ArtistData is now part of Sonicbids

ArtistData Community,

Today I'm happy to announce that ArtistData has been acquired by Sonicbids, a company that connects over 245,000 artists with potential gig opportunities. Sonicbids has been helping artists for almost 10 years, and I feel is the perfect partner to help ArtistData continue to grow and innovate.

I started ArtistData almost four years ago with the hope of making artists' lives easier by giving them a central dashboard to update and manage many of their web profiles. We've experienced unbelievable growth and currently help over 25,000 musicians save time and energy every day. We've posted over 3.75 million updates for our users and assuming it takes about 3 minutes to update each site, that means we've saved musicians over 187,500 hours (or 7812 days or 21.4 years)!!!

It's been the most rewarding experience of my career, and partnering with Sonicbids for the next step is an exciting way to help hundreds of thousands of musicians with this same problem. I'm thrilled about this acquisition for three reasons:

1. Sonicbids has built a much larger company with a greater resource pool. If there is one regret I have about ArtistData it's that we've moved slower than I would have liked because we didn't have a ton of resources. Sonicbids brings a whole new approach to the table and our tools will get better and stronger.
   
   
2. We can help almost 245,000 additional artists almost immediately. This gets me so excited.
   
   
3. We fit perfectly. Sonicbids helps artists get gigs. We help artists promote and organize gigs once they have them. Together, we'll build the best end-to-end solution for touring bands. Plus a lot more. Awesome awesome.

I have spent a lot of time over the past year getting to know the Sonicbids team, taking several trips to their Boston office and meeting with founder and CEO, Panos Panay in different cities and at different events. After spending tons of time together, I am more confident than ever that this is the right move for ArtistData and its members. We share an exciting vision for helping artists with what has become the most important revenue source they have: touring.

Naturally, this acquisition will generate a lot of questions, and I'm hoping this post can address some of them. Some obvious initial questions are:

Will ArtistData still have a free plan?
YES. This was very important. Sonicbids and I are both excited to continuing offering one of the best music promotion tools absolutely free.

How will ArtistData's paid services be handled?
This is exciting. Immediately as a welcome gift, Sonicbids has made all ArtistData paid services absolutely free until September 1! Once we combine our platforms, our gold bundle will be combined with the current Sonicbids plan and our Platinum bundle will be combined with the Supersonic accounts. We are still working out exact pricing, but here is the promise: Bundles will cost less and give you a lot more. I think you'll be really excited when we roll it out.

Will ArtistData be able to automatically sync to Sonicbids?
We have already started integrating the platforms and hope to roll out a tight integration in the fall.

Will Brenden still be involved?
I'm not going anywhere. I'll be joining Sonicbids as VP Strategic Development and overseeing how ArtistData is integrated into their platform. I'm also going to be working on making their entire product stronger, easier to use, and more valuable for artists. It's going to be awesome. You can always reach me on twitter at @bmull and on my blog at http://www.bmull.com.

I've set up this question and answer forum to answer any questions you have about this acquisition. I'm happy to answer anything you're wondering (well, almost anything). Sonicbids also set up an FAQ here.

We'll be releasing a bunch more information soon. I'll also be doing a series on my blog about the process behind making this decision over the next few months.

You'll also be hearing from Sonicbids Founder and CEO Panos Panay. I know he's excited to meet and talk with you.

I want to sincerely thank every one of you for all the support you've given me, the team, and ArtistData over the past few years. We've built an unbelievable community here and I'm so excited to take things to a new level with Sonicbids.

Thank you.

Brenden