Given a page of profiles, most people scan the photographs, glance at the prices, and shortlist on some blend of the two. It is a reasonable instinct and it is a poor predictor. A good photograph means the artist invested in photography. A high price means they believe they are worth it. Neither tells you what happens on the night.
Here is what to read instead, roughly in the order it is worth your attention.
1. Video, and Specifically Unedited Video
The single most informative thing on any profile. A cut-together showreel over music tells you someone can edit. Thirty continuous seconds of a live performance, filmed from the audience, tells you almost everything: whether they hold attention, how they sound in a real room rather than a studio, and how an actual audience responded.
If the only video is heavily produced, that is not disqualifying, but it is a reason to ask for something raw. Any working performer has phone footage.
2. Reviews, Read for Detail Rather Than Score
Ratings compress. A five-star average across three reviews and a 4.6 across forty are not comparable numbers, and the second is far more informative. Read the text, and weight the specific over the enthusiastic. "Arrived early, handled a forty-minute delay without complaint, adapted the set when the schedule changed" predicts your evening. "Amazing, so talented" predicts nothing.
On idlidu, reviews are attached to bookings that actually happened, which means they cannot be manufactured — but the useful signal is still in the sentences, not the stars.
3. Evidence of the Specific Thing You Need
Excellence does not transfer as cleanly as people assume. A superb concert performer may be a poor fit for a wedding, where the job includes reading a room that is half not listening. Corporate work rewards reliability and appropriateness; a festival rewards presence. Look for evidence of your context specifically, and if it is absent, ask about it directly.
4. How Long They Have Been Doing This
Years of experience is a blunt number and still a useful one, mainly because it correlates with the things you cannot see in a profile: what happens when the sound fails, when the schedule collapses, when the audience is not what was described. You are, in part, buying someone's capacity to absorb a bad evening without it becoming your problem.
5. Price, Last
Price is best read at the end, as a consistency check on everything above rather than as a filter at the start. A rate far below comparable artists is worth understanding — it can mean early career, which is often excellent value, and it can mean something else. A rate well above is worth the same question. Neither is a verdict; both are a prompt.
What a Profile Cannot Tell You
Whether they will reply promptly. Whether they ask good questions. Whether they will still be reachable a week before the event. None of that is on the page, and all of it is available for the cost of one message — which is why the shortlist should always be longer than one, and the decision should come after the conversation.
For the full sequence from search to confirmed booking, read the step-by-step guide. For the moment just before you commit, there is the pre-booking checklist. And if you are an artist reading this to work out what to fix, it is all in what to include in your profile.