as soon as the ball is rolling, you really see it move,” Rollo said. “The important thing is to get started and embrace everything that comes with it.”