Capture Fans in the Moment – an interview with Kole Hansen

We recently had the opportunity to speak with Kole Hansen of Kole Media http://kolemedia.com. She’s currently on tour with fellow Utah musician Melody Pulsipher, spreading, as her fan’s call her music, “emotionally charged music dripping with passion.” In the rare moments when Kole is not touring, she spends her time working as a consultant, booking agent, and social media strategist and has collaborated with major labels such as Warner Music Group and Atlantic Records. But her true passion is teaching up and coming artists how to get out on the road and take control over their careers through her company Kole Media.

Adva Mobile (AM): You’ve been out connecting with fans and playing music for quite a while now.

Kole Hansen (KH): That’s right. At one point I stopped playing music for 5 years but now I have been back playing since '09, touring 19 out if the last 24 months across the US 4 times, Canada, Europe, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Israel. I really like being back touring and helping Artists out through Kole Media.

AM: You’re up on the Adva Mobile Platform. How do you think it can help?

KH: We do a lot of house concerts, and I try to connect with everyone there – get their email, talk to them, get them to support my music. You really want to capture fans in the moment. It’s hard to do that, but the text feature should help. Fans can text in, and I can capture their contact info and reach out to them later.

AM: How would you do that?

KH: It would be great to get fans to download music, and then tell them they could get monthly downloads by signing up for like $2 / month. Or $20 / year. I think lots of fans would do that, and that extra income would be a big help to keep me touring, with everything else.

AM: We can do a lot of that now on the platform. Do you think Artists are thinking about mobile web Apps or native Apps?

KH: For a lot of Artists, it’s too early to worry about it. The most important thing for me is capturing fans “in the moment”, and getting them to support me through a small monthy payment for exclusive content.

AM: You do a weekly music show.

KH: That’s right. It’s on Blog Talk Radio about different topics in the music biz. We should do one together on mobile marketing for musicians!

AM: Sure, let’s go. Hey, thanks for taking the time to talk and share your stories.   

More about Kole:

If you’re an independent Artist and need help

·       Finding your fans

·       Choosing your tour route locally/nationally/internationally

·       Being your own agent

·       Building relationships with venues/promoters

·       Negotiating guarantees

·       Prioritizing costs /budget planning (allocating funds)

·       Raising money, crowd funding (kickstarter, pledgemusic)

·       Engaging your fans via social media: do’s and don’t’s

… then get in touch with Kole. Kole's experience in the music space has made her a sought after consultant, booking agent and social media strategist for both major labels and independent artists. And also check out her Episodes on Blog Talk Radio about the Music Business at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/musicbizsuccesscoaching#.UmNLFbzCaBc.email.

Adva Mobile Portal Launch Press Release

March 15, 2013

Musicians Gain Fans and Revenue With New Adva Mobile Marketing Portal 

Driven by Feedback from Artists and Labels, the new Mobile Marketing Portal is more efficient, relevant and useful

Adva Mobile, the leading mobile marketing portal for Artists using mobile technology to acquire, engage, and sell to fans, delivered a redesigned website and Artist portal today, aimed at helping Artists connect to fans on mobile devices more efficiently. The new design - over a year in the making, with teams from Argentina, Pakistan, India and the US – includes improvements in how Artists reach fans on mobile phones and integrates mobile commerce into their fan engagement efforts. 

The improvements to the Adva Mobile Portal were largely driven by requests from Artists and Labels, who seek to take advantage of unprecedented new opportunities to create loyalty and drive sales through the mobile channel. In addition to the new design, increased functionality was added, including enhancements to the Artist Mobile Store to help digital sales direct to the fan and new capabilities through HTML5/CSS3 – for example, an embedded music player.

Jack Kelly, Adva Mobile CEO, oversaw the redesign and directed the international teams that designed the new website, Artist portal user interface, and new Artist mobile sites and Hybrid Apps. “This should be a huge advantage for our Artist users who will benefit from a better experience as they manage their mobile outreach efforts. Fans will also appreciate the new, clean designs of Artist mobile sites & Apps and new features that engage them with their favorite bands.”

