Does a band need an iPhone app?

Last week I referred to the new iPhone music app builder Sound Around in my further reading post.

A couple of days ago I got a mail from one op the people behind Sound Around.

Date: Thu, 1 Jul 2010 23:54:15 -0400
Subject: Sound Around follow-up
From: steve@getsoundaround.com
To: hilkeros@hotmail.com

Hilke,

Hey – I noticed you created an account with Sound Around but hadn’t started uploading content. Were you thinking about doing an iPhone App for Amatorski? We’d love to have you with us and would be happy to answer any questions you had, talk to you more about the product, or do anything you might need to help you if you choose to use our service. Let me know if there’s anything I can to do help you out.

PS – checked out the MySpace and saw they’re from Belgium — that’s awesome! How did you hear about us?

Best,
Steve Klein – @StevenKlein
http://getsoundaround.com – @getSoundAround

Well, this is great customer follow-up. The first paragraph is probably automatically generated. However, in the PS, Steve shows that he actually took the time to do some research on my band and he noticed that we are from Belgium, probably an exotic place for an American .

This is a textbook case of good, personalized marketing. It is exactly how you want put a music start-up like Motion Music Manager in the market, or even how you want to deal with your fans or other interested people when you are an artist. As a user, I feel personally connected to this Steve from Sound Around and I am more eager to help him with an answer. Similar connections can be maintained between artists and fans and it will motivate fans to do something for the artist at a certain point, e.g. buying an album, referring your music to other people, etc.

However, why did I need follow-up from Sound Around? Apparently, I signed up for the service, but I didn’t really start to use it. The confirmation email ended up in my junk folder. And I didn’t take the time to put content in the application to test it out… because I didn’t want to upload all those stuff (songs, videos, twitter accounts, etc.) over and over again. I would love to use the future Motion Music Manager for that: just one click and all my content is filled in at Sound Around… keep on dreaming…. .

Second reason: I looked at the pricing. The cheapest payment plan is $14/month. Is it worth it? I am reluctant for a couple of reasons:

• Amatorski is getting popular in Belgium. However, iPhone penetration is much lower here than in the States, or the UK, or even the Netherlands
• Maybe some people would download the app, but would they really use it, or would they forget it after a week or two?
• Is ‘one app for every band’ a good evolution? As a fan, I would not like to have an individual app for every band that I like

But I could keep going on like this forever. So, I decided to ask the Amatorski fans via an online poll. I posted the poll in the following places:

• Amatorski Twitter page: 295 followers
• Amatorski Facebook page: 3411 fans
• my personal Twitter account: 450 followers
• my personal Facebook profile: 458 friends

And this is the result:



First conclusion: 63 votes. It proves how many people you actually reach on Twitter and Facebook. Ok, I posted it only once, on a Saturday afternoon and it was a very hot day and not that many people were behind their computer. If we would actually have an iPhone app, we would pay more attention to promoting it.

Second: only 51 % would download the app. 38 % would regularly use it. 32 % doesn’t have an iPhone. 17 % doesn’t think that single artist iPhone apps are useful.

My estimation is that about 200 people would download the app if we launch it and that about 50 people would keep using it. Is that worth $ 14/month?

But in fact, this is only guess work. I will only know if I really launch the app. What do you think? Should we try it?

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