Bandize, a new web service for musicians that's currently in closed alpha, gives bands a suite of online tools to manage everything from tour bookings and social networking to mundane tasks like accounting and monitoring merchandise levels.
The five musician/web developers behind Bandize say they are trying to cover all the bases in an attempt to make musicians' lives easier.
“The main thing we're doing is all of it," said Beamer Wilkins at the South by Southwest Music festival trade show last week. Wilkins, 25, and his team have been working on the service for just over a year. In fact, their first focus group to discuss Bandize was held at last year's SXSW festival.
The overlap between music and technology has never been greater. Virtually every band rocks the internet to promote itself these days, using MySpace, Twitter and other popular services to attract new listeners and keep current fans loyal. A wave of iPhone apps like Gigotron, a winner at this year's SXSW Interactive Web Awards, make it easier for music lovers to find shows they want to see.
Soon, Bandize will deliver business and communication tools that let bands collaborate more easily as they work to take their careers to the next level. Bandize will go to public beta within six months, according to its founders, and will cost no more than $10 per month per band. (Want to try Bandize now? The first 50 Wired.com readers that use Twitter to request a free trial will be whisked into Bandize's closed alpha. If you're already a logged-in Twitter user, just click the following link to tweet: “Hey @wired, gimme a @bandize invite!")
Bandize lets bands keep track of tour dates, venues and hotel accommodations, and print out tour itineraries. The inventory-management tool keeps track of every T-shirt or CD that is sold or given away, registering the cost of the swag or the profit from the sale. Bandize lets bands sync their social networking info on MySpace and Pure Volume (Bandize is also working with Facebook), and assign tasks to each other and track productivity. Every band member gets their own Bandize login, making it easier for anybody to update the data at any time, and accounting data can be exported to popular bookkeeping software.
Scott Hansen, a San Francisco-based electronic musician who records and performs as Tycho, has been using Bandize during the closed alpha. He said it “absolutely" simplifies the music biz.
“My manager works with it handling a lot of the day-to-day, and it's nice to be able to collaborate in a single space instead of requesting e-mails from him," Hansen said in an e-mail interview. “Feels more like we're working on things together now." Hansen said he finds Bandize's novel inventory management system especially useful. “I sell a lot of T-shirts, so it's cool to see how much I made on merch at each show I played," he said.
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