Regarding the new site design, Kelly said “It has a great look and feel. The portal is more personalized and easier to navigate. For example, the new Dashboard is organized to simplify the Artist’s management of their fans, mobile assets, campaigns and activity analytics.” Artists using the new platform have found it more useful, fun, helpful and relevant.

In addition to simplifying the Artist Portal experience, new mobile web and Hybrid App template designs provide a better experience for the fan. Fans that opt in to the Artist site receive personalized experiences that become more relevant as the fan increases his or her engagement with the band.

“We have been aggressive in acquiring new Artists and helping them use our platform to make money.” Kelly said. “Still, I always want to go faster.”

About Adva Mobile
Adva Mobile is a marketing services and technology company dedicated to helping Touring Bands, Recording Artists, Labels and music industry professionals reach, market and sell to their fans on mobile devices. More information can be found at www.advamobile.com

How well do you know your fans?

Oftentimes you'll hear people say that the purpose of business is to make money, but that's not true. Making money is the result of a business, and it's essential to keep a business going. But it's not the purpose of business. The purpose of a business is to attract and retain customers. For musicians in the business of making money, your business purpose is to attract and retain fans.

Not all fans are equal, however. You need fans that will buy your music and merchandise, and pay to come to your shows. Your "Superfans", or "1,000 True Fans", whatever. What's difficult, besides making great music and just getting fans, is knowing exactly who these fans are so you can personally reach out to them.

I propose that mobile technology provides a solution to this problem better than any other marketing tool available to musicians.

Check out this screen capture:

(We blocked out the email addresses and names because, hey, it's a real list!!)

This is a fan database from an artist on the Adva Mobile platform. It provides their phone number (for reaching them via our SMS Text Service), and their email address  (for sending them email marketing, either through our service or your own email service like Constant Contact, Mail chimp, or Fan Bridge), details about their age, gender and location. Also, the number of page views of your mobile site / App for that fan. It's incredibly useful to know that two fans on this page (circled in RED) have visited you mobile site pages 204 and 106 times since they joined your site. Those fans are checking you out all the time!!

Mobile can provide so much more, however. Here's another screen capture from our soon to be released new portal, showing enhanced fan data (again, real info, so the name is blocked).

With this information, you can learn more about your fans, how they engage you on mobile phones, and what they are interested in. You can target them precisely - even individually - and you can expect great results from your efforts to market and sell to them.

Mobile is a new world of fan engagement and the ability to data mine fan information and behavior on your mobile site and App will improve your ability to make money with your music.

Postscript:

From Jonathan Ostrow and Music Think Tank

Back in November 2010, Jonathan Ostrow  wrote a blog titled "How well do you know your fans?". It was picked up and re-published by Music Think Tank - you can read it again here. It's a decent attempt to categorize fan types to help Artists spend time cultivating fans that really matter. I remembered this article when I was writing the article above, about what Adva Mobile was doing to help Artists figure out who their best fans were.  Enjoy!

We Need Your Help - Adva Mobile Goes Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding is a new financing tool and works exactly opposite from traditional venture financing. Instead of a few individuals each providing a large amount of capital, crowdfunding creates a community of many individuals providing small amounts of capital -- typically less than $100. Websites that help organize Crowdfunding campaigns are common today, and many are having terrific success raising money for a variety of projects -- everything from art, film projects, technology such as Adva Mobile, causes, businesses, photography -- anything that a community can help fund to get something done. Adva Mobile is working with a popular Crowdfunding management site called IndieGoGo that manages Crowdfunding campaigns for all types of projects.


Since we launched in early 2009, we've grown to over 1,400 bands that recognize the value of the service we are providing. It's going great, however these bands and new partner prospects are telling us that our Mobile Web designs and Portal user interface, while delivering compelling capabilities, are not modern and cool and is, in fact, lame and old. We need to fix this, and are going to raise the money to get you Artists new mobile designs that are sleek and modern (even for free users of our service) and a better user interface to manage mobile fans, assets and campaigns.

