GigTown is a new app which acts not only as a local music discovery engine but also allows venues and indie musicians to directly connect for the purpose of booking gigs.

When the guys first sent me an e-mail introducing the app, I immediately downloaded it, checked it out, then began engaging the fellas in conversation about their development process and the dynamics relevant to relations between local venues and local musicians.

Using the app, venues and fans are able to discover music relevant to their location, read reviews from others who have attended shows of local bands, as well as book those bands immediately through the app.

As far as financials, you set your rate – $0/hr up to $1000/hr. As an example, if you charge $100/hour, you will make $95/hour after GigTown takes their fee. A lot more fair than some deals I’ve seen between booking agents, promoters, and bands in various local scenes…

You, the musician, having nothing to lose for using this service. If you sign up and never get a gig, you’ve simply wasted 15 minutes of your time. Andy has made it clear that GigTown never wants to take a dollar from the musicians.

GigTown has the potential to become the hub of local music scenes connecting not only musicians, venues, and fans but providing a platform that can connect musicians to labels, agencies, guitar manufacturers, sound equipment supply companies, and anyone else that makes your local music scene operate.

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We recently had the chance to interview Andy and Travis from the GigTown Team. While on a road trip, the fearless leaders turned on their mobile recording device and answered questions (off the cuff). These are questions I e-mailed them concerning their mission, dedication, and the app itself.

With that said, a few of the answers follow Andy’s stream of consciousness as he thinks out loud but the message, information, and mission is delivered with genuine sincerity, passion, and determination to make a difference in local music scenes across the planet.

In the short video introduction to the longer audio interview, I will show off the app and the back-end of the website.

Questions and Quotes from the interview

Take us on a ride through GigTown. What is it? What is the mission?

..whatever it may be, I’d like to think of GigTown – or at least the vision of GigTown, is to become the hub of local music.”

“The core of GigTown is connecting fans, musicians and venues. I really believe we’re creating a win-win-win scenario…”

“So many venues are failing right now. They book live music and it’s just an expense and it starts to drag them down. You know, every musician can’t bring all their fans to every gig. So venues end up booking musicians and its just an expense…and they would love it if they would bring fans in but its just too hard to do…”

“..it’s facilitating these connections in ways that help everybody. And then around the periphery you have the equipment manufactures, sound equipment companies, you have record labels…and you know, think about what we could provide for each one…”

“We’re the only ones..as far as I know…really pushing for a win-win value proposition. I’m so inherently against turning it into a service where the musicians who pay the most get the most gigs…”

“I never want to take a dollar from the musicians…”

What inspired this?

…a number of things coming together… One piece of it, my parents run a fundraiser for Type 1 Diabetes which I have and several family members have…it’s called Rock The Cure.  They’ve done it 7 years..going on 8. They’ve booked some big name acts for it including Styx, Sugar Ray, and others. It raises a lot of money for diabetes research… Through that my parents were exposed to the difficulty in booking live music. There was no easy way to do it…”

“My dad, Travis and I have been bouncing ideas off each other for a while about something we could start a business with. As music fans, Travis and I went to Coachella. While we were there relied heavily on Uber…. the night I got back I called my Dad and we started bouncing ideas…”

“Why can’t I easily and quickly bring one of those musicians over to play the piano in the living room that never gets played while my friends are over hanging out?” — We thought about that and that’s the first time ever we were both like “that makes sense”. You should be able to do that.”

“…we realized it was so much bigger than what we first conceptualized as an Uber for Music.”

When is the Android app coming?

We have a team of 4 engineers working on it. It should be available in a few weeks.”

How much time, effort, blood, sweat, and tears have gone into the development of this app?

I really think our visual designer did an amazing job.”

“…sooo much has gone into this thing….even down to the finer details which are easy to overlook. It’s built to scale, it’s not a demo, it’s ready to go.”

Any plans to expand it’s reach outside the U.S.?

We definitely have plans to expand the reach of GigTown beyond the US.”

During this process, what lessons have you learned about the indie music scene and relationships between local acts and local venues?

One of the bigger things…there’s a lack of trust between musicians and venues in the sense I feel musicians feel they are being exploited by venues. They want the exposure of playing that venue but then venue is going to say ‘well, if you want to play here you’ve got to bring all your fans out’. The musicians are in a sticky situation where they have to figure out whether to use all their fan credits for this one gig or do I save them up for the next gig…. they are forced to spread themselves thin…”

“..venues don’t really have good access to musicians…”

“GigTown can play a huge role in being an organizer of the local music scene by being the consolidated place venues can go to find musicians and musicians can find all the venues around town that provide local music.”

Can you go into more detail about how GigTown will be able to create this transparency?

Over time GigTown will have a wealth of data on musicians, venues, and fans around town…given some time we will accumulate data. We can say “this band has 1,000 fans; when they are booked this percentage of fans show up… then it’s just a numbers game.”

“Venues are able to see how much a musician is worth relative to every other musician in the area… it’s not a perfect science but I think it gets venues a lot closer to an idea of what they get when they book musicians…”

“..from the venue’s perspective it’s really hard to put on a consistent music program that brings people in…”

What has been one of the biggest challenges you have faced and conquered on this journey? Do you expect to face more as this platform develops and matures?

The biggest challenge we’ve faced is the skepticism of musicians when they hear about us…”

“We really believe we’re different but it’s hard to message that…”

“..at least with GigTown, there’s nothing to lose.”

What’s one thing you want people “to get” or understand about GigTown’s service and what’s coming in the future?

The one thing I want to make sure people take away is that GigTown is not just a booking app. We are a one-stop shop for anything local music…”

Any last thoughts? Shout outs? Words of wisdom?

One final thing I’d mention is that I think Travis and I have the best jobs ever. A big part of it is listening to music get submitted from all over the country and it’s so cool. We went into this venture with the assumption that there’s so much talent in the local music scene and that is so true… It makes our job really fun and we really appreciate all the musicians out there becoming a part of this.”

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