September 10, 2012 Developing a mobile app for your band
Why Your Band Needs an App
It’s no secret that the world of music has changed over the past decade. In fact, there’s no aspect of writing, recording, distributing and marketing music that hasn’t changed. While some bands may be actively seeking major label success, the truly inventive bands are working hard on every aspect of their music, including promotion. This is largely because today’s independent musician is truly independent. They often produce, record and promote their music without the help of a record producer or PR company.
Your Band is a Brand
The truth is that whether you like it or not, your band is also a brand that people need to connect with. The other truth is that music is more accessible than ever, and that means that we’re constantly barraged with new music via cloud-based music streaming services and music blogs. In fact, standing out from the masses of musicians and bands trying to strike it big is among the most difficult challenges of playing music these days. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a better way to stay ahead of the back than with a well-designed iOS or Android app, though.
Three Reasons Your Band Needs an App
1. Promotion – If you’re like most band managers, promoters, frontmen/women you have probably spent countless hours promoting shows, new singles and upcoming tours or radio appearances. A mobile app would serve as a simplified portal for promoting upcoming band-related events.
2. Band Updates – If your band is actively touring and recording, you may find yourself incessantly posting updates to Facebook pages and Twitter accounts, sometimes getting posts crisscrossed in the process. A quality mobile app will allow you to pre-schedule tweets and status updates from the road without having to scour unknown cities and towns for Internet cafes when you should be focusing on touring, which is a stressful process in and of itself.
3. Music/Merchandise Sales – A big debate in today’s music making culture is whether or not bands make money from touring. Whether or not bands make money from touring is irrelevant. The bottom line is that bands don’t make money from selling records anymore - royalties are a mere pittance of what they used to be - so they have to make money somehow. This is an unfortunate reality for many bands, but you can make this work in your favor with a mobile app. An app will let you alert fans and users when you come to their town. You can even offer discounts and specials for people who present a ticket stub for your show at the merch table. However you approach it, make sure you make it easy for concertgoers to buy your band’s merchandise.
Getting Down to Business: Developing the App
Unless you’ve lucked out by recruiting a mobile developer as a drummer, odds are you may find yourself on the clueless end of the app development spectrum. There are a number mobile app development services that work with you to build a high quality app to fit your band’s image. Some are open source or allow you to build your app in a drag & drop format, while others will work with you directly and custom design the app for you.
Facing the Music: The Old Industry Model is Dead
From the moment music lovers knew they could enjoy music digitally without spending $15 to $20 on an entire album, music industry bigwigs have been trying to thwart the power of the Internet. While this battle is far from over, the accessibility of promotional tools, like mobile apps and digital distribution, puts more power into the hands of musicians, and less power into the hands of executives and music publishers.
Branding tagged mobile, mobile apps, mobile marketing
Reader Comments (20)
Couldn't agree more. And I approached a couple of freelance web/ app developers just to get an idea of cost. Guess what? Still haven't heard back. Seems that they're not prepared to work on a shoestring and work out some back-end deal. Get in touch if you will..
These apps are the way to go. It's a great way to get your music out there in many different ways. I have built apps for indie films and doing some for musicians. People are using mobile more and more. With an app you can keep it updating with new stuff all the time or sell an app like an album expience or sampler.
I'm pretty skeptical of this. How much real estate is there on a device for apps? Not enough to have room for more than a few artist apps. Whereas a device owner might have songs from hundreds of artists on their media player, the relative number of artists they're going to have as apps is probably less than 10, and by necessity less than 100, if they're into artist apps at all. So my app is competing for very limited space with artists who can afford to have big professional dev/content teams polishing their app. It seems to me that I should focus my resources on battles I am more likely to win.
Furthermore, how does an app help me gain or retain fans? I'd wager that someone who puts the Lady Gaga app on their iPhone is already a huge gaga fan, and the app is just icing on the cake.
The article really doesn't make the case to address any of these issues.
- Tungsten Carbide, http://thehumanoperators.com
It def makes me happy to see more and more bands using their app to promote their brand! @daznez I might try going to local art/comp sci universities and see if any aspiring developers/designers could develop something for you. Quality might not be top-notch(maybe it would depending on who it is) and costs would probably be lower.
We've come to exactly the same conclusions when designing NuPlays. Creating apps is another great way to give your fans experience And music branch must start thinking about selling music experiences, not files.
How about Mobile Roadie? It's a platform for creative artists and is reasonably priced. Almost no development except for the art pieces.
We really dig Sonic Row. Web apps and QR codes, messaging and selling music through their system. It's pretty impressive. sonicrow.com.
Thanks for sharing this post on developing a mobile app for your band. You have clearly explained why a Band needs an app. An app for band will be really helpful for promotion, band updates and Music or Merchandise Sales.
Can anybody share some measurable results before having mobile app and after? I still feel very skeptical about paying 30 bucks per month just for fanciness.
Another very good app solution can be found at http:/volu.me
They provide native apps for iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry platforms.
Funny, I'm a drummer and an App developer. I know the indie music world b/c I've been in it for the last 12 + years. I understand the questions and the concerns for viability and results with every dollar spent. If you're tired of paying too much for an App or finding a cheap one that is poorly designed and clunky, take two minutes and look at my website www.blackeyedapps.com to find an option that is elegant in design, super easy to make without technical jargon, and works on an indie band's budget.
Nice blog Cameron, i have learned lot of new things from it. Great job!!!
I think there's no need in a separate mobile application for each band but having a musical hub isn't a bad idea. However, there are already many other competitors. But if you want an iOS app then this page https://www.cleveroad.com/ios-app-development-company is for you. These devs can handle everything.
I would like to share my experience and recommend you to choose a native app development as it has more advantages than other development approaches. Native apps look and feel great, and operate very well, which leads to better user experience, customer satisfaction, and retention rates.
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Hi! I think due to the impact that covid-19 caused on our lives It is always a good idea to digitalize anything you can, the music band as well. Maybe in the next couple of years, we will all be living on the internet, and the internet of things will become our everyday routine. I found some useful information about mobile app development on this page - I guess this can be quite helpful in the process of understanding mobile software development.
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