Bandz N’ Showz
Streamling the Show

Promotion Process

Musicians and Promoters Have Trouble Driving Fan Turnout to Shows...

When trying to log tour dates users (musicians, managers, etc…) have trouble keeping track of all the sites they need to post tour dates to and often have to redundantly
re-post information on many sites. We would like to explore ways to streamline the process by saving users time and frustration by developing a new platform.

Our Process

This case study is very involved click on the icons below
if you want to jump to any specific sections.

This Section //

Research

What we tackled:

Competitive Analysis
Heuristic Analysis
Research Plan
Screening
Interviews

Research

There was a major disconnect between
where fans are and bands list!

Most of the places where regular folks here about show are not the sites listed above by more common places like social media and ticketing sites.

1. Competitive Analysis // Research

The best place

to start was a Google search

We searched:
“Sites for local bands to list shows”

And this is what we got. Some of these we had never heard of before which was surprising since I play and a band... and am more dialing into this than most folks.

Where Our Fans Are

Other Notible Sites

This is where
fans are listening.

There are about four big players in the musician/tour manager space. They don’t work great with each other.

You can’t list direct on Spotify
and have to use Songkick Tourbox.
BandsInTown can push to Facebook.
But Facebook has its own event page!
Lack of control with Ticketmaster
No Proper event listing on Instagram

Overall Findings

See our full
presentation here:
Show Booking for Bands
Secondary Research

There are many players in the musician / tour manager space. They don’t work with each other.
Some of them push out to social or to other platforms.
Songkick being the player really trying in this space.
They have even been working with Google. BandsInTown and Songkick work with Wix a website platformsome bands may use.
The fans are in a different space from the apps bands are using to manage tour dates. AKA you want to reach fans on Facebook and Twitter but need to update tour dates on your website with Songkick.
The venues mostly control big player listings like Ticketmaster, etc…
Venues list tour dates with ticket links on their sites bands do not have to tackle this side of the listing

2. Heuristic Analysis // Research

Our Heuristic
Journey Begins

The three sites below are websites that bands and managers use to currently track and book their gigs. We wanted to do a dive into the below to see what was working and what could be improved as we moved into design our platform.

Songkick allows you to organize and track your favorite bands, get concert alerts, and buy tickets. Get instant tour dates from your music library.

Find tour dates and live music events for all your favorite bands and artists in your city. Get concert tickets, news and RSVP to shows with Bandsintown.

Find upcoming events near you, with listings, tour dates and tickets for concerts, festivals, movies, performing arts, family events, sports and more.

*Sadly Eventful is not longer up and running. It is now something called radio.com. COVID has taken a big toll on live event spaces.

We focused on these three aspects of Heuristic analysis when review the sties.

Overall Scores (1-10)
1-3 Not acceptable
4-6 Passable
7-9 Meeting Customers Need Well

Link to the full research
presentation here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CjONuUwkaKODUc3hDLGjzYPqbqUo74Tb/view

User control
and freedom

Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked "emergency exit" to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue. Support undo and redo.

Match between system
and the real world

The system should speak the users' language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order.

Help and
documentation

Even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation, it may be necessary to provide help and documentation. Any such information should be easy to search, focused on the user's task, list concrete steps to be carried out, and not be too large.

Songkick

✓ Venues Pre Populate

saving time and effort

✓ Artists Pre Populate

to save time

✓ You can manage
multiple artists

✓ The event form is very easy

to edit, update, delete and use overall.

✓ Has some good integration

to push out to other platforms

I am targeting.

✓ Overall the site design was simple nothing really jumped

out at me.

✓ This site is specifically for bands listing show dates.

✘ The ticketing language/

userflow could be clarified/simplified to allow

for better understanding.

✘ The help section is very

poorly designed and
needs work.

Bandsintown

✓ You can manage

multiple artists

✓ Venues Pre Populate

Saving Time

✘ Overall the “add event” form

was really unresponsive at times and really buggy.

✘ It was not clear how to easily delete or edit.

✘ Artists Pre Populate – Saving Time BUT this is very buggy does not always work ☹

✓ This site is specifically for
bands listing show dates.

✓ The site design was nice but

the event form design could be way better!

✘ Might have some site integration as well. Does
provide a share link but
that is very limited.

✓ The chatbot help is way better than the actual help part of the site and was super responsive!! Awesome Help! Chatbot for the win!

Eventful

✓ It was easy to make an event but then I had to go through extra steps to find it then track it so I could edit or delete it.

✓ Venues Pre Populate – Saving Time

✘ Not really a lot of integration to other sites.

✓ This site is for making events in general.

✘ Overall the design was clunky and corporate. Not very cool or fun.

✘ I could not find a way to follow my bands they did not show up in search.

✘ That part of the site not working well.

✘ The help is terrible. There was no help button at the top. You can only email and I had to really search for it.

3. Research Plan // Research

Our Research

Plan

In order to get off on the right track we needed to have a plan to target the correct potential users for research on our platform.

Here is our plan:

4. Screening // Research

Narrowing

The Field

We solicited 25 users to get insights on who best continue on with in our next round of interviews. Along the way we gained some really useful insights to take into our research.

Our
Screener Results

ProTip: Google Forms takes all the hard work out of visualizing your data so I was able to utilize the charts they create to see my data at a high level quickly.

5. Interviews // Research

What We Heard

We reached out to local musicians and promoters.
Here are some of the questions we wanted to dive deep into.

Our Guiding

Interview

Questions:

How many concerts per month do you post about?
How many hours per month do you spend on posting tour listings?
Talk about the importance of fan turnout?
Name your top three ways to spread the word about upcoming concerts?
What online services do you use to share you upcoming concert infomation.

Do you work on mobile,
desktop or both?
Walk me through how
your current process for posting?
What do you find easiest?
What do you find hardest?
What would make things
easier for you?
Name your dream experience :)

Interview

Insights

What our
users are saying.

After talking with our potential users this is
what we heard:

Users would like to better know what actually works to drive fan turnout with some metrics and data.
The big goal is to get fans to turnout and despite posting everywhere fans that want to go are missing the information about concert dates.
Users are frustrated by the fact they need to relist events in multiple places.

Venues can also create listings
and do not always work with promoters or bands which leads to duplicate listings and/or events.
Users would like better integration with the sites and formats they are already using to keep their calendar.
Users know most of their fans are on Facebook but it is becoming increasingly hard to reach their fans on the platform.