Q&A with Julien Mitelberg (CEO, Bandsintown)

By Jason Epstein

Since launching in 2007, Bandsintown has grown in popularity in a most exponential manner with a variety of live music-centric features, allowing fans track their favorite artists just as easily as artists manage their tour dates.  We had a Q&A with Bandsintown CEO Julien Mitelberg and spoke about their involvement with Vans Warped Tour, music fan “personalities”, and the state of the live music industry today.

SoundCtrl – Bandsintown was recently announced as the official app of the 2013 Vans Warped Tour. Can you tell us how the app works and how it integrates with the Warped Tour experience for fans that use it at the festival?

Julien Mitelberg - Many of the artists playing the Vans Warped Tour use Bandsintown’s platform for artists to promote their tour dates, as well as the tour page on Facebook, so this was a natural fit for us.

We’re able to share all of the artists’ events on the official Vans Warped Tour page so that all of the traffic, RSVPs, and comments are consolidated into a single event.  Whenever a fan RSVPs to a Bandsintown event for their favorite artist playing Warped, that will sync back to the Warped event, regardless of whether it was through the artist page, an artist post, or our Facebook or mobile apps.  This drives more traffic to the Warped events and page, and remedies the confusion of having more than 100 bands playing a full tour together with scattered Facebook events.

SC – Do more Bandsintown users tend to be die-hard music lovers seeking the musical experience of going to a concert or social-seekers that enjoy the atmosphere of a concert and the company they’re with?

JM - It really encompasses everyone from the biggest die-hard fans down to people who are just looking for something to do.  We commissioned a study with Insight Strategy Group last summer that looked closely at the behaviors of several different types of concert-goers.  We found that 18% of concert-goers (what we called “Dedicated Diehards”) were most invested in seeing one of their favorite artists play live vs. going with friends, which we address by pushing concert announcement early so Dedicated Diehards can make plans ASAP.  On the other hand, 22% (“Tag-Alongs”) would mainly go for the social aspect: tagging along with other friends who are going to the show.  For them, Bandsintown provides a run-down of the weeks ahead through our weekly newsletter, so if they have friends visiting one weekend, they can check Bandsintown for those dates and find shows to check out that their music library suggests they’d enjoy.  Two other groups of music fans – “Plugged-Indies” (15%) and “Super Fans” (20%) – fell somewhere in between.  They go to enjoy the music but are also actively interested in the social scene. You can read the full study HERE.

SC - How much does trend-setting really affect ticket sales and the live concert industry in general?

JM - It’s clear that Bandsintown and other social media-based apps are informing people about more shows, thus leading them to buy more concert tickets.  With that in mind, we’re harnessing the power of word-of-mouth and “trend-setting,” as you said, with new updates to Bandsintown that we just rolled out in the last few weeks.  We’re now encouraging our fan base to communicate amongst themselves within the app, since with over 5M registered users; Bandsintown is its own social network of live music fans.  This includes the ability for users to see each others’ concert RSVPs with a separate section for “Friends,” also allowing them to invite friends to shows directly through the app.  Want to check out Jane’s Addiction?  Bandsintown will tell you who of your friends likes the band, so you can suggest they join you at the show.  This new social layer connects the dots to a lot of the ideas that Bandsintown is passionate about, and we’re already seeing our users sharing more concert info with their friends, resulting in them buying more tickets to shows.

SC - What does the Bandsintown Spotify app offer users that they can’t get with the Bandsintown Facebook app?

JM - With our Spotify app, we’ve taken the same great functionality you’ll find in our Facebook app and pushed it to the next level.  In addition to previewing shows in your area and the ability to RSVP to shows and buy tickets, our Spotify app offers music fans the added bonus of streaming music to make more informed decisions on what their next live show will be.  Now you can listen to full songs of bands you may not be familiar with to assess if you would want to see them live.  What’s especially cool is the feature makes an exportable playlist featuring songs by both the artists you listen to who are touring nearby and the artists that Bandsintown recommends who have shows nearby during the same time span.  It’s a really fun app that complements both the Bandsintown and Spotify experiences.