Musicians using apps to meet you Backstage

A new mobile service aimed at musicians has finished trials, and is being launched to the industry at large. Mobile Backstage allows musicians to create a mobile “hub” for their fans, combining a lot of different “hot” aspects of mobile technology: social networking, content sharing and ‘checking in’.

What’s the story?

Steam Republic is a Finnish music marketing firm that works mainly with smartphones and mobile networks. It has created Mobile Backstage as a way to give musicians an easy way to maintain a mobile audience. The musicians actually using the service are paying for the creation of their own app – the content of which is maintained from a central dashboard that allows them to upload content and information to the app, as well as integrate with social networks that are popular on mobile, like Facebook and Twitter.

Fans who download the resulting free app will be able to access the following:
•    Songs, videos and information uploaded by the artist
•    Upcoming gig information (the ability to book tickets to those gigs through the app is planned for a later release, along with merchandise sales)
•    ’Checking in’ at gigs using GPS, like FourSquare
•    Aggregated social networking updates from the band from other social networks

The apps are only available for iPhone at the moment, but Steam Republic says it will launch Android and Blackberry versions later this year.

What we think?

Unusually for a service like this, Steam Republic has actually announced the price: approx. €1000. That’s not actually too bad, considering what you’re getting here. The app on offer is pretty comprehensive – whether or not it’s worth the money is up to the artist themselves. But if you’re a musician with the kind of audience that will carry smartphones, this isn’t a terrible investment.

As for the trial that came before this, artists that tested it out included Dizzee Rascal, You Me At Six and Enter Shikari. Steam Republic claims the trials were very successful, and that fans checked the apps far more regularly than they would visit the artists’ web page.