And here's an interesting issue.

I often hear musicians complain that they just don't play enough live and that is mainly booking agents' fault, as thay concentrate their efforts only on artists who have a certain audience.
Well, here's a first news: agents concentrate their efforts only on artists who have a (numerically speaking) audience.

In fact, the answer to be given to those who ask "Where can I find a good agent that will provide me a good number of dates," is "Nowhere." There is no good agent (defined as able to procure dates prestigious and perhaps with large audience) if you have no audience!
The concept seems obvious, but in facts, it is not.

All of us, myself included, at the beginning of our music adventure, believed that the process is more or less like this: you just call or send emails to well-known booking agencies, saying "Hey! Give me a chance, after all you are powerful and I just need to play in front a big crowd to make it! " And, i mean, that is good, because it means that we strongly believe in our music, right?

Well, here is the second news: it does exactly work at the opposite! And it's a hard and long way (at least for most of us).
As Hugh MacLeod says in "Ignore Everybody", if your business plan is to be suddenly discovered by some big shot, well.. it probably fail" as this is, more or less, how it should be.

Our efforts as "new independent musicians" must focus on the here and now "- or "What can I do now to promote my music?" The answer is: make it known to as many people as possible.
In the chart above, I tried to summarize the way "ideal" that should lead us to have concerts. The key is having an audience and this is the direction we should direct our efforts.
When the wave (or the "buzz") will be high enough, then we will be contacted. For a review, a concert, an opening... small things, at the beginning. As much as our music runs over the net, will start running also in "real" world and people start asking for us to play in their town.

Once again, the key is to have enough visibility - attention goes a long way!