Mobile Backstage Grabs €1 Million, Opens Office In San Francisco
Helsinki-based Mobile Backstage has secured a €1 million bridge financing round. Investors include Finverra, the Finnish government-backed investment company, as well as Miston Ltd., the management team, as well as a group of angel Investors. The investment round will allow the company to open an office in San Francisco, where they hope to better connect with U.S. investors and put a lot of effort into making partnerships with business partners and other startups.
The company creates virtual fan clubs designed to build a community and increase engagement between fans and artists. Early on the service was focused purely on mobile platforms, although it has shifted to also include Facebook and web platforms.
Mobile Backstage Hits 100K Users Interacting With Artists
We've covered the rise of Helsinki-based Mobile Backstage, a service that creates and maintains smartphone apps for bands. They've seen success creating an interactive fan club service that helps develop and maintain relationships between artists and fans, where now their platform has expanded to many Finnish and UK based bands. Today Mobile Backstage tells us the service has reached 100 thousand registered users on mobile devices alone. These users have also logged 4 million interactions in 2011.
Mobile Backstage Goes Android
Mobile Backstage, the multi-service communications platform for bands and their fans, is now available on the Android platform. The Android roll-out follows the launch of the service’s Facebook application last August.
Android owners can now use Mobile Backstage to follow their favorite artists, interact with other fans, play and buy music, check into gigs and much more.
Steam Republic Brings Bands Direct-To-Fan
Steam Republic, a Finnish startup in the mobile space, is focusing on digital fan oriented marketing. They are big in mobile and want to enable bands to control the relationship with their own fans and consequentially make money through that.
Steam Republic was previously called Backstage Alliance. The company has participated and won several competitions under both names. Latest is the Appsfire App Star Awards where they were a finalist (see video below). They have also landed their first international agreement with EMI record label (UK) and are pushing out their first international pilot with You Me At Six already at the end of this week if all goes as planned.
