

Ask HN: Critique my simple service for musicians: booking shows online - ABrandt

Hey everyone,<p>I'm one of those programming-illiterate business guys obsessed with start ups--here's my app (which is actually just drupal beat to hell). I've finally got something of substance though and I'd like to hear what people here think.<p>Any thoughts or criticism would be absolutely awesome (although the design is a wootheme so you can take that up with them...). I know the whole thing is pretty minimal but is there enough there to entice you to sign up?<p>Want to dig a little deeper? username: HN password: hn<p>Thanks in advance!
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pedalpete
As the creator of HearWhere, I've got a bit of experience in this live music
space, and I actually started building a service to connect bands with venues
which I ended up scrapping.

To start off, it would be really great to show a demo to artists of what the
venues would be getting from you. You've kinda explained how to use your
service and what it does, but I don't know that I understand what a venue is
going to get.

As a band (which I'm not) I suspect I'd like to see that.

I'm sure you know there has been a few attempts at this space, the most recent
one I'm familiar with is <http://www.toursavant.com/>.

In my research when I was looking into this space, I found that venues were
wanted to work with local booking agents. The reason (they told me) is that
they aren't in the business of promoting or choosing artist, it just isn't
what their good at. That is what the local booking agent does. Of course, this
depends on the venue a bit.

The big challenge that I think you are going to have is building the database
of venues or booking agents.

Right now as I see it, bands can add themselves to your site, but there are
very few venues that they can request to be promoted too. I think that is the
next challenge for you.

As far as the current site you've got, it's easy to navigate, and add venues,
so you've so far managed that process well.

Your logo is quite pixelated, so I'd get that cleaned up a bit. I don't think
you have to worry too much about the design at this stage. As long as it looks
cool and professional(ish), i think you're good.

Best of luck

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ABrandt
This is all awesome stuff, Pete (Gotta love HN for this, getting instant
feedback from someone whose work has influenced my own). The little things you
pointed out are definitely on my todo list, and a demo video is in the
pipelines.

There certainly have been, and currently are, a number of people working to
solve this problem. I think we can both agree though that it hasn't really
been cracked yet. Interesting that you met so much resistance from venues. It
may be just the size (small) of the places I've approached, but most have been
very receptive. A lot of them currently rely on a mixture of myspace and
email, so a streamlined system is right up their alley.

In the near future I also want to tackle the whole choosing the right artist
problem for venues. By integrating the echonest API (<http://echonest.com>) I
think we can provide far more detail about an artist than other services have
in the past.

Once again, thanks for all the encouragement and feedback. You've both renewed
my faith in my limited abilities as well as provided great guidance for moving
forward. If you wanted to talk more, my email is in my profile.

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phreanix
Upvote from a guy in the same boat.

Just some thoughts and q's on the functionalities:

1\. Will there be a way to search geographically for both the venue and the
band? If you get enough publicity and traction on this, it could be the go-to
place for finding local bands and their gigs. 2\. A limited forum would be a
good idea for newbs needing help. 3\. Maybe adding a feature to create a band
profile on the site would be a good premium item to offer. (ex.
beatnex.com/localband) 4\. There are events (not nec. venues, say a local
music festival) that need bands or performers, maybe adding something for that
as well. 5\. Good luck!

I hope you find a good programmer and graphic artist + a UI and metrics
specialist to work with.

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ABrandt
I knew there were others lurking among the discussions on Erlang... :)

1.) Geo filtering is definitely going to be key for us at some point. Right
now the system is designed to handle this, its just a matter of implementation
really. 2.) Documentation is a work in progress. I just wrote the FAQ today
afterall 3.) Currently a band's dashboard is located at that URL, but you have
to be signed in to use it. Beatnex was originally supposed to be a myspace
music on steroids (among other things, read: many iterations). I'm focusing on
the gigging niche for now to get my foot in the door, and hopefully expand.
4.) The events issue is something I haven't quite thought through yet
honestly. I'm open to suggestions! 5.) Thanks, you too!

I'd love to hear about what you're working on too. Shoot me an email if you
care to share about struggles of a non-programmer in tech haha.

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ABrandt
clickable: <http://beatnex.com>