There are more details about our campaign on our IndieGoGo page at http://www.indiegogo.com/The-Adva-Mobile-Campaign but we are going to raise $6500 through many small donations from friends, business interests, and Artists such as yourselves to redesign the user interface of our Artist Portal and new mobile web templates for your sites. For Artists, there are terrific rewards should you contribute, including big discounts on our premium services. I hope you have the time to look at our program and contribute to our success. Every contribution helps. Thank You.

People don't buy what you do they buy why you do it.

I'm watching this really insightful presentation by Simon Sinek (here) about how to motivate people to buy your product. It's especially interesting because here at Adva Mobile we do mobile marketing for musicians, with mobile web sites, Apps, storefronts, text campaigns, etc. We tell you that all the time. We tell you what we do. Hey, we're technologists.

We don't tell you why we do it. We believe that mobile can be the center of the universe for a new successful business model for music.  We think everything you do today to connect with fans, tell them where you're playing, how to buy tickets, how to find your music, buy your music, tell their friends about you, .... everything is better and easier on mobile. You thought you needed to be on MySpace? Where did that get you? Heck, PC's are going away. Mobile is not going away. Everything you are trying to do as a musician except make great music can be done on mobile better than any other service or system out there.

There is this cool concept called "The Law of Diffusion of Innovation." Here's what it looks like:

The key to this chart is that the "Early Majority", where innovative ideas (like Adva Mobile) take off, can't occur until you have attracted the Innovators and Early Adopters. And to get them (you) to try our innovation, we have to tell you why we're doing Adva Mobile, not what we do.

We really like the Innovators and Early Adopters. They want to be first. If you are the kind of person that believes mobile can create a whole new system for finding fans, sharing music, connecting with them and selling to them,  boy do we have a product for you.

Natalie Stovall's Blog Message

Natalie Stovall officially launched her mobile strategy yesterday with a simple blog telling fans she had a new mobile site and that fans can get a cool, free song if they  texted in and joined.

Here's what she wrote:
News – Natalie Launches New Mobile Club



June 6th, 2011

We are excited to announce the launch of Natalie’s new mobile community. It was developed in partnership with our friends at Adva Mobile and over the months and years to come it will allow Natalie to communicate and interact with her fans in new and exciting ways.

All you have to do is text “GetFiddle” to 88704 and you will get:
-Access to Natalie blog and tour schedule right from your phone.
-Localized alerts when Natalie is playing in your area.
-The chance to participate in contests and offers that won’t be available anywhere else.
-And for a limited time you will be able to download a special live recording of her infamous “Fiddlepalooza Medley”

That’s right, the only medley where you can see a 5’2″ blond girl play everything from AC/DC to Michael Jackson on the fiddle in the same song, and it’s yours! All you have to do is text “GetFiddle” to 88704.

In less than 24 hours, more than 100 fan joined her mobile site.

She'll get many more fans when she tells them from the stage during shows, but it's great to see so many Natalie Srivall fans who want to stay connected with her on their phones. It's really the best way.

Your Mobile App Will Let You Down

Brands, including Recording Artists and Touring Bands, who take the time to consider their mobile strategy still struggle over whether a mobile website or a mobile app is the right way to go. If you have limited resources, you may wonder whether you really need to build both, and perhaps you are able to channel scarce resources into only one fully funded mobile project. Mobile Apps have historically been seen by web designers as the only way to provide a rich user experience of mobile. Add to that the countless partisan debates between those who want to sell you a mobile app and those who want to sell you a mobile site and it can be difficult to get to what it actually makes sense for bands to help them reach, engage and monetize their fans.


