Archive for September, 2010
Mobile Roadie in Japan
posted by Michael Arcand
Mobile Roadie is pleased to announce our latest expansion, this time into the Japanese market! We’re teaming up with All Access Today‘s Japanese office (AATJ), one of Japan’s top entertainment companies. With offices in the U.S., U.K., and Japan, All Access Today is an entertainment company with a global reach. Clients of the company include Cindi Lauper, Rob Thomas, Matchbox Twenty, and Sugarland. Combine that with coordination of events such as the 2008 Projekt Revolution tour where they worked with Major League Baseball Properties to promote special game passes and other rewards for concert goers, and you can see that they are truly a world-class entertainment company. They are already well-known in Japan as a live entertainment company, specializing in managing fan clubs, VIP ticketing, merchandising, and planning events. AATJ plans to utilize Mobile Roadie to offer artists, labels and artist management firms a solution on managing and delivering new services to smartphone users.
While their current mobile offerings include online list building as well as development of web properties such as the artist’s website and social media profiles (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter), AATJ will be expanding their product line into the mobile world by providing Mobile Roadie‘s platform as their premiere app-building partner. Their fan-based focus will promote instant delivery of music, mobile updates from the artists, exclusive opportunities via the mobile platform, community connection, and entertainment. Of course, this is where Mobile Roadie comes in, with the CMS that will deliver these exact qualities to their users.
Additionally, we would like to acknowledge our very own Taishi Fukuyama in Japan, who is a key player in the AATJ-MoRo partnership team. You can reach out to Fukuyama via twitter @tshfyhm or Facebook.
Mobile Roadie and Songkick Announce Partnership
posted by admin
Quickly import concert information into mobile apps
LOS ANGELES – September 24, 2010 – Mobile Roadie and Songkick announced a partnership today that allows integration of upcoming concert listings into Mobile Roadie’s content management system. Now, when a client is building their own iPhone or Android app with Mobile Roadie, they will have the option to import their concert schedule via Songkick with a click of a button. The integration is available immediately and at no extra charge.
“This integration will be very important to all of our music artist and event oriented clients,” said Michael Schneider, Mobile Roadie’s CEO. “Imagine entering your name, clicking a button and having your entire tour schedule import automatically into your app. This is a natural extension of our strategy to enhance the user experience and save our clients hours of manual input.”
“Mobile Roadie is a valuable solution for artists and fans who want to stay connected to one another, wherever they are,” said Ian Hogarth, CEO and co-founder of Songkick. “By automatically publishing concert listings and ticket links to Mobile Roadie apps, Songkick makes it easy for fans to find their favorite artists’ concerts, and reduce the burden on artists to update their concert listings in multiple locations.”
As the largest self service mobile app platform, Mobile Roadie is leading the market with its build-once, deploy everywhere technology. After it’s initial debut in April of 2009 with only a handful of apps, Mobile Roadie now has nearly 1,000 live apps in the Apple App Store and Google Android Market including major clients like Taylor Swift, Drake, Madonna, Linkin Park, the Miami Dolphins and The Wynn Las Vegas. Mobile Roadie’s quickly growing staff is headquartered in Los Angeles, with additional offices in London and Tokyo. Find our more at www.mobileroadie.com.
Songkick is the home for live music on the web. Fans can track their favorite artists so they never miss them live. With over 120,000 upcoming listings, Songkick is the world’s most comprehensive database of concerts, collecting festival and concert information from over 100 different ticket vendors in 60 countries. Songkick has become the most trafficked live music site after Livenation.com. Songkick allows each music fan to track their favorite artists, discover upcoming concerts, find the cheapest tickets and let friends know which shows they are attending. Fans can also use Songkick to share their concert experiences with the world by uploading photos, setlists, and reviews from past concerts. Songkick helps fans find concerts wherever they consume music online, by syndicating its database of concert information to a network of partners that include YouTube, Vevo and The Hype Machine through an open API. Songkick is backed by Index Ventures as well as angel investors from the technology and music industry. Check out www.songkick.com for more info.
Press Contacts:
Rob Swope
Mobile Roadie
315.416.3319
rob@mobileroadie.com
Caren Kelleher
Songkick
404.309.0289
ck@songkick.com
Where in the World is Mobile Roadie?
posted by Michael ArcandMobile Roadie has been growing by leaps and bounds, not only in our European market, but also at home as well. The best news is that we are going with the flow and have no intention of slowing things down. In fact. we are working towards becoming more vertical in our approach to marketing our services. No matter what business sector you are working with, chances are that our customizable platform can be used by you. We’ve got apps for athletes & sports teams, authors & writers, education & schools, movies & TV, and celebrities, just to name a few. You’ll see this commitment to vertical development reflected in our schedule over the next few weeks. If you plan on attending one or more of these events, be sure and look us up!
