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.
Mobile Backstage Launches A Facebook App, Names David Hazan CMO
Music fans are bands' most precious resource. They can take artists to fame and earn them money. Creating and maintaining a strong fanbase is, therefore, extremely important for any band. Mobile Backstage offers artists directly engage with their core fans through a fully customized mobile app. Now their solution is also available as a Facebook app, though for the moment it is in free invite-only beta. Artists can apply for an invite here. Steam Republic, the company behind Mobile Backstage, also hired a new Chief Marketing Officer - David Hazan, a seasoned professional in music industry that would help the Helsinki-based start-up establish presense in the US.
5 Of 30 MidemNet Lab Finalists Were Finnish
MidemNet Lab, whose winners were just announcned, is the second most important music event after SXSW, according to Kai Lemmetty, co-founder of GigsWiz. GigsWiz happens to be one of the five Finnish companies who took part in the MidemNet Lab startup competition. The competition featured 30 startups from all over the world showcasing their digital music innovations in the areas of mobile applications, industry services (B2B) and consumer services (B2C). Together with GigsWiz, the other Finnish (and also the only Nordic and Baltic companies for that matter) startups were Playmysong, Steam Republic, Geisha Music and SongHi. The only country to have more representatives was the US with 10 finalists. The winners this time round were Jammbox (mobile applications), Next Big Sound (B2B) and Shuffler (Consumer services).
ArcticEvening Tampere - Program And Speakers (Few Extra Tix Too!)
It's only a few days before we have our event in Tampere and we've made available a small batch of extra tickets and will share the program in this post as well. In short, the event will roll around the theme of angel investing. We'll be having three companies pitch in the event and afterwards have a panel discussion with three angel investors on their personal investment philosophy, what they're looking for in a startup and in general their experiences in angel investing. Lots of interesting stories to be told for sure!
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.
