JOIN OUR TEAM!

We’re looking for an enthusiastic and experienced Business Development, Marketing and PR manager to join our small but awesome team in London.

Check out the job spec below (full listing here: http://bit.ly/workforbc) and if you think you are the person for the job, send a cover letter and CV to office@bandcentral.com.

Role: Business Development, Marketing and PR manager

Based: Carnaby St, Soho, London

Reports to: CEO & Directors


Business Development:

• Proactively create, convert and secure new relationships through networking, prospecting, PR and technical integration. Maintain strong direct relationships with strategic partners nationally & internationally.

• Leverage opportunities to raise BandCentral’s profile within the start-up & music-tech community.

• Demonstrate solid understanding of digital arena and how to exploit further opportunities within this area for the company.

• Capable of developing written work of the highest standard – strategic pitch presentations and more consultative documents.

• Play central role in helping team build “business infrastructure” tools.

• Represent BandCentral at industry events.

• Thrive on responsibility and in supporting the development of business, individuals in the team, and the company as a whole.

Marketing and PR:

• Lead, develop and track all product marketing & PR initiatives.

• Develop brand and product strategy.

• Track & optimize traffic and conversion rates.

• Obsess over the information architecture and user experience on both the BandCentral site and application.

• Work closely with devs and creative teams to produce online and offline collateral.

• Assure alignment between online and offline brand strategies and adherence to industry best practices.

• Conduct market research and competitive analysis.

• Organise & lead market visits.

• Maintain BandCentral’s online presences: twitter, facebook, myspace, blog.

• Manage Marketing & PR assistant/ Interns. Direct report to CEO & Directors.

Required skills:

• 4+ years experience in a senior Business Development role.

• Proven ability to spot opportunities within market place and action against them.

• Demonstrate measurable success in marketing online products.

• Possess deep understanding of the full marketing mix with specialism in online marketing practices.

• Posses an eye for creativity and outstanding copy writing skills.

• Obsessive about product optimisation.

• Comfortable working in an agile development environment.

• Ability to present confidently in a sales environment.

• Experience working with web-based collaboration tools (Pivital Tracker, Basecamp)

• A master of Google Analytics, Adwords

• A passion for new and emerging web technologies.

• Obsessive about social media.

• A love of music – particularly the unsigned scene – extra points if you have actual experience playing or working with bands.

• A robust contact list.

Desirable skills:

• Digital Communications Agency background + client side marketing experience highly desirable.

• Successful experience working with a Freemium business model desirable.

• Music industry experience preferred.

Wil Padley: “If by ‘like a start-up’ you mean, ‘work damn hard’…”

The following is an except from a recent guest post for Midem. To view the original article – please click here.

“If by ‘like a start-up’ you mean, ‘work damn hard’…”

A common analogy for the new music industry is for musicians to think of their band as a business, (or a start-up, or a brand…).

Now no musician wants to be told to run their band like a business.

But before dismissing it out of hand, let’s unpack this idea a little and look at some of the reasons for what is actually a really helpful comparison.

A band, like a start-up:

-       has several members

-       all working together, performing lots of different, crucial tasks,

-       that are all in aid of a single, ambitious, overarching goal that you could loosely define as ‘success’ – whether that be fame & fortune or just making a living from your art;

-       and achieving this goal takes unity, a lot of time, money, organisation and clear-headed dedication to achieve.

With the state of the recording industry such as it is, the majority of bands are looking to the DIY model to get ahead – my band included. With a selection of distinctly underwhelming record deals on the table, my band and I have taken our collective fate into our own hands and we each now own a stake in the newly formed, Exhibition records, our own label, on which we will release our debut album in August. Like a start-up  – we’ve raised the funds, devised the online and offline marketing and PR strategy and we’re poised for launch.

Organisation.

Unlike a workplace, which relies upon the order of socially-acceptable work hours, conventional goals, and an office, or somewhere, to converge and get stuff done, a band has to build their own sense of structure.

And so the biggest problem for most bands is finding, from within the puzzle of four or five different people’s day jobs, university courses, partners and families (i.e. ‘lives’), the time to produce new material, to rehearse, to gig, to liaise with promoters, interact with fans, complete important tasks.. the list goes on.

The most straight-up practical advice I can give a band is to be obsessive about organisation. Get a shared calendar  and plug in all of the absolutely essential time you can’t devote to the band (basically: sleep, day job or university classes), and then to commit to all other time as band time. If you are well organised you can capitalise on every opportunity that comes your way. It’s as simple as that.