Sept. 22nd: Verizon Developer’s Conference (Las Vegas, NV)
Join Brock Batten, Mobile Roadie‘s Creative Director, at this year’s Verizon Developer’s Conference. He will be speaking at a Brand Enablers workshop on Wednesday at 10:45 a.m. The conference features two full tracks of sessions to help accelerate app development and expand marketing opportunities. Each day will feature some hands-on sessions that introduce everything from Verizon’s latest API’s and developer enablers to content programming methods.
Sept. 24th: Social Media Week (Los Angeles, CA)
Social Media Week kicked off yesterday with events being hosted in five different locations worldwide, including our very own Los Angeles. Designed as a global platform to connect people into the conversation and trend that is social media, there are dozens of free events being hosted at locations all over LA this week. You can meet up with Rob Swope, Mobile Roadie’s Communications Manager, on Friday the 24th, at many of the events throughout the day. In addition to the days events, Rob will be attending the Closing Night festivities recognizing Mobile Roadie as a worldwide technology partner. Even if you can’t attend these events in one of the host cities, you can still download the free SMW app here.
Sept. 27th: Devcon (San Francisco, CA)
The BlackBerry Devcon is the premiere annual event for BlackBerry developers around the world. You will find not only developers, but also BlackBerry experts, RIM partners and our own Arthur Jinian, Senior Developer for Mobile Roadie. Arthur will be there to further our knowledge of BlackBerry as we build toward a future, full platform release. Learn about the new BlackBerry 6 platform as well as Super Apps, generating revenue and profit and new web-based tools that can help you get started in the world of successful BlackBerry apps.
Oct. 6th: Mipcom (Cannes, France)
MIPCOM is the world’s leading content market for creating, co-producing, buying, selling, financing and distributing entertainment across all platforms. Join Mobile Roadie’s CEO Michael Schneider as he attends this year’s event. At 5:30 p.m., Michael will be part of a Superpanel entitled: “Can Rich Media Apps Generate Significant Digital Revenue?” Even if you can’t be there in person, you can still keep up with the latest official news, photos, and videos by downloading the MIPCOM app.
Oct. 5th: Billboard Music App Summit (San Francisco, CA)
Join Rob Swope as he attends the Mobile Entertainment Live: The Music App Summit and meet the key players that are revolutionizing mobile music apps for today’s leading smartphones. This event is the place to discover new companies, technologies and apps that are setting the bar for mobile music success, not to mention the first ever awards reception solely focused on mobile music applications.
Oct. 7-8th: Perfect Business Summit (Las Vegas, NV)
Join Michael Schneider on Friday at 12:30 p.m. during the Internet and Software Track as he gives a presentation entitled “The Future of Mobile Apps.” During this presentation, he will outline the trends in mobile and apps, then explore what the future has in store. He will also demonstrate a number of ideas on how mobile apps can be used to grow your business and affordable solutions to creating your own app. Whether you are a Mobile Roadie customer or just looking into the idea of getting an app for your business, this is one you won’t want to miss.
Oct. 14-17th: Blogworld New Media Expo (Las Vegas, NV)
BlogWorld New Media Expo is a forum for members of both new and traditional media where you can learn about content creation, distribution and monetization, and discover the current tools being used by the most successful bloggers, podcasters, and other new media pros. Both Michael Schneider and Rob Swope will be in attendance during this event. So, come on out and network with our team.
Nov. 4-7th: Taxi Road Rally (Los Angeles, CA)
Never content to rest on his laurels, Rob Swope will be leading 2 classes (TBA) on how to manage and market your own mobile app at the Taxi Road Rally 2010. Taxi is the world’s leading Independent Artist & Repertoire Company, specializing in giving artists, bands, and songwriters real access to the people in the music business who have the power to sign deals. Come join Rob and be a part of this great networking event.
Social Media Week is live! So is the app…
posted by admin
On their website, Social Media Week (SMW) is a global platform that connects people, content, and conversation around emerging trends in social and mobile media. In person, it is a whole lot more. Hosted by Crowdcentric, SMW initially launched it’s conference in February of 2009 in New York City as a distributed conference with events taking place all across the city. With the demand growing, they kicked it up a notch in February of this year, simultaneously hosting events in 6 international cities and drawing more than triple the attendees from the year prior.
In addition to the physical events taking place, SMW organizers used Ustream.com to stream live video of many of their events and hosted real-time conversations through their website. For Toby Daniels (@tobyd), the Founder of SMW, the decision was simple to create a mobile app. They already had tens of thousands of web visitors, millions of impressions and thousands of attendees and followers. It made sense that they needed a mobile presence and they needed it fast!
