NeoMusicStore

Archive for January, 2011

Wanting an iPhone and/or mobile app for your festival but a bit confused by some competing solutions, and nonsense pricing ? Here are some quick facts about our apps, which differentiate from others.

1. Prices

Most of our festivals apps cost between €500 and €1,000. We have yet to publish an app that costed more than €1,000 for a festival. Even the most ambitious one to date is still below this price tag, and includes many features unseen in other festival apps (near real time photos, enhanced digital ticketing, personalized media push, …). We don’t charge that price for a renewal, nor an audience spike. Actually we don’t charge anything when only database content is changed, so that includes a renewal with no new feature added to app. We only charge when there’s an actual human being doing some work. Please ask for a quote to get pricing for your needs.

2. Content

Innovation, Interaction, and Guidelines are the 3 keywords of our apps. So you won’t have to wait for 6+ months when some key features such as push notifications, multitasking are made available by Apple. First apps or app updates made once the iOS version is released benefit from these. We don’t outsource, so that helps for sure to add these features quickly. On top of that we try to add some value to the apps we publish so it isn’t only a way to have the festival book on your mobile. Interaction is the second key for that. Allowing users to share experience with tweets, photos makes them be part of the app, part of the festival and enticing for their relatives to attend. Granting them some extra content when attending an event, or using the digital ticketing solution is another differentiation point. Guidelines are also very important for a mobile user. If you don’t want your user to be lost when opening your app, looking for content, you have to follow strict guidelines to make sure he’ll know how to use your app within a few seconds. Bells and Whistles  may be nice, but a mobile user shouldn’t take more than 2 seconds to find information. Forget apps which require you to reload full content every time you have to open it (still seen on some competitor’s apps late 2010)

3. Updates and offline access

Needing a submission to Apple (which takes around a week for review) for simple content update ? No way ! Updates made by the festival in the customers area are sent over the air every time a mobile user gets a connection to the Internet, then is stored to his device. Offline access to real-time line-up and detailed schedule is part of the package so that they can be seen when networks are saturated.

4.Multiple devices

iPhone and iPod are by far the most used devices in festivals. But some other smartphones may be used. That’s why we suggest a low cost stripped-down mobile web version which will work with any other recent smartphone (Android, Blackberry, Symbian, Windows Phone 7, Bada, …). Still, we partner with (specialized) developers for those which want to have a native version for different systems

Oh, and yes, most of the things listed here are also applicable to artists, DJs, labels iPhone apps…