Going to Barcelona for the weekend and need a place to stay? Book a room at AirBnB! Need a ride home after a long night of partying? Uber will help you out with that! Throwing a wedding party and looking for an awesome band? Much more difficult to answer, right?
Arranging a private booking of a live music performance could take a lot of hassle. First of all, there is information asymmetry: an average person has little understanding of the booking process and does not know where to find the available options. Searching online will only result in finding musicians who has paid a lot of money to appear at the top of a Google search. These artists would cost you a fortune. A specialized booking agencies could help you out, but the extra fees are certainly not cheap either. Is there any affordable solution? Yes, there is!
Plugify is an online market place for booking live music performances. Similar to other platform mediated networks like AirBnB and Uber, Plugify mediates the direct interaction between supplier and customer. The website serves as a platform where local artists are able to create a profile, upload videos of previous performances and provide booking information. Customers can select the desired type of music performance and browse through the available options. Prices and requirements are immediately visible for the customer, making the booking process much more transparent. By using Plugify’s personal message system, customers are enabled to have direct contact with the artist to make arrangements regarding the performance. After that, customers can immediately complete both the booking and payment processes online.
Besides offering the first online transparent booking system to customers, Plugify also differentiates itself by creating a community where authentic, yet unknown artists can express themselves. At their turn, customers are able to discover and rate these talented musicians. Currently, Plugify has over 500 artists on their website available for booking, ranging from pianists to bands and DJ’s. In September 2016, the start-up has raised approximately 750,000 Euros to finance the platform’s further development.
So do you want to book a live music performance? Go check Plugify!
Sources:
https://www.plugify.nl/
http://www.sprout.nl/artikel/startup-van-de-week/online-muziek-acts-boeken-plugify
http://www.emerce.nl/nieuws/boekingsplatform-plugify-haalt-745690-euro-crowdfunding
https://innovation-awards.nl/concept/online-marktplaats-voor-live-muziek-optredens/
https://vimeo.com/158152384
Thanks for the post Christian. I do see how Plugify makes it easier to find and book artists for music venues and other individuals or groups. But I also think that music venues often already get enough requests for bookings so they will not bother with searching for other options. Furthermore they are often only interested in local bands or bands that bring in a lot of revenue, often managed through an artist agency. From the side of individuals and groups it is also not really a solution to a problem because those will usually just want to book artists they already know, or local artists. Next to that the website is dependent on network effects, so a critical amount of artists and people searching for them is neccesary to make the platform efficient. However that critical amount of users will be difficult to achieve due to the earlier mentioned reasons.