Bandsintown Manager Has Some New, Funky Features

BBandsintown has some new features for their free mobile app (iOS and Android) for touring artists – Bandsintown Manager – and they are both exciting and innovative.

You’re driving to one of your gigs. You’re in a hurry and unsure if you’re gonna make it in time. Suddenly, you get a flat tire and there’s no way you’re gonna make it in time! What to do?

A new feature for the mobile app enables you to send direct messages to fans that have RSVP’d to your shows. They’ll receive a targeted push notification, and you can send as many messages as you need. This is a good way to inform your fans about breaking news or other show related announcements. It’s a cool, spontaneous thing that brings the artist closer to the fans.

If you have Bandsintown’s Tour Dates Widget installed on your website, your tour data will show up on search engines such as Google and Yahoo!. This is useful since it enables existing and new fans to see your upcoming shows when they search for you.

Another feature is that you can repost fan photos on your social media sites: If a fan has uploaded photos or videos from one of your concerts to Instagram or Bandsintown, you can repost the ones that you like on Facebook and Twitter, which can increase fan engagement.

Now, you can also add a so-called Tour Trailer. Instead of a simply having a header image on your Tour Dates tab, you can now chose to showcase your music with a Tour Trailer. It can be a live clip, a video message or something completely different. Either way, a Tour Trailer is a cool tool to encourage fans to see you live.

At first I wondered why these features are only available from the mobile app, but considering the spontane nature of the direct-to-fan messages and the fact that concert goers mostly take mobile photos, it seems like a natural choice.

What are your thoughts on these new features? Have you tried them yourself? Let us know what you think about the app and its new features in the comments!

Oscar Hjelmstedt, editor of Dotted Music, is a writer from Sweden. Besides writing, he’s passionate about 90’s rock music and Tarantino-movies.