MUSIC INDUSTRY BLOG

1. Wil, I see the value in BandCentral but is it really a ‘must-have’?

While record labels are trying to halt their downward spiral and unswervingly opting for “safe” artists with proven mass-market appeal, the DIY model of self-management, self-promotion and self-releasing is the only option available to the majority of bands ? and the only way that most bands will get off the first rung of the music industry ladder.  Any band that is serious about moving their career forward in this climate will see BandCentral as an essential tool.

In our experience, the difference between a successful band and a band that fades away has to do almost entirely with hard work, dedication and passion.  BandCentral is designed to streamline the self-management process and make every-day organisation and communication between the band, band manager and third-parties much easier, enabling you to get on with the music and promotion, rather than getting bogged down with missed communications, lost gig booking info, bickering over shared or IOU costs, chasing each other for rehearsal or gig stage times, losing your performing rights data or not having important files at hand.

Naysayers say that “bands will never be organised enough to do all this stuff themselves”.  I believe that these are the same people that are sitting around, blinkered to all the opportunities the digital sphere presents to artists and waiting for CD sales at record stores to turn around.  I know from personal experience that without some way of keeping tabs on the nuts’n’bolts admin side of a creative venture, there’s a risk that the band can lose momentum and non-creative work can sink the entire endeavour.

Making it in the music industry has always involved a lot of hard work but never more so than today.  BandCentral fills a vital role in this new ‘DIY’ paradigm, helping bands to harness the best of what the web has to offer them and giving them all the tools they need to streamline the self-management process and join the music revolution.

2. Should every band be using BandCentral, from fledgling to established?

Every band that is serious about their music should be using BandCentral.
If you’re an unknown band, you should make use of BandCentral’s tools to get organised, get yourselves out there and get known.  Once you’re established BandCentral will help you to collaborate better with each other encourage complete transparency in dealings with third-parities such as managers, producers & bookers etc. and help you to organize every aspect of your band life.  It will also help you to organise and get the most out of all the different elements of the DIY business model, from live shows and tours to single/album releases and accounting and merchandising.

Acts who have broken through to the big-time will have an army of full time management looking after them, so acts like Coldplay or Interpol are obviously not going to be needing any help from BandCentral.  Their management, however, would find it hugely helpful on a day-to-day basis as it keeps everything in one central, secure and instantly accessible place online.

Every industry needs a tool to help it get organised – BandCentral aims to be that tool for the Music Industry.

3. Most bands are strapped for cash. With so many musician resources out there, bands often face a tough call as to which they should spend their money on.  I have always recommended investing in assets that show a direct financial return.  Is BandCentral such an asset?

I’m in full time band and I know from personal experience how costly things can be.  We’ve intentionally kept the price down with cash-strapped bands in mind and we feel that £4.99 (approx. $10) per month split between 4 or 5 people is a small price to pay for the service that we offer bands.  It’s less than one packet of smokes in the UK.. and a lot better for you!  We also have a Free option for those bands who either can’t quite justify the outlay yet or see their bands as more of a hobby or a side interest.

There’s a strong argument for a band saving a great deal of money simply by being better organized.  To take the BandCentral Finance Manager as one example, if your band keeps track of finances in a detailed, responsible way, then you’ll know what you’re spending, when and how you’re wasting your money, and you’ll surely pick up much more than £4.99 a month in savings.

So, is BandCentral an asset worth investing in?  You tell me.

4. How is BandCentral different to Bandize?

Whilst Bandize is certainly in the same territory as BandCentral, anyone who has tried the two services will be aware that there are stark differences in terms of functionality, design and overall usability.  We welcome comparisons between the two sites because this gives us the opportunity to highlight the contrasts.

5. When do you expect to become profitable?  Do you expect to reach this goal without another round of investment?

We have been working on BandCentral for the last 15 months and have grown to a team of 7.  Happily, we’re on course to become profitable within the next 12 -18 months.  BandCentral has already negotiated a second round of funding, details of which will be released in the coming weeks.

6. What can we expect to see from BandCentral in the next six months?

BandCentral Version 2 will be launching in the autumn and brings with it a whole host of brilliant new features such as Music and Merch Management along with some cutting edge enhancements to those V1 features that BandCentral users already know and love.

We’re also incredibly excited about the BandCentral iPhone app that’s in development because it’s something our bands have been asking for for a while and were pretty confident it’ll transform how bands and band managers communicate and get organised whilst on the move.  We have just appointed an agency and the app will be set for release in early 2010.

Beyond that, we’ve got some more music festivals and industry events lined up, both here, in the UK, and abroad.  We’re going to be taking BandCentral to Music Live in November, MIDEM in Cannes in January and we’re excited to be part of the really strong British contingent headed to SXSW in March ‘10.
You’ll be hearing a lot more about BandCentral V2 and developments with the iPhone app in the coming weeks.

Visit www.bandcentral.com

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ArtistForce

I caught up with Brenden Mulligan (@bmull), founder of ArtistData, this week.  Brenden, a seasoned business manager and do-whatever-needs-to-be-done kind of entrepreneur, started in the music industry through a work study program at Creative Artists Agency in Nashville.  He moved from there to work for Aware Records and Asquared Management, where he was on the label and management teams for indie and signed artists.  A lot of his time was spent in the initial signing and development of an artist named Mat Kearney.  He left Aware to found ArtistData, a data synch-and-syndicate system for musicians.  In the early days of ArtistData, he did some consulting, serving as a strategy consultant for an online CD store, the tour manager for Mat during his arena tour with John Mayer, and the manager for a small Chicago folk rock band called The August.  When ArtistData took off, he stopped the various consulting projects to focus on growing the company which has been financed by angel investors as of last year.