Teamwork and collective vision.

As a band, you need to take the leap of commitment together – a private one, and an all-hands-in-the-circle, blood-brothers, group-affirmation-kinda one. If you’re not on the same page as far as ambition-dedication and creative direction go, you might as well go home.

Teamwork is crucial. In my band there are things that some of us are better at than others; one of us has the gift of the gab, one of us can write better than the others, one is a great designer, and i’m a digital creative by trade – we use our respective skills for the band and divvy up all important tasks so each member has an ongoing responsibility.

As with most things in life, communication is also key. If you communicate well with each other you’ll each have a chance to vent frustrations before they become an issue.

Money.
I’m not talking about the argument about money v. creativity as contradictory forces. Neither am I going to get into a discussion re. the future of record sales; there’s plenty of other people doing a much better job of that, and if bands worry too much about the viability of the industry, then they’ll never pick up their guitars and write great songs.

The way I see it is: if you need money to live, and you want to make your band your living, then you need to make money from your band.

Bands have a brand (image) & product (music) they are trying to sell to make a living. It may not be a glamourous or rock ‘n roll way to view it, but these days you not only need to write great music, you need to be able to market it effectively & maximise your sales via a multi-channel environment.  And the reality is, unless you are really lucky or have a benefactor with very deep pockets – you’re going to have to work out how to do a lot of this yourselves.

Our band is now unequivocally a “business” and we’ve had to learn some hard lessons about running it, and fast…

So, be open-minded & enterprising, actively seek solutions to your needs; you can find a lot of answers by cultivating relationships with bands and industry professionals you admire & respect. Use the web to maximum effect – it is a huge leveler and enabler. Be sure to consider all possible marketing avenues – without compromising your product. Have a solid and well thought out plan for both production and promotion and track every pound (or dollar) like it’s your last.

But most of all – keep writing great material. You can run a tight ship but at the end of the day there is no substitute for good music.

Open Event:- BandCentral, SoundCloud, Mobile Roadie & Topspin Meet Up @ Dean St Studios

If you’re in London next Tuesday night (29th June) come along to the BandCentral, SoundCloud, Mobile Roadie & Topspin meet-up co-hosted by Underdogs Management and Dean St. Studios in Soho.

Check it out:

“Take the hassle out of the hustle!” Win one of 10 six-month Pro passes for BandCentral with Total Guitar Magazine

Hi All,

The good people at Total Guitar are giving away 10 x 6-month PRO passes to BandCentral!

To be in with a chance, head over to Total Guitar’s site and answer their brain teaser:

“How much file storage does the Pro Annual package offer?

A) 1GB
B) 2GB
C) 3GB”

Good luck!

BandCentral’s Message Board is an Email-killer!

Tedious, multi-thread email discussions where you keep forgetting to hit ‘reply-to-all’ have been vanquished. Nixed. Toasted.

Better than trying to negotiate a volley of group emails, your BandHub’s Message Board offers a much smoother way for a band to communicate online.

Here’s why:

Centralise band communication:

Having a central Message Board for group discussions tidies up shambolic communication by giving your band:

-       One shared location online for all internal band news

-       A new discussion for each piece of band business (e.g. one for re-scheduling rehearsals, one for planning tours, and one for feedback on the latest demo recordings).

-       A clean, open layout that allows you to easily see the flow of a conversation, and each band member’s contributions.

Sync with SoundCloud & collaborate on mixes:

As a team, we find SoundCloud so darn useful that we decided to integrate their awesome service directly into your BandCentral BandHub. If you don’t already have a SoundCloud account, you should do (check them out here) – it’s such a simple concept and design, that manages to solve so many of the logistical problems of music file storage and sharing.

You can access your SoundCloud tracks at any time by incorporating them into your BandHub music catalogue, but the major benefit of the BandCentral – SoundCloud integration is that your producer can now stream your latest tracks directly into your BandHub where you can discuss mixes, comment on sections and generally thrash out your creative differences via the communal messageboard. This in turn should save you heaps of time and money by minimising the number of costly trips down to the studio.

Set Email & SMS Alerts:

When you need an urgent response to something and your band mates aren’t logged into the BandHub you can attach Email or SMS alerts to your messages, via the Set Alert button beneath the message body.

