GigsWiz, the direct-to-fan ticketing service, is officially launching in the UK today. Conceived originally as a sort of analytics for bands to help them identify “fan hotspots” and therefore where next to perform, the service provides artists with better tools for promoting and selling tickets to gigs via social media and their own websites.
In other words, it’s an attempt at making sense of the fragmented (and more direct) nature of fan relationships now that the music industry is flatter and spread across multiple online channels.
To entice bands to take on a greater role in promoting live shows, GigsWiz provides the artist with a share of ticket sale revenue, and therefore hopes to grow the pot overall. The service is also designed to get artists, promoters and venues working together. To that end, the company has already signed deals with a number of UK promoters including FeedMe Music, HotVox, and Substance Gigs.
The way it works is as follows: Artists sign up to GigsWiz Backstage and connect the service to their Facebook and Twitter accounts. GigsWiz then automatically promotes all upcoming gigs with monetizable ticketing links. Event organizers can also create events on the GigsWiz Tickets service so that they can reach a band’s fan base.
In addition to those updates being pushed automatically to social media channels, GigsWiz provides embeddable widgets and Facebook apps for artists, promoters and venues, which list upcoming gigs and link directly to a page to purchase tickets. Finally, gig info is also automatically posted to all relevant gig listing services. This degree of integration across multiple channels is obviously a time saver for both promoters and bands.
Finland-based GigsWiz was founded in early 2010 by Juuso Vermasheinä, Kai Lemmetty, and Joonas Pekkanen. It’s been running as a closed beta since November 2010. The company is angel funded.