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

Adva Mobile Partners with The Orchard

The Orchard, a full service marketing and distribution company, has launched the Marketplace, a new service for its clients to access great third-party apps, including Adva Mobile. We're excited to be part of the Orchard Marketplace alongside other great companies building products that help it's clients connect with fans.

The Orchard launch is a global event, begun Monday in San Francisco, Tuesday in Los Angeles and continuing next week in New York, Nashville, Paris, London, Hamburg, Madrid and Barcelona. Adva Mobile will join the New York launch event on the 20th.

The Adva Mobile / Orchard partnership helps Adva Mobile expose our mobile marketing plaform to over 20,000 labels and distribution partners worldwide, companies very interested in taking advantage of the latest mobile technologies to help their artists acquire, engage and sell to their fans. We'll continue to improve the Orchard integration with new features and capabilities.

You can read the Orchard Marketplace Launch Press Release here.

Adva Mobile Reviewed in Let's Talk Digital

The on-demand segment for Mr. Shadeeds broadcast introducing the benefits of Adva Mobile on Let’s Talk Digital is now available for your viewing pleasure.


Adva Mobile enables an all-in-one mobile solution that enables direct-to-fan promotions, exclusive content giveaways, mobile pages and more.In this segment of Let's Talk Digital, Shadeed Eleazer discusses new direct-to-fan mobile platform, Adva Mobile, and its impact on the entertainment industry. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqEpPFv1rNg&feature=youtu.be
 
GO DIGITAL OR GO HOME, The Online Home of Shadeed Eleazer, is at http://www.mrshadeed.com/

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.

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.

New Mobile Web & App Designs

We've been busy and excited about new designs we've built for bands that are using our service. Over time, we may be able to take these designs ideas, turn them into templates, and offer them to other artists.

Our latest design is one we're building for country star and Entertainer of the Year nominee Natalie Stovall. I like the simple but visually stunning design. Also, the social links at the bottom of the home page send you to pages that are mobile friendly - that wasn't the case a year ago, when none of these sites rendered correctly on a mobile phone browser.

We also made a web design for Fistful of Mercy. This design is sort of a "portal" design - the home page doesn't provide a lot of content. Instead, the site links you to other pages to learn more and engage the band. I like the way this site "lays out", as the pictures represent the visually exciting element of the page and provide a clear delineation between the links. This picture shows it as an Android App.

Good designs are important to maintain the brand of the band and engage fans visually in ways that make them want to explore the site. There's some challenge to making that happen on a small screen (and even more behind the scenses to make them look good an the many different phones, browsers and operating systems). The design doesn't impact the back -end mobile marketing engine we provide, so all of the services for both Artist and Fan are available, regardless of design.