If you, personally, want to make sure you know about every discussion as it happens, you can choose to have every message from the BandHub delivered to your email inbox. To activate this function go to My Settings > Notification Settings and select the ‘Messages’ check box. Also, you can reply to messages via email directly into your BandHub’s Message Board.

SMS alerts are particularly useful if you’ve got some urgent news to get out to the band members, e.g., a last-minute scheduling change for a gig’s sound check, a no-show for your friend who’s meant to look after the Merch table, or a newly-confirmed out-of-town gig on the weekend.

…

The central Message Board was a foundation stone when we started to build BandCentral. Our own experiences with five-way group emailing had been driving us round the bend and we knew we could find a better way.

If you have any queries concerning how to get the most out of your BandHub – please email us at help @ BandCentral (dot) com.

Cheers,

BandCentral HQ

Going Social with BandCentral: Syncing Facebook, MySpace and Twitter with your BandHub

Depending on who you are, having a lively social network presence (personality?) will be something that either comes naturally, or that you’ll consider a chore.

And while the vogue advice is all about wide-open engagement with fans, this can be misleading if the consequence is a kind of forced engagement, or proffering of any old rubbish for the sake of a daily tweets quota: we’ve all learnt to read the Internet, and anyone glancing through your Twitter stream will be able to sniff in an instant whether you’re natural, or not. Beware of both: gaping, whistling, empty social network sites, and of insincerity.

There’s precedence for all types of Muso-Social Networkers, though: some artists do an excellent job of keeping a more-or-less constant conversation going with their fans (Amanda Palmer, MIA), while others are more reserved, but still manage to maintain a respectful line of communication with their fans (The National, Joanna Newsom). And often, in a band of four or five, one or two members will naturally fill the role of ‘social-networker’, tweeting away without inhibition, while others stay as far away as possible.

Regardless your band’s approach, it’s safe to say that, seeing as ‘social networks’ is now synonymous with ‘the Internet’, maintaining social network profiles is essential for the modern musician.

Different fans will want to keep up with you via different avenues and, especially while you’re building up your fan base, it’s important to meet your fans where they are. The banter might come or it might not, but at the very least, social networks are an excellent way to share details on upcoming gigs, new releases, merchandise, and any other news, directly with your fans.

…

Keeping up with it all can become a lot of work, though, and it can be especially frustrating if you’re just repeating the same piece of news on, say, a new gig, across several different networks.

The BandCentral BandHub syncs up with your band’s MySpace, Facebook and Twitter pages, so you can save time by sharing info with each of these networks all from within the BandHub while you’re in there working on other band stuff – planning your upcoming gigs, for example.

More uses:

With the launch of BandCetnral V2 we’ve expanded the ways in which your social networks work with your BandHub, beyond the status updates and event listings..

Some of the new uses: pre-filled-but-editable Gig-Tweets so you can shoot out a message via Twitter each time you enter in a new Gig; a ‘share’ option when a fan signs up to your mailing list via our Fan Collector Widget lets your fans spread the word about your band to their friends. Also, the ‘Recent Tweets about My Band’ box on the Dashboard pulls in any Tweets mentioning your band name, in real time, acting like the Twitter search feature.

…

How do I sync my Facebook, MySpace and Twitter accounts with my BandHub?

First of all, everything is much easier if you are already logged into your social network accounts before you do anything, so do this now.

From the Dashboard, under Social Network Status, you will see that the links to Facebook, MySpace and Twitter indicate whether or not they have been synced.

Twitter

1. Click on the Twitter icon. You will be redirected to a Twitter authorisation page. (Log in if you aren’t already..)

2. Click ‘Allow’. (You will be directed back to the BandCentral dashboard).

3. That’s it! You’re done. :)

MySpace status updates

1. Click on the MySpace icon. You will be redirected to a MySpace authorisation page. (Erm, log in if you aren’t already..)

2. Click ‘Allow’. (You will be directed back to the BandCentral dashboard.)

3. And you’re done. :)

MySpace gig-syncing

1. Open up ‘Settings’ in the main side menu, and click on ‘Social Networks’.

2. Go to ‘MySpace Account Settings’ and enter in your email and password FOR YOUR MYSPACE LOG-IN (i.e. not your BandCentral log in…).

3. Click ‘Save MySpace Settings’.

(NB: every time you send a gig across from your BandHub to your MySpace page, BandCentral automatically logs into MySpace and posts it for you, using the information you enter here.)

