Opening Riff

by Brian McManus

Maybe you’re a musician unsatisfied with the current technological options available to help you annoy the general populace. MySpace is so yesterday, and filled with too many bugs. Mass emails to your fan base just aren’t what they used to be, and each “Please take me off this goddamn list” is a serious blow to your delusions of rock-star grandeur. You need something more.

There’s a new service available to bands and touring musicians you might not know about. And your fans have to sign up to get info from you, so it’s not annoying to the rest of us.

It’s called Broadtexter, and it works like this: Fans join a Mobile Fan Club from something called a Flash widget that musicians can embed across their entire Web presence (social networking sites, blogs, homepages). Once in a Mobile Fan Club, the fan gets spam-free text messages from the musician (not Broadtexter), who controls when they go out. So fans are never inundated by third-party text ads on their phones.

Imagine this scenario. You’re a big fan of, say, Derek and the Dickholes, but you also have a life and aren’t on the computer following their every move. You sign up for the Broadtexter widget on Derek’s MySpace or homepage and, boom, next time they’re in town you get a text message about it. If they’re playing a festival, they can send out a text to fans attending to let them know what stage they’ll be appearing on.

The band can control the texts by region, so you never have to worry about getting a superfluous “Derek and the Dickholes, tonight in Omaha!” text here in Philly.

The advantage to musicians is obvious. They have a pointed, precise way to reach fans in the cities they’re traveling to on the nights they’ll be in town. Everybody wins.

The service was dreamt up by former touring musician and Philadelphian Teddy Goldstein, who knows that getting an extra 10 or 15 people out to a show while on the road is nothing to turn your nose at.

Broadtexter’s website is filled with testimonials from bands both small (David Mead, Melissa Ferrick) and large (Candlebox, Reel Big Fish) who swear by the service.

Go to www.broadtexter.com for more info.