3 iPhone App Creation Platforms For Musicians

Ryan Van Etten — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:11:06 +0000

Enter the mobile music frontier—the age of the app is here—and you don’t need to be a developer to create your own iPhone app anymore. Here are ~~three~~ four platforms that enable artists to build their own custom mobile applications.

iLike artists can create an iPhone app through their iLike artist account. This looks like the the easiest, most basic, and inexpensive of the three options. Your app automatically integrates with the media content in your iLike artist profile. Currently it’ll cost you a one-time $195 to activate your app. You can choose to make your app free with the clause that iLike may place ads in it, or you can sell your app in a 50/50 split with iLike. View details and video demo.

Mobile Roadie is a flexible service geared for musician iPhone app creation. Their app features are interactive and viral. They include deep social network integration with YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr. Fans have the ability to stream content, comment, upload photos, and purchase tickets and merchandise through the app. A band can sync their updates with their RSS feeds and social-network accounts, or they can update them through Mobile Roadie’s content management system. Their current basic pricing for musicians is $499 set-up + $29/month (covers the first 1,000 installs of the app each month—subsequent installs cost 1 cent each). Extras include “push notification” which uses geotagging to target fans in a specific region. If you opt for Mobile Roadie then please use our 10% discount referrer code virtual or this sign-up link. Watch video demo. View apps created with Mobile Roadie in the App Store.

Kyte is an online and mobile video platform providing on-demand content delivery and feature-rich application development for iPhone, Blackberry, Android, and Nokia devices. Their mobile app frameworks page details the key features, add-on modules, customizations, and monetization possibilities of their apps. The modules include RSS, Twitter, multimedia chat, content streaming, downloads, comments/ratings, fan media uploads, events, location-aware services, games, fan club sign-ups, and mCommerce. Kyte no doubt offers an immense customizable feature set and it is presumably more expensive than the aforementioned alternatives. You have to inquire for exact pricing, but I believe that they charge on a monthly basis for their service at different levels based on features and usage. Update—I received an email response from Kyte with the following details: Kyte iPhone Applications are available as an add-on component to the Kyte Platform and cost an additional monthly fee of $600 per app. The Kyte Platform tiers start at $500/month (plus set-up) and go up into the thousands. Kyte is a power solution for musicians with a massive fanbase.

Did I mention that these services handle the submission process to the Apple iTunes Store for you? Please share how you’re using these for your band etc. Plus, what other platforms am I missing? Update: we were informed about a new 4th platform via the comment section below. Here’s the 411:

MobBase is an iPhone app creation platform designed for musicians and brought to you by the collaborative remix community MixMatchMusic. MobBase launched today and its options enabling musicians to connect with their mobile mob include streaming audio, RSS, Twitter integration, videos via YouTube, photo albums via Picasa, artist info, events, ticketing, and merch. It looks affordable too—their current pricing for free apps is $20 set-up + $15/month (covers the first 500 installs each month—an additional 1,000 installs costs an extra $5). For paid apps, the set-up fee is the same, the monthly rate starts at $20/month, and you keep all the revenue from the sales. Digital distribution company IODA has partnered with MobBase as the app solution for its artists and labels. More detailed coverage is at RWW. View apps created with MobBase in the App Store.

Connect with the Buzz in your Music Scene

Ryan Van Etten — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 01:40:57 +0000

Fans want to connect with musicians. Musicians want to connect with fans. Fans want to connect with other fans. How are they all connecting in 2009? Social platforms such as Twitter, Ustream, and Facebook allow artists to communicate and interact directly with their fans. Direct communication bridges the abyss dug by decades of record label domination.

Find the buzz.

Realtime buzz. Twitter makes it easy for fans to join in realtime conversations. By leveraging Twitter’s search operators, musicians are able to find their fans and contact them directly in realtime. Fans can also use the search to connect with other fans. Both musicians and fans are likely interested in other artists in the same genre. It is their music scene, and, from a bands perspective, it is their target market. Anyone in their music scene is a pretty likely potential fan to them.

Know your scene.

Even if you are new to a particular scene you can still easily discover similar artists as there are many applications that support this feature. Due to its wide use, last.fm is a one relatively accurate similarity indicator. The point here is that one can search conversations about multiple artists simultaneously, and focus on a specific niche or microgenre. By combining the search operators one can create extremely effective searches that target a specific scene in a specific location.

Search like this.

Participate.

Finding the conversation is not enough. Participation is key. Genuine and honest participation. Musicians that can effectively use social platforms to build true relationships with their fans will deliver the most entertaining and valuable experience to them. What fan would not want to be able to contact their favorite bands as they come to their city? What band would not want to be in touch with their local fans? For touring musicians this local connection is invaluable. Twitter is your street team. Spark impromptu fan meet-ups and improvised gigs. Make true connections.

Happy Mondays in 2006. Photo by Stig Nygaard.

Happy Mondays are currently touring the U.S. with The Psychedelic Furs. The Maccabees and Bombay Bicycle Club are each on tour in the U.K.

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