Facebook.

1. On the dashboard, click on the Facebook icon.

2. You will be redirected to a page within your BandHub, with clearly spelled-out directions for syncing both status updates and event-listings.

(NB: BandCentral works with a Facebook ‘Band Page’ – where you have ‘likes’, rather than ‘friends’ – and not a personal account. Also, your page must also be public/published and you must be an admin.)

—————————————-

If you ever need to change your social network accounts, then just follow the same steps via ‘Social Networks’ under the ‘Settings’ tab. Each button will be rephrased to say ‘RE-sync’, etc..

FYI!!! Like every other aspect of BandCentral, all of your information is secure in your BandHub and accessible only by you.

Once you’re done, you can jump back to the Dashboard and give it a test run. Note the optional check boxes and the character count for Twitter, and then marvel at how easily three tasks have become one! :)

…

Cheers,

BandCentral HQ

get the most out of every gig

BandCentral’s Gigs & Tours Manager is a centerpiece of your BandHub and its detail is unrivaled for live music and tour management.

In this post, we would like to introduce you to features that can help you to get the most out of every gig you play. Read on for details on how to:

  • Send your gig listing to your Band’s social networks.
  • Compose and print set lists.
  • Compose and print guest lists.
  • Print fan sign-up sheets for gigs.
  • Print gig day sheets.
  • Print tour books.

——————–

Send your gig listing to your Band’s social networks.

Setting up your social networks will be covered in a post of its own, but this is a quick reminder of how easy it is to post a listing to your MySpace calendar, your Facebook page’s events and to your Twitter account. These ‘one-click’ links can be found in the Social Networks tab when creating a New Gig.

——————–

Compose and print set lists.

Once you have entered in a new gig, there is a link to compose a set list. Click on the Set List button in line with a particular gig’s heading under the Gigs & Tours main-page.

This will take you to our snazzy Set List builder.

To compose your list, drag and drop the song titles from the catalogue list, or enter in new titles using the Add a song box.

NB: All songs you have previously entered into the Music Manager will appear in the catalogue, and vice versa: when you Add a song from here it will also become a song entry in your Music Manager.

You can also Add element, which essentially allows you to insert free text indicating elements of your live show that aren’t exactly songs, for example: ‘Brian’s extended guitar solo’ or ‘the bit where we introduce the band.’

Your set list auto-saves while you’re making it, so you can leave the page at any time. Also, you can use a past set list via the Load Previous Set List.. drop-down.

Once you’re all happy, hit the Print Set List button in the top-right to export a large-font, printable .pdf file.

——————–

Compose and print guest lists.

Once you have finished entering in a new gig, click on the Guest List button in line with a particular gig heading under the Gigs & Tours main-page.

This will take you to our Guest List builder.

Using this straightforward list builder, add the names of the guest list for each gig you play – it will most likely change every time!

Like the Set List, the Guest List auto-saves as you compose it, meaning you can leave the page at any time and check back to add or delete names in the lead up to your gig. Once your list is finalised (set the band a deadline!) hit the Print Guest List button in the top-right to export a professional, printable .pdf file.

——————–

Print fan sign-up sheets for gigs.

We cannot stress the importance of building your fan database enough – directly approaching the crowd after you’ve played a gig is the perfect opportunity to collect the email addresses of genuine fans! For every gig you create in your BandHub you can export and print a fan mailing list that is dated and titled with the venue of each specific gig.

After you have saved a gig  a link to Print Mailing List appears above the gig information when you are editing or viewing the gig entry. Hit this button to download a clear, well-spaced mailing list with fields for: Name, Email, City and Phone.

Later on, when you’re plugging the contact information into your Fan Database (Fans > Add a Fan), we give you the option to Associate the fan with a gig, recording this information alongside a fan’s name so you know who to contact next time you play the same venue.

——————–

Print gig day sheets.

All of the information you enter when composing a gig can be exported into a very handy Day Sheet. Venue details (and map), promoter’s contact information, load-in and schedule, line-up and any other information you input are condensed onto a few printable sheets.

After you have saved a gig just once, you with be able to export this .pdf file via the Print Day Sheet button that appears above a gig when editing of viewing the gig’s details.

——————–

Print tour books.

After you have composed a tour using the Tour Manager, a link appears beneath the tour name: Tour Book. Click on this to export a bumper .pdf file composed of a title page, a day-by-day itinerary and a gig day sheet for every gig played during the tour, in date order.

