Bandsintown for Artists
Company: Bandsintown
Role: Senior Product Designer
Case Study: Getting Warm Bodies Into Concert Venues
The Challenge
Bandsintown already had a massive audience for live music discovery, but artists and managers had to promote shows through a clunky Facebook-based interface that felt outdated, confusing, and totally disconnected from how modern music professionals work. It created friction where there should have been momentum. The brief was clear: take that old experience and turn it into a standalone, artist-first platform that actually helps musicians promote shows, build audiences, and sell tickets.
Listening to the People Behind the Music
As a former major label artist who spent years on the road, I came in with firsthand knowledge of the pain points: juggling tour logistics, engaging fans, managing constant administrative tasks, and doing all of it with limited tools. That perspective helped the team quickly define realistic personas and understand what mattered most. We then expanded the research with interviews across managers, agents, indie artists, and touring pros to capture a 360 degree view. Once we had a solid foundation, we moved into interactive wireframes and put them in front of real users, refining the flow until it felt effortless.
Designing the New Bandsintown Manager
With validated wireframes in place, we moved through high fidelity designs and built interactive prototypes for another round of testing. The goal was simple: give artists and managers a clean, intuitive front end for promoting shows and connecting with fans, and remove every piece of friction from the old Facebook experience. We crafted a fully responsive web app tailored for professionals across the industry. I partnered closely with engineering during handoff, even jumping in with CSS contributions where needed. We also created a smooth migration path so existing Bandsintown artists could move their data over without losing their history or their momentum.
The Impact
When the new Bandsintown Manager launched, the numbers painted a very clear picture:
- The user base grew from 40 million to 60 million
- Manager accounts jumped from 320,000 to 540,000
- Artist-to-fan engagement increased tenfold
- Ticket sales per concert rose an average of twelve to thirty percent
- Early adopters of the redesign included, casually, Sir Paul McCartney and Taylor Swift
This was the kind of impact that reminded all of us why the work mattered.
Better tools lead to better shows, stronger communities, and fuller venues.
Conclusion
The redesigned Bandsintown Manager became a powerful, standalone hub for artists, managers, agents, and industry professionals to promote their concerts and grow their audiences. It replaced a clumsy, outdated workflow with a focused, intuitive experience that helped real musicians reach real fans in a real way. And it proved that when design deeply understands the people it serves, everybody wins.
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