Less than 4 weeks ago, Social Media Week started working with Mobile Roadie to create their very first app. After a week of planning and uploading, they had what they needed. Today marks the first day of their second conference this year, and their iPhone and Android app is live and already starting to generate a buzz. With the ability to integrate with their already successful Twitter, blog and Ustream following, the impact could be far-reaching. If you happen to be in Bogota, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Milan or Los Angeles this week, don’t miss the events taking place. If not, check out their website for other ways to stay updated – like twitter: @socialmediaweek
Either way, stay connected 24/7 and download the SMW app now to experience it all from the palm of your hand.
Mobile Roadie + Apple = Simple yet Powerful Apps
posted by Michael ArcandWhen Apple first launched its App Store in June 2008, the push was for quantity. In just a few months, the store’s selections exploded, featuring over 100k apps by the end of 2009. With its overwhelming popularity, and the paralleled success of both the iPhone and iPod Touch came the inevitable low quality wave. Most of these apps were created with templates to get them up and running quickly, primarily with RSS feeds, blogs and other standard web content. Many development companies and freelancers began to appear, taking advantage of the template concept to offer apps at lower prices to unwary customers.
Several months ago we reported that Apple was in the process of cracking down on “cookie cutter” apps in the App Store. That process continues, with apps being pulled or rejected for using standardized templates. With the approval process becoming more streamlined and strict on Apple’s end, many of these apps no longer make it to the store in the first place. Apps are dropping like flies and companies are shutting down or suspending their operations left and right. While there are no hard figures on the actual number that have been pulled, or definite reasons why they are pulled, this issue continues to strike a chord with developers. Just last week Apple released a statement responding to that community: “We are relaxing all restrictions on the development tools used to create iOS apps…in addition we are publishing the App Store Review Guidelines, to help developers understand how we review submitted apps.” Click here to check out the review guidelines.
Either way, Mobile Roadie’s ongoing relationship with Apple has continued to keep clients confident. “While we may provide a platform that allows anyone to build and manage iPhone apps from a central template, it’s a highly customizable template that our clients can count on,” said Rob Swope, Communications Manager of Mobile Roadie. “You can rename and reorder sections, upload custom graphics, media, and other content, or have our design team build a theme for you. Also, top-notch partnerships with companies like Brightcove, Soundcloud, Topspin and Ustream, assures that the content we do allow in our apps will be of the best quality. In addition, our advanced API and the ability to bake in custom features from outside developers create exciting possibilities for the builder and a positive experience for the user.”
With that said, a long list of updates will be released by the end of October, and along with it, the bottom line becomes that much clearer: Mobile Roadie apps are simple at their core, but powerful when customized, just the way Apple likes it. It’s no surprise that some of the most successful brands and individuals in the world trust Mobile Roadie. So stop thinking about building a mobile app and join Madonna, Taylor Swift, The Wynn Las Vegas, The Miami Dolphins and Drake, on your own quest for a mobile experience. It won’t be too long until you have some “mobile roadies” of your own, downloading your app all over the world!
Want a Dramatically Faster App? Here You Go, at No Extra Charge…
posted by adminContent delivery network helps apps load content faster internationally
LOS ANGELES – September 9, 2010 – Mobile Roadie has teamed up with (mt) Media Temple once again to provide a more efficient user experience for its apps. This time around there was only one thing on their minds: speed. Today, Mobile Roadie has officially deployed a CDN, or Content Delivery Network to bring any static content that’s coming from their servers, geographically closer to end users using Media Temple’s 16 points of global presence, which in turn lightens the load on Mobile Roadie’s servers and increases their capacity.
“Putting it as simply as possible, the CDN knows how to route requests for content to the closest global point of presence,” says Ryan Goodman, Brand Manager of Media Temple. “So if you have a user in Tokyo, the static content they access will come from a server in Tokyo, versus having to traverse the globe…causing much faster load times.”
The CDN has been tested by both companies’ development teams and went live this morning across all of the apps in Mobile Roadie’s network.
“Users of apps are impatient, and want what they want, when they want it,” stated Michael Schneider, CEO of Mobile Roadie. “Given our increasingly global presence, it made sense to deploy a CDN into our system and dramatically speed up our apps, at no extra cost to our customers.”
The new rocket-fueled content stream was summarized in just one sentence by Mobile Roadie’s CTO, Steve Schroeder: “If you thought our apps were fast before, you’ll be blown away by their speed now.”
Mobile Roadie is the largest mobile app platform in the world. After it’s initial debut in April of 2009, Mobile Roadie powers nearly 1,000 live apps in the Apple App Store and Google Android Market including major clients like Taylor Swift, The Fader Magazine, Drake, Live Nation, Linkin Park, the Miami Dolphins and The Wynn Las Vegas. Mobile Roadie’s quickly growing staff is headquartered in Los Angeles, with additional offices in London and Tokyo. Find out more at www.mobileroadie.com.
