14 DAY TRIAL // Steam Republic, a Finnish mobile tech firm, just announced the commercial release of its new social music application – Mobile Backstage. The software enables record labels and musicians to build communities around their fans' smartphones.
Mobile Backstage also helps artists to get in touch with their fans by creating a unique mobile presence, which can be downloaded for free from either a website or mobile app store. As soon as it's loaded, fans will be able to begin communicating directly with the artist, as well as with other fans, sharing their experiences by uploading content and attending to gigs using GPS. The application also integrates with major social networks and digital music stores.
Janne Airo, CEO of Steam Republic, added; "Rather than merely aggregating passive content from 3rd party websites, Mobile Backstage facilitates real social interactions between artists and fans. Our recent trials have generated data that clearly demonstrates that fans visit and interact with Mobile Backstage app vastly more often than the artist 's own website or social page. In some cases hundreds of times more often."
Mobile Backstage is compatible with iPhone and Symbian device and costs around 1,000 Euros. The application recently completed successful trials with several major acts including international hip hop star Dizzee Rascal, power pop outfit You Me At Six and post-hardcore rockers Enter Shikari. Mobile Backstage has already received a lot of positive feedback, which made the launch to the wider music sector much easier.
Josh Saunders, Technical & Creative Projects Manager at EMI UK commented, "Mobile Backstage offers a powerful and seductive communication and community tool for artist and fan communication, with great usability on the iPhone. Furthermore, its Java support takes us beyond the so-called smartphone markets giving our artists extended reach."
Steam Republic also stated that it will release Android and Blackberry versions for Mobile Backstage, in the near future.