ArtistData News

As you all know, we announced Monday that ArtistData had been acquired by Sonicbids. As a welcome gift, Sonicbids has made all the features on ArtistData free for the entire summer! Until September 1, you can use the entire site for free, so get in there and install the ArtistData Platinum bundle, which has all our features included! You won't be asked for a credit card or anything. You just get the goods, all for free.

So what happens September 1?  At that point, you will have the ability to choose whether or not you want to keep using the premium features. The free features will stay 100% free. The premium features will be offered as part of Sonicbids' premium upgrades, but will be offered at a substantially reduced cost. Seriously, it's going to be a hell of a deal.

So get in there an add some bling to your ArtistData account, courtesy of Sonicbids!

I'm thrilled to announce this morning that ArtistData has been acquired by Sonicbids! My note about the acquisition can be found here, as well as details regarding a summer of free ArtistData!

We have been in the process of rebuilding and restructuring the ArtistData server architecture for the past two months and finally made the switch live on February 15, 2010 around 12 AM CST. This was a much needed upgrade that will allow ArtistData to continue to serve its tens of thousands of artists using it every day and hundreds of thousands of fans viewing their data each month.

Today we released the single largest revision to the ArtistData platform. For the past few months we've been reworking and improving the user interface to develop a framework that will allow us to drastically expand our site's capabilities. We are thrilled to share it with everyone today.

Our old user interface was suitable when we initially launched in 2008, but we quickly outgrew it. Today's release is an interface that has a stronger foundation to support future growth, and we believe it is an easier site to use based on your valuable, ongoing feedback. 

So, what's new at ArtistData.com?

The ArtistData Team has Grown! We're thrilled to announce that ArtistData has recently brought on two amazing additions to the team. Brandon Passley has joined as a senior engineer and Matt Williams has joined as a senior user experience designer. They are both in Chicago and are currently heavily involved in the entrepreneurial technology scene here. They'll help to build a faster, better, prettier, and more usable ArtistData.

From Brandon ... Twitter: @brandonpassley I am a software engineer, user interface designer and all around web guru based in Chicago. I drink too much coffee, spend too much time in front of a monitor and have enough technology to control a small country. ArtistData has become the essential tool for artists and I am excited to help make it faster, better and prettier.

From Matt ... Twitter: @nomoregoodnames I specialize in front-end design and user experience. In my freelance life, I've worked on a number of projects for various bands/ artists including Ari Hest, William Fitzsimmons, Secondhand Serenade, and Josh Kelley. I'm passionate about taking ArtistData to the next level. I look forward to engaging myself with the users to provide a better experience for all artists.

Before leaving for CMJ last week, I was invited to the Chicago Innovation Awards ceremony. As most of you know, ArtistData was a finalist for the innovation awards, so I was happy to be invited to the ceremony. By the end of the night, ArtistData had been awarded a Chicago Innovations People's Choice Award!

This is a huge accomplishment for one reason: the award is about you guys, our users. It was your amazing feedback and support that won ArtistData this award. It is your constant feedback and ideas that help ArtistData continue to innovate and bring great products to market. It is YOU that inspires us to keep working, keep pushing, and keep making musicians' lives easier and careers more manageable.

This award isn't for ArtistData. It's for the incredible community of music creators and supporters who use ArtistData. So thank you for and congratulations on being a part of this great accomplishment! As I've said many times before, you guys rock. Let's go do a lot more!

Also, sorry for the silence and inactivity lately. There's a lot going on behind the scenes and I'm excited to release some info about it all soon!

I've copied everyone's feedback to the rest of this post, so click through!

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Tim Jahn last week and talking about ArtistData. Tim has been doing a series of interviews with Chicago-based companies called Beyond the Pedway and wanted to add ArtistData to the mix. We chatted for about 45 minutes, but so you're not bored, he only included about 6 minutes.

We chat about starting a company, how artists and startups are alike, and some things I've learned along the way. It was fun, and while I absolutely hate watching myself on video, it turned out well. Video is embedded below. Thanks Tim!



And yes, I realize the internet was created for more things than automation. That's editing for you... Haha

It's been a fun couple weeks for ArtistData. First, we were nominated for a Chicago Innovation Award, which is flattering in itself. Then, users started voting and commenting, which was 10000000x more flattering. Go check it out. We are humbled.

Then, late last week, Derek Sivers (founder of CD Baby) posted an article on his blog about the need for central management of data. He suggested something a bit beyond ArtistData in its current state, but mentioned that we were well on our way. Go check out his post as well.

Finally, today our friends at Next Big Sound ("Actionable Analytics for the Music Industry") posted a really great and recommended article called "A Band’s Guide to Surviving Online". They mentioned that we were making bands lives easier. We hope so. I gave my feedback in the comments.

Thanks everyone for the support! It's amazing.

I'm proud to say that ArtistData has been selected as a finalist in the Chicago Innovation Awards! We are really excited to be picked and encourage you to go vote! We'd love all the support we can get!

UPDATE: Woah! You guys are amazing. The comments you are leaving are incredible.

There's been a lot of buzz today about our announcement to release an application platform for bands. We are just as excited as the industry is, and we will be posting a lot of information about it, starting Tuesday when I will post a blog entry right here about some of the questions surrounding it.

Until then, please check out the announcement slide deck about the initiative. Also, enjoy some of the great coverage we've gotten from the following sites:

• Digital Music News
• Hypebot
• Billboard
• Musformation
• ArtistDirect (DMN Link)

Also, if you are interested in developing for the platform, please sign up on our developers list and we'll keep you very updated.

Have a great weekend everyone, and thanks for your overwhelming support.