Step by step

• 1. Discovery — venues and organisers search artist profiles by genre, location, budget and availability; artists browse the gig board and the public gig directory. Public directories and free tools feed new members into this step continuously.
• 2. Negotiation — parties message in real time; an offer sent in chat carries the date, fee and terms and becomes a structured booking the moment it is accepted. Counter-offers, declines and cancellations are all explicit states, not lost DMs.
• 3. Contract — every booking generates a digital contract both parties sign. No handshake deals; disputes reference an agreed document.
• 4. Payment — where the parties choose protected payment, funds are held via Stripe and released after the gig completes, following a short dispute window (5% platform fee). Private settlement is allowed at 0% — the platform does not force its rails to extract a toll.
• 5. Completion and review — completed bookings unlock two-way reviews. Because reviews require a real booking, reputation on GigXchange is verified, not self-asserted.

Reliability engineering around the flow

The workflow handles the failure modes that define live music: cancellations and no-shows are explicit booking states with defined consequences, and an emergency-cover flow (Gig Rescue) re-lists a slot and notifies matching artists when an act pulls out. These edge cases are where handshake-deal booking breaks down — and where infrastructure earns its keep.

Why multi-role matters

Most booking platforms model one buyer and one seller. Real live music involves agents booking on behalf of rosters, promoters programming across venues, and organisers booking one-off events. GigXchange models all five roles natively on shared rails — which multiplies the connection surface of the network (every new member can transact with four other role types, not one) and underpins the liquidity argument in Network effects.