(mt) Media Temple, Inc is a web hosting and virtualization service provider headquartered in Los Angeles, California. Since 1998, the company has provided businesses around the world with reliable, professional-class services to host websites, email, business applications, and other rich Internet content. (mt) is an always-on company (24/7/365) with a U.S. based support department serving customers in over 60+ countries. Visit www.mediatemple.com for more information.
Press Contacts:
Rob Swope
Mobile Roadie
315.416.3319
rob@mobileroadie.com
Alex Capehart
(mt) Media Temple, Inc
310.841.5500
press@mediatemple.net
Apps Are the New Website
posted by Michael Arcand
Take a look around the technology landscape, and what do you see? Today, the mobile market is growing by leaps and bounds, faster than ever before. In fact, growth in smartphone sales this year have surpassed the growth in traditional desktop computers, at least by percentage. Perhaps the most obvious example is Apple, which has transformed their business from a niche computer market to a leader in the smartphone industry. Their best-selling products of all time are the iPhone and iPad, both mobile devices that are transforming how we digest content from the Internet.
As seen in the graph above, sales of desktop PCs are slowing, while smartphone sales are accelerating. In fact, many are predicting that smartphone sales will outpace the sales of desktop computers by 2012, with one analyst predicting over 50 billion mobile devices connected to the net by 2020. In just over two years since the Apple App Store debuted in July of 2008, they have amassed over 250,000 apps listed in the store, with over five billion downloads to date. The trend is very clear: people are using the mobile web more and more each month. So when will we be attending the funeral of desktop computing?
The truth is the desktop computer will never completely die, but as more and more of its computing power is moved to the cloud with online applications and storage, it makes it easier for the mobile market to access all of your information on the go. The day of the mobile office is already here. In fact, Google’s Eric Schmidt noted earlier this year that “mobile web adoption is growing eight times faster than the first wave of PC Internet adoption.”
This year alone smartphones are set to see sales increases of up to 50 percent, up to 250 million units sold. Contrast that to 20 percent growth in the PC market, with sales of 366 million units, and you’ll see why some experts believe we won’t have to wait until 2012 to see the takeover of the market.
So what does all this mean for you? It’s simple. Mobile apps are the new website! Remember when getting your very own website for your business was cutting edge, and everyone was telling you that you needed one? They were right, weren’t they? Well, history is repeating itself, sort of. The smartphone industry is set to overtake desktop computing. The primary way users are adapting to this new environment is through the use of mobile apps. In other words, you need a mobile app and you need it now.
Think about this for a minute. There will be 250 million smartphone sales this year (projected), with 250,000 apps in the Apple App store alone. That’s roughly a 1:1000 ratio. Based on the chart above, with 500 million sales in 2012, at the current ratio, this would mean 500,000 apps on the market. That’s double what Apple has available right now.
So what are you waiting for? Don’t you want to get in on the biggest wave in technology since the Internet came along?
(Image source: Bloomberg.com)
From L.A., to the U.K.: Apps are taking over!
posted by Michael Arcand
Back on July 5th, we posted “Mobile Roadie in the U.K.,” in which talked about our recent expansion into the U.K. and Ireland with the addition of a new team member and an office in London. Since then, a lot more has been going on across the pond and we figured that you all would like to know what’s brewing.
First off, the new JLS app is blowing up in the iTunes store and is currently ranked 5th in U.K. music apps! As if you didn’t know, JLS were runners-up on the British talent show, “The X Factor,” in 2008. Following their success on the show, the group signed a deal with Epic Records and had two number one hits on the U.K. Singles Chart. Their debut album has sold over a million copies in the U.K., with the band taking home two awards at the 2010 BRIT Awards. This year they’ve signed a deal with Jive Records and earned their third number one hit on the U.K. Singles Chart.
The app allows JLS fans to watch videos, listen and buy music, share and download photos, and connect with other fans. Also, keep an eye out for exclusive competitions, messages from the boys and updates. You can download the JLS app at http://road.ie/jls.
In addition, here are other noteworthy updates from our U.K. office:
- Stephen O’Reilly and a new sales manager (TBA) are meeting with hundreds of prospects per month.
- Mobile Roadie CEO, Michael Schneider’s recent trip to the U.K. in early August to meet with potential partners, business owner’s and record labels was a huge success. So much so, that he has booked another long-term follow up trip for conferences and meetings that will span almost the entire month of September.
-Check out our most up to date customer map below. Each dot on the map represents an app that we helped build. As you can see, Europe is our 2nd largest market and growing fast!
We look forward to the map being filled with thousands of dots all over the world. Where will yours be?
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