Here at Adva Mobile, we sell both Mobile Apps and Mobile Sites, so we don't have a position that clouds our passion. (We love mobile, so we love Apps!) However, there are compelling reasons why the strongest mobile strategy starts with a mobile website and uses it to build a fan base. Consider the following problems inherent with betting the farm on a Mobile App:

1. The most successful iPhone App which becomes viral enough to be passed around to every user on the platform, ultimately reaches only 7% of thev mobile market. Mobile websites have the potential to reach 100% of mobile web users.

2. There is a lot of buzz about Apps, and those who are looking to sell Apps have been successful propagating the myth that users prefer a mobile App experience. There's enough research out there that shows that most users in fact prefer a mobile website over Mobile Apps.

3. There are very few Apps that exist today that provide something beyond what a mobile website can do. Mobile browser technology is increasingly powerful, and there are many things a mobile website can do that they couldn't previously. For music artists, however, there's nothing about an App that can be duplicated in a mobile web experience, and with much greater reach and engagement.

Fan Unfriendly

4. The primary detraction of Apps for the Recording Artist or Touring Band is that Apps never let you know who your fans are. The mobile website can have a close relationship with inbound text services, including key words and short codes, and outbound text messaging that drives fans to a mobile website. Apps can't do this. These mobile marketing services allow you to capture information from opted-in fans that you can use to later market proactively to them and drive them to your mobile website. For artists committed to the direct-to-fan movement, this information is critical to building and maintaining your fan base, engaging them, marketing to them and selling them your music, merchandise, and show tickets.

5. The benefits of mobile websites for your mobile commerce strategy also overwhelm Apps. iPhone Apps seamlessly drive purchase interest to the iTunes Store, where - you guessed it - you cannot learn who you fans are and who is making these purchases. Mobile website storefronts deliver all of this information - and ALL of the revenue - to the Artist.

There is a segment of your fan base who prefer Mobile Apps and use them regularly. It is exactly for this reason that Adva Mobile offers inexpensive Apps that follow the brand of your Mobile Web and tie into your mobile marketing campaign strategy. All of the Artists using Adva Mobile services that are building their fan base use the Mobile Web to anchor their mobile strategy, and branch out to Apps from there.

More apps may be coming for feature phones, too

There was a great article in CNN Online International Edition yesterday, which you can read at http://bit.ly/eJOlS5, titled "More apps may be coming for feature phones, too."

We like Apps - we now provide iPhone and Android Apps to complement our Mobile Web and mobile marketing platforms. The article points out that "According to comScore, as of January 2011 only about 28% of all mobile phones in the U.S. were smartphones. This means 72% of U.S. cell phones are feature phones, most of which have a broad array of features, including the ability to run Java-based apps." So we're struck by the hype over Apps for recording artists and bands, since they don't reach 72% of your audience.

Article author Amy Garham poinsts out that "One of the great strengths of smartphones is their fully featured, easy-to-use Web browsers. Increasingly these will support HTML5 functionality, which allows Web pages to work more like apps. Since it's much easier and cheaper to develop for the mobile Web than for several native app platforms, a lot of smartphone services that are delivered mainly via apps today probably will migrate to a mobile browser experience."

One question to ask is if the App needs to take advantage of the smartphone feature set to work. If you need access to the phone book, or camera, for example, then a native App is the way to go go. For bands that want to provide what fans are looking for - music, videos, tour dates, news, social net links, etc., you don't need anything the phone offers except the browser. The Adva Mobile platform leverages this strength, providing a consistent experience for fans, whether on iPhone App, Android App or Mobile Web.

Is Mobile Better Than Facebook for Engaging Fans?

