#bandofthedayapp

Today, it’s with a heavy heart that we announce that July 31st will be the final day of Band of the Day app. It was an incredibly tough decision to make, because for nearly four years we’ve had the pleasure of exposing one new amazing artist a day, every single day, to some of the most passionate music aficionados out there. That’s over 1,400 curated bands from all over the world.

When we started developing Band of the Day app back in 2011, our goal was to make music discovery as delightful an experience as possible. This resulted in building an innovative and stunning mobile platform unlike anything out there -- the world’s first music publication built for mobile from the ground up. Our vision and hard work paid off immediately, with Apple selecting Band of the Day as App of the Week when it launched in the App Store. We saw a huge spike in downloads, and the press and accolades started rolling in. Later that year, Band of the Day won the award for the iPhone App of the Year runner-up (to Instagram) for 2011.

During this time period, we decided to make Band of the Day a completely free app (it started off as a paid subscription-only app). At the time, we believed that growing our global user base and exposing bands to as large an audience as possible was more important than revenue. It was exciting to see all of the new user feedback come in, thanking us for helping them discover bands that they would have never found on their own. We also started hearing directly from bands on how big a spike in new fans they had when they were featured in the app. As a company of music lovers, it was incredibly rewarding to see that we had accomplished exactly what we set out to do.

Unfortunately, a company cannot sustain itself on accolades and buzz alone -- just like a band cannot sustain itself on number of song plays. We had to figure out a way to generate revenue if we were to keep going. This led to the creation of our fan club ticketing and data analytics platform, Applauