Bandsintown gives artists total control of their fan relationships at no cost

The new Bandsintown Fan Management Suite helps artists build a following and gives them complete control of their relationships with those fans, all at no cost.

The #1 live music discovery platform’s new free toolkit arrives at a crucial time for artists.

Facebook, Instagram, and other social media are making it harder to reach followers at the same time that Spotify and other platforms have begun to charge for key marketing opportunities.

Bandsintown has taken the opposite approach with a decade-long commitment to help all artists build an audience without restrictions or cost.

For Bandsintown, artist ownership means a direct line of communications to fans without filters on a free platform that includes tools to build a fanbase, and know who they are, where they live and how to keep them engaged.

Bandsintown’s commitment also now includes a new free email service that will save artists hundreds of dollars a year and lets them combine their existing email lists with their Bandstown followers for seamless messaging. Here too, the artists own the addresses and data.

Bandsintown For Artists’ signature Events Widget also got a major upgrade.

Months of testing showed that artists using the Widget experience up to 30x increase in ticket clicks, up to 7x increase in event saves/RSVPs, and 10x increase in followers and subscribers.

“There is no sustainable future for artists without the ability to own their first-party data,” said co-founder and managing partner of Bandsintown, Fabrice Sergent. “Reaching fans is getting harder than ever as social algorithms become more unpredictable, web cookies disappear, and platforms come and go. That’s why having a direct connection to fans is critical for artists. Bandsintown is the best companion to help our 560,000 artists super-serve their most engaged fans, the concertgoers.”

In addition to empowering artists to build a fanbase that they “own,” Bandsintown’s recommendation engine drives new artist discovery for its 70 million registered users, the vast majority of whom say that they’ve gone to a show of an artist that they first learned about on the platform.

Key Features

• To Build a Fanbase: 
  • Events Widget: Seamlessly sync artist’s Bandsintown event listings to their website to drive sales, and capture demand and first-party fan data. Artists using the Widget experience up to 30x increase in ticket clicks, up to 7x increase in event saves/RSVPs, and 10x increase in followers and subscribers.
  • Smart Link: An all-in-one link for artists to promote shows anywhere, build their audience, measure success and retarget visitors.
  • Signup Form: Artists can easily integrate customized signup forms across their website to own first-party fan data and build their email and SMS lists.
• To Manage The Fan Relationship:
  • Fan Manager: Manage fan relationships from a single artist-friendly dashboard. Import existing contacts, send engaging emails and direct messages, view actionable insights, and export fan data anytime for free.
  • Integrations: Connect the tools artists are already using and easily showcase upcoming events across sites like Shazam, Linktree, Feature.fm, WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, Bandzoogle, Shopify and Twitch.
• Ongoing Fan Engagement: 
  • Email Builder: Craft custom emails using a powerful drag-and-drop editor, target fan segments, gain analytics and more. Unlike other email marketing platforms that charge, ​​Bandsintown’s Email Builder lets artists engage their audience for free. 
  • Direct Messaging: Engage audiences via in-app, email, web, and push notifications to make sure fans don’t miss a thing. Artists can use posts to share updates and news directly to their followers’ feeds. Each post has built-in analytics, so artists can reliably measure reach and see which content resonates best.
  • Ad Retargeting: Artists can add their marketing pixels to build valuable retargeting audiences for Facebook, Instagram, Google, Twitter, and TikTok ads. 
• Education:
  • The platform launched Bandsintown for Artists Playbooks, providing artists the strategies to grow their audience and activate their fanbase with topics ranging from fan growth to tour promotion, merch sales, and more.

Case Study: The Head and The Heart

When indie folk band The Head And The Heart ran a promotion using the new Fan Management Suite tools, they gained first-party data from over 4,000 fans, including name, location, email, and phone number.

“Bandsintown’s Fan Management Suite was so helpful in launching our 2022 tour. It allowed us to interact with fans in a new way by collecting emails and phone numbers, which was vital for tour exposure, pre-sale reminders, and first-week ticket sales. Bandsintown also helped us run contests that boosted our following and let us collect even more contacts,” said Matt Shay, Manager of The Head And The Heart.

Learn more about Bandsintown for Artists and the new free Fan Management Suite here.

Bruce Houghton is the Founder and Editor of Hypebot and MusicThinkTank and serves as a Senior Advisor to Bandsintown, which acquired both publications in 2019. He is the Founder and President of the Skyline Artists Agency and a professor for the Berklee College Of Music.