Today I'm writing about an article from Hypebot (one of our favorite daily Blogs) to share with you because it's very germane to what we're trying to do here at Adva Mobile. The article is by Robin Davey at Growmyvision.com) it's titled "Only 10% of your friends see your Facebook posts and only 1% like it."It's worth the read. It's a very prescient article because here at Adva Mobile we've always thought that the ability to proactively reach out to your fans with SMS texts that drive them to your rich media mobile webpage was far more effect than any of your other tools that reach fans where they had to find you. I've included a link to the Hypebot article http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2011/03/only-10-of-your-friends-see-your-facebook-posts-and-only-1-like-it.html?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzEmail&utm_campaign=0&utm_content=395530

The article affirms that it is still early for mobile and that the music mainstream has just not discovered mobile as a way to reach fans, because Robin suggests direct contact with your fans via e-mail as the most effective and essential tool to keep your fans updated. The e-mail studies show that only 20% of the recipients open an e-mail, so all you've done is exchange a 1% success rate with a 20% success rate. SMS Text messaging, however, is currently running greater than 95% open rate. At Adva Mobile we think that your most effective marketing tool to stay connected to, and engaged with, your fans. More than Facebook. The statistics bear it out.

Adva Mobile Now Offers iPhone Apps

We've signed a partnership deal with Mobiflex to offer bands an iPhone App. To our knowledge, no other company offers a complete platform of Mobile Web, Android Apps, iPhone apps and a Mobile Marketing dashboard to manage marketing campaigns across the entire mobile ecosystem.

Here's the text from the Press Release:


Adva Mobile and MobiFlex bring the Power of Affordable iPhone Apps to Bands and Recording Artists

Leading mobile companies partner to deliver new online service for providing iPhone Apps and Mobile Web presence under integrated mobile marketing platform

Bands and recording artists can now quickly create iPhone Apps at low cost that extend their brand across the mobile Web and iPhones.

Adva Mobile Corporation, a pioneer of mobile web, mobile App, and marketing services for touring bands and recording artists, has partnered with MobiFlex™, a self-service portal that lets you create robust native smartphone custom apps in just a few hours without coding, to provide this new support for iPhones. Features include playing songs and videos, showing concert schedules, band photos, sharing fan feedback, mobile purchases, targeting fans through location and more.

“Touring bands and Recording Artists need to connect to their fans on mobile phones across all major phone platforms, and we’re excited to bring the MobiFlex App creation platform to help them achieve this goal,” said Jack Kelly, Adva Mobile CEO. “The MobilFlex platform is simple and integrates seamlessly into our portal, ensuring that their messages and marketing outreach efforts reach their iPhone audience.”

George Adams, MobiFlex CEO, added “Mobile apps for the iPhone and other smartphones have quickly become a major new touchpoint for professional musicians and groups to engage their fans and reach new audiences. We’re very pleased to provide Adva Mobile with a version of MobiFlex to empower their band and recording artist customers to quickly create their own apps, leveraging the native resources of the iPhone without having to find engineers to do the coding.”


The Adva Mobile service has quickly become the leading mobile marketing platform for bands and recording artists, with more than 1,100 artists using the service to acquire, engage, and sell to their fans on mobile phones. Combined with Adva Mobile’s mobile web and Android App services, bands can now also use the MobiFlex iPhone App creation service to have a branded iPhone app presence that can be deployed in a few hours as part of outreach programs to virtually all of the 6 billion mobile devices on the planet.

Adva Mobile Analytics - Measure Your Success

A music band's fans are essentially its "customers" and you should make every effort to understand and please them. That include's of course, maintaining close contact through a band-specific mobile web and App and other band-management tools, but sometimes, there's no substitute for good, hard analytics. The Adva Mobile service includes incredibly deep analytics to help you identify fans, measure social engagement, find hot markets, discover trends, gauge attitudes, create in-depth reports and more! The Reports tool - part of your Dashboard - is designed to give bands new insight into where their biggest fans are and what they want to hear.

Mobile allows you to collect so much more information about your fans than traditional media, even the Internet and Facebook.

Fan Analytics
o Collected information including phone number, carrier, location, phone type
o Volunteered information including email, age gender, likes, dislikes.

Of course, location is critical. And also, you can test their likes and dislikes to help you craft the right products and approach. Don't discount info like phone type and carrier. If your fans are heavy smartphone/Verizon - AT&T users, they haver more money to spend than Virgin/Boost/Cricket featurephone fans, and that can help you target price points more effectively.