In one click you have pulled together an entire tour book, with every detail you need to know, from set duration and venue capacity to dressing room number and backline notes, for every different venue you’re playing while you’re on the road.

——————–

Ta da! These tools are here to help your gigs to run more smoothly on the night, ensuring you get the most out of every show you play.

BandCentral HQ

Grow your fanbase with the BandCentral Fan Collector Widget

No musician can underestimate the importance of fans to their band’s success. If you want to make your band your living — if you want people to buy your music, come to your shows and quote your lyrics on their Facebook status updates — then you must take care of your fans: they are your bread and butter.

BandCentral includes a bunch of tools to help you to stay in contact with your fans, like fan email and SMS alerts and our expanding social network integration, but we also offer you ways to directly grow your fan base.

As part of your BandHub we have included a Fan Collector Widget that you can embed across your band’s online presences like Facebook, MySpace and your band’s own website or blog.

When a fan enters their contact details into the widget they are imported directly into your Fan Database. If posted in the right places, this low-maintenance, conscientious gadget can make your band a lot of new friends.

———————

Share!!

We’re really pleased with a nifty new feature we’ve incorporated into the Widget that enables your fans to spread the word for you. After entering in their details, fans are given the option to share a link to your page via their personal Twitter or Facebook accounts, in just one click!

(We’re currently unable to incorporate the share feature with MySpace, but just as soon as they let us we’ll make that happen!)

———————

How to:

Go to ‘Fan Collector Widget’ under ‘Fans’ in the main sidebar menu, and select either ‘Widget for MySpace’ or ‘Widget for a Website’.

The Fan Collector Widget has a simple and fully customisable design. You can: change the colour, the corner radius, the heading and the subheading. Have a tinker, and click ‘Set’. If you like what you see, click ‘Copy to Clipboard’.

Beneath this field there are instructions for embedding the code onto your various web presences, including links to Facebook and MySpace flash embedding procedures, and a link to a more thorough article on embedding Flash into the HTML of your website. Each website’s instructions will be slightly different, but it is generally very easy to do.

Don’t get scared off by the HTML if it’s unfamiliar to you; the benefit of the Fan Collector Widget to growing your fan-base is invaluable!

Tip: You can have as many of these guys working for you at once. On top of your band’s website and social networks, ask your friends to embed this widget onto their own pages. Ask your most loyal fans to post one on their blogs in return for a free gig ticket, merchandise or good karma.

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If you have any problems setting up the Fan Collector Widget, you can email us at help@bandcentral.com and we’ll get you set up.

New features!

Hi All,

Last week we finally launched the brand new BandCentral. We’ve had an amazing response from our users and from the wider community – and we’d like to thank you for your continued support.

We’ve packed a whole lot of stuff into your new BandHub and we want you to be able to use features such as the brand new Music manager, Tours manager, SoundCloud integration and the Merchandise manager to their greatest capacity. So, over the next few weeks, we’re going to be posting a series of ‘How-tos’ highlighting some of the new features & how you can get the most out of them.

First up, growing your fanbase and spreading the word about your band with the brand new BandCentral Fan Collector Widget…

Stay tuned!

p.s. If you’d like a little light reading – check out what Tech Crunch, Digital Music News, Music Week and SXSW had to say about the launch of BandCentral V2!:

http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/05/05/bandcentral-a-basecamp-for-bands-gets-official-push-today/

http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/stories/050510bandcentral

http://www.musicweek.com/story.asp?storycode=1041045

http://sxsw.com/node/4889

WIN 2 tickets to the Great Escape Festival!

Great Escape 2010 Line-up

Great Escape 2010 Line-up

We’ve found ourselves in the possession of two tickets to the Great Escape festival in Brighton this weekend, and we’d like to give them away to you!

Two win: check out the awesome line up, and then @message @BandCentral over Twitter with the name of the band you simply have to see.

E.g.: “@BandCentral, I will never forgive myself if I miss @EllieGoulding!”

…or: “@BandCentral, plz plzz lemme groove wit Broken Social Scene! (@bssmusic)”

The Great Escape festival runs from this Thursday 13th – Saturday 15th by the lovely Brighton seaside.

You’ve got until 9pm tonight, and you can message us as often as you like, so get to it!!

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For the full line-up check out:

http://www.escapegreat.com/