Sites That Can Help With Band Business

Lately, I have become obsessed with websites that cater to the business of being in a band. I love hearing about new ones and I love diving in and seeing how they work. Here is my current list of favorites in no particular order.

Reverbnation: Reverbnation is a phenomenal tool for the band that is interested in getting a little more organized.The site is packed with tons of great widgets that help the artist to spread their music and images all over the web and others that help artists collect emails or display their upcoming shows. They have a utility that lets you send out mass emails where Reverbnation will handle any opt-out situations (not that anyone will want to stop getting your emails but just in case). They have a gig finder tool that will help you find venues based off of location and even who has played there before. They even have some pretty good metrics tools that let an artist gauge the success of their efforts. One of my favorite parts of Reverbnation is that they are constantly adding new services and they recently partnered with Microsoft for a song sponsorship program where artists can get paid for people downloading their songs for free. Oh, did I mention that most of their services are free?

ArtistData: I first found ArtistData a few months ago and I was blown away. If you are tired of updating every social networking site out there each time you have a show, this is the site for you. ArtistData allows you to publish content on multiple sites at once from a single location. Update your calendar and status at Myspace and Facebook from a single log-in. Plus you can generate newsletters and tour books as well as post your shows to numerous concert databases. This is a website that can seriously help you cut down on the amount of time you spend away from making music. Oh, did I mention it's free?

Band Metrics: This site monitors and analyzes an artists digital identity. How many hits your social networking sites are getting, how many friends you have, how many time your video has been viewed. Now you can see how many hit your Myspace page received after you did that radio interview or played a big show. On the surface metrics might seem a bit boring but with a little creativity you can use this data to help increase your fan base and keep track of which of your efforts are paying off the most. This site is still in beta and it is only occasionally letting in new accounts so go sign up for the updates so you can be the first on your block to have an account. Oh, did I mention its free?

Bandize: This is an incredible site for band management. This site has great business features that are tailored to the business of being a band. It has a digital ledger that allows you to not only keep track of band money and expenses but you can easily keep track of what expenses came out of who's pocket. You can easily log merchandise sales, keeping track not only of the cash but of your inventory. A band can delegate and keep track of tasks. Keep a contact list online that every band member can have access to. Keep note on each contact. I only recently found out about this site and I was pleasantly blown away by it. This is the only site that I am mentioning that has a monthly fee ($15 per month with unlimited log-ins per band) but if you are serious about organizing your band, this might be well worth-it.

What are you using to manage your band? Drop it in the comments section and I will check it out.