1. Brenden, how did you arrive at the problem which ArtistData is gaming to address?

I started in the industry at an agency and then worked at a label in Chicago.  During my time at the label, MySpace exploded and then the birth of music network/profile sites started.  Part of my job, and a large part of each day, was spent trying to make sense of an increasingly crowded mess of social networks, concert databases, etc..  It seemed really inefficient and tedious.  The ArtistData concept was born out of making that complicated mess a little simpler.

2. How do you plan to make ArtistData a more ‘complete’ resource for artists and agents in the future?

We constantly struggle between focus and “completeness”.  Some artists want us to do everything: manage fan mailing lists, create stage plots, help them book shows, help them find new drummers.  I’m a firm believer in focusing on a real problem and trying to create a really good solution for it, as opposed to taking an approach to trying to create a site that does everything, but only marginally well.  So, realize that ArtistData is a content management system which syndicates information out to multiple destinations.  We’ll stay on that track.

Some immediate improvements we want to make to our system is finding better ways to get input INTO ArtistData (multiple user access, importing RSS Feeds to be distributed, mobile interfaces/applications for data entry).  We also want the data we distribute to be more widespread, so we’ll continue expanding our network to more relevant sites, including adding status updates to MySpace and Facebook Pages.  We’re also going to make the data more accessible to fans, so when they click on a twitter link from their mobile phones, it presents the information in a VERY clean and straight forward interface.

So we’re going to keep making it complete, while staying true to our focus of getting information as many places as possible without getting in the way of the band and fan relationship.

3. How are you spreading the word about your service and what kind of user acquisition and activity trends are you seeing?

Our service is word of mouth in the truest sense of the word.  Since our tools don’t necessarily have our branding on them, a lot of times you will be on an artist’s MySpace page without having any idea they are ArtistData users.  This is a huge positive for artists because their fans aren’t distracted by logos from all these different artist services sites.  Unfortunately, it really slows down our market penetration.  However, it’s a trade-off we are happy and excited to make.

So to answer your question, we spread the word by doing one thing: continuing to help our users be more efficient.  When we do that, they naturally tell their friends about the site.  We’re growing really fast (we’ve grown by 100% over the past 2 months), and it’s all because we have amazing users spreading the word because they find our site useful.  We love that.

4. What were/are the technological barriers to creating the ArtistData service?

The hardest thing is convincing other sites that it’s okay that the artists don’t update their sites directly.  So many sites are afraid that if they lose that relationship, they put themselves at a competitive disadvantage.  Every one of our current partners has taken the approach we believe in: that it’s better to have a lot more relevant content for fans than to have a more constant connection with the artists.

We find that the sites that are truly useful don’t see a drop in artist activity on their sites but, instead, see more meaningful activity.  What I mean is that the artists who are signing-in aren’t there to do monotonous data entry, but there to interact with the community, or use other resources of the site.  It actually leads to a better overall relationship with artists.

5. Who are your competitors and how is ArtistData different?

I’d say out competitors are those who offer artist promotional services.  This includes all the obvious names.  The iLikes, ReverbNations, etc… The difference, in my opinion, is that ArtistData has a more specific focus and is not interested in capturing the attention of the music fans.  We leverage the power of the sites that are already good at that.  So our approach is to put the information where it’s supposed to go onto MySpace instead of building a widget to be installed.  However, the widget has its benefits, and we will hopefully give bands that option at some point.

6. How do you hope to monetize ArtistData?

We’ve been talking to our users about this all year, and the conversation has led to our users saying it would be perfectly acceptable for ArtistData to be a paid service.  Because we have no intention of launching a social network where we could sell ads based on fan eyeballs, building a revenue model based on advertising is not an option for us.  We also have some interesting ideas that would allow us to keep it free, but unfortunately I can’t disclose them at this time.  Ultimately, we plan to keep ArtistData free for as long as we can and learn as much as we can from the artists that are using it.

Visit ArtistData at www.artistdata.com

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This is an update follow-up on one of the most promising enterprises in music tech at the moment.  ArtistData is attempting to solve a ubiquitous problem: today, an artist’s online presence consists of several social network pages among other web assets which, unfortunately, are not connected with one another.  As such, gig schedule updates and other content must be ‘updated’ manually on each network.  This is time consuming.  ArtistData addresses this problem by translating and syndicating a single update to all of the artist’s network pages.  More about this topic here.

In addition to ArtistData’s core offering, the company developed some nifty side-features based on geo-specific attributes such as where to get a cup of coffee or new set of guitar strings near the venue.  Not a huge selling point but certainly a nice-to-have.  The “Local Listings” feature is more compelling, serving as a local press distribution platform for live show promotion.  Anyone who has had to manage a PR campaign, hire a publicist, or distribute through PR Newswire will appreciate the value of such an application.

Local Listings Tour:

While every leading and emerging artist service is selling “self-promotion” as its mantra, ArtistData has beautifully positioned itself by focusing on the necessity of syndication: making data quick and easy to manage.  Simple and brilliant.

Full Product Tour: