Bandposters Makes Getting Gig Posters To Tour Venues A Lot Easier

Bandposters recently launched to solve the problem of getting just a few high-quality posters to each venue you're appearing at on tour. If you don't have a dedicated office staff taking care of the ongoing flow of such details, something that sounds fairly simple can end up crowding your schedule at a busy time or, worse, not getting done. Bandposters is developing an integrated online tool to allow you to draw together the resources to design, populate with info, print and ship a handful of posters per venue on your next tour.

I was initially skeptical of Bandposters due to the pricing. For $15 they print and ship 5 posters to a venue on your behalf. But if you go to the homepage, click on FAQ and scroll down about 2/3's of the way you'll see this explanation:

Isn't 15 bucks kind of expensive?

Not at all. Our data tells us that the average independent artist is spending more than double that amount per show. And that doesn’t include time cost (because let’s face it, you’ve got much better stuff to do, like, you know, playing music). Think of it this way:

• Your local Kinkos probably charges $1.79 per page
• A poster tube or flat pack will cost about two bucks at retail office supply stores
• The cheapest interstate postage will run about $7 (you can calculate it yourself)
• That’s $17.95, and we haven’t even factored in labor and time

Sounds reasonable. And, when you look at everything they're now offering, it sounds even more reasonable but you have to piece the information together yourself. Honestly, my best advice for Bandposters would be to put up a features/pricing link and put all the features on one page so folks will grasp the idea. Not seeing pricing until you search through a FAQ is a barrier to user adoption.

Bandposters Demo

I've gotten a basic picture of Bandposters based on their blog, emails and an interview by Wes Davenport.

Bandposters determined the number of posters venues preferred and when they need to be delivered for maximum exposure.

They created a design tool that lets you upload designs or pick design elements from accounts at Facebook and Instagram.

Additional integrations include Songkick and BandsInTown that allow you to populate the posters with relevant info. More integrations are expected.

Bandposters then prints and ships the posters.

Here are more details on some of the features.

As I mentioned, I was initially skeptical due to the pricing but their explanation allowed me to think through the process which I haven't done before. Someone who's done this task for a tour would probably grasp it more quickly.

But there was another factor that convinced me that Bandposters was worth taking seriously, this photo that includes a poster gave me a better sense of the quality of work they're doing, assuming that's the kind of poster they deliver.

So some pics of actual posters might help communicate the quality of the product itself.

Beyond having a few barriers to adoption on their site, Bandposters looks like a promising service and is apparently an initial offering with more to come.

More:

• How To Adapt Your Gig Posters To A Digital World
• Flyer Lizard: Create & Distribute Digital Gig Posters
• Gig Poster Is Almost A Great App From SplitGigs

Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (@fluxresearch/@crowdfundingm) also blogs at Flux Research and Crowdfunding For Musicians. To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.