Behavior Analytics
o Activity on mobile website, most visited pages, content downloads
o Graph, statistics and trending analysis

Being able to test over time and measure what fans want to download from your mobile site helps you figure out what they will buy from you.

Engagement Analytics
o The platform allows you to test positions and fan preferences and measure engagement and response

Behavior Analytics allow you to measure what fans are doing on your mobile website. Engagement Analytics allow you to ask questions and engage in contests that measure the response of offers you make to your fans. This can be tremendously valuable in crafting the right set of products for your fans to buy.

The reports and analytics engine that comes with your Adva Mobile marketing platform are a tremendously valuable tool to augment your efforts on stage, on the web, and in print. Take advantage of these knowledge-creating tools and watch your music career explode.

Use Voting on your mobile web to atract new fans

I am noticing a lot more polls today, being used on everything from Sports Illustrated, the Weather Channel, and my own Yahoo web landing page. Advertising for car insurance is even presented as a poll. It got me thinking about how valuable the VOTING feature on the Adva Mobile service is for music artists.

Fan engagement is the key to maintaining loyalty and Voting represents a very cool way to keep engaged with your fans. You never want to overwhelm your fans with too many texts, but I can see where they would never get tired of answering polls because they are so much fun. Asking your fans about everything from what they think the conclusion of the Egyptian revolution will be to what should your encore song be at the next show helps you understand your fans and connect with them in a personal way that only the mobile phone can offer.

The Adva Mobile Voting feature is easy to set up. Under “Your Mobile Web Pages” on your Dashboard, go to the Voting page and set it up. Then, scheduled a text blast to your fans that drives them directly to the Voting page on your mobile site. Very simple. It's only available to our Silver and Gold members so another good reason to upgrade your account - get a better looking mobile website and take advantage of some of the terrific tools on our platform that help you acquire new fans, engage with them and convince them to buy your stuff. The insight you get from asking your fans questions and getting that feedback is a key component to understanding your fan base and being able to connect with them in a very personal, rewarding way.

We Made a Movie

You've got to check out Adva Mobile Man and how he explains why bands and recording artists need a mobile web site, and mobile App, and mobile strategy to connect with fans. It's cool, fun, only about 3 minutes long.

Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/advamobile

Making Video Work on Mobile

Most musicians are correctly focused on making their music and thinking about the many possibilities to share that music to fans. Music videos are becoming increasingly important as a way to get fans excited about your music, and YouTube is one of the most popular sites on the web because of that. In the mobile space, according to a recent survey, nearly a quarter of smartphone users watch video on their phone at least once per day. Here at Adva Mobile we know that presenting videos on your mobile websites is a very popular activity and we know that fans really use this feature and watch your videos. Unfortunately, not all phones are alike, and many do not support certain video formats or player types. Adva Mobile is working to solve that, so every member of your mobile fan base has the ability to experience your awesome videos right on their phone.

Delivering video to mobile phones is complex, and until now we have been limited to linking to YouTube videos. Many of you are creating higher-quality, professional grade videos than what's typical on YouTube, and new web services like VEVO, Vimeo, Metacafe and Brightcove offer professionally created video on your PC. You are probably aware that Adva Mobile renders your mobile website correctly for most of the world's 5,000 phone types, but this also needs to be done correctly for your video. Each model of phone has its own requirements for web site display and each has unique requirements for showing video, since not all phones use the same video player. Video needs to be sent correctly for each type of phone, otherwise they miss out on seeing it.

We recently solved this problem through a test with Nellymoser. Many of you know that, for audio, we require you to upload audio in m4a (iTunes) format, because we know it is the most widely-accepted format for phones. But the video world is different. Each phone has its own player, which means you have to send the video to each phone type in its particular format in order for it to play on that particular phone. Nellymoser does this. Nellymoser provides a single point of entry to easily reach the mobile marketplace across the multitude of mobile networks, devices and content formats. Especially interesting to Adva Mobile is their ability to provide video content, in whatever format it is provided to them, rendered correctly for whatever phone type that receives the content.

For established bands, this is important because you now know that your high-quality video can be displayed to your fans on their mobile phones in the high-quality you expect. For emerging bands, it's important that you know that, as you migrate from user generated content typical of YouTube to more professional quality video, your mobile website is competent to serve up video to your expectations.

If any of you have this need today, please contact us and we will facilitate getting your video onto the Nellymoser platform and creating links to it on your mobile web site.

Adva Mobile Voting Contest at the MIT In-NOW-Vation Event

Last Thursday Adva Mobile had an opportunity to showcase its VOTING feature at the MIT Enteprise Forum's In-NOW-vation event. This event was a showcase/networking event with 26 Boston area technology companies showing off their goods to an audience of about 250 worldwide MIT Enterprise Forum volunteer officers and a healthy group of Boston technologists, entrepreneurs, and Venture Capitalists.

Attendees were encouraged to vote in four categories:

• Best in Show (won by Zeo)


• Most Likely to be a household name (won by Everyspace)


• Coolest Technology (won by Infrared5)


• Company I want to have a beer with (won by MocoSpace)

We used the Adva Mobile Voting platform to vote. Attendees texted GETVOTE to 88704 (the same way you would do this at a live event or promoted on your Facebook page) and got a SMS link to the voting page. It looks like this:

During the event, we were able to show real time updates on a PC of how the voting was going. We could have put it up on a big screen, like you might do at a live event, but we just used a PC. It looks like this:

It was really cool to see how excited people got when they were using their phones to vote for their favorite companies. We did 3 shout outs during the event to remind people to vote, but as you can see from this chart, it was pretty consistent throughout the evening:

We learned that people with iPhones and Blackberry's and other smart phones had a better experience than feature phones, but everone could participate. We had a corner stand where people could come and get help - this was useful because it's still new (using your phone this way) so it was good to be able to help people who were trying this for the first time. (You could put a "VOTE HERE" sign at the merch table where fans could come for instruction if they needed it.)

About 60 percent of the attendees voted on their phones, so we think this was terrific engagement. It can definitely be used to engage your fans and collect their phone numbers for your mobile fan club, so be sure to try out Voting - another cool feature that's part of your mobile fan club.

Adva Mobile Artist Survey Results

Many thanks to everyone who participated in our recent survey. We were very encouraged by the general feedback that you appreciate the service, see value in it, and want us to continue providing a service for you, to reach your fans on their mobile phones. We also appreciate the comments related to simplifying the experience. We will be working on that as we continue to add new features and try to make the service simpler.

Your response to the questions “whether the service was valuable enough to pay for” was encouraging. We are looking to introduce a “Freemium” model, where some artists could receive basic mobile web and mobile marketing services for free and others could have more specialized services for a small price. While some of you indicated you would never pay for it, more than 85% indicated you would pay for it, or you would pay for it once it started generating revenue for you. That’s great news for us, since we expect mobile commerce to really take off in and outside the US in 2010, and that your fans will be increasingly comfortable with making purchases for your music, tickets, and merchandise on their phones.

Shortly, we're going to introduce a paid service to complement our free service. While going from a free service to a partially paid service may be a difficult transition for some, were committed to our existing artists and you will continue to have all the services you currently have without cost. Moving to paid services is good for everyone, since it will make us stronger and more valuable to you, the artist, and to your fans. The financial support we receive from those of you who choose to upgrade to the paid service will help us build a stronger platform and provide each of you with better resources.

We built our mobile marketing platform when we realized nothing existed to help artists connect with fans on their mobile phones. Our mobile fan club service will continue to be, built with your feedback. We want to hear from you about these changes and the many future improvements we will introduce to help you expose your music to more fans, market to them, and realize your dream of creating a career in music.

Jack and the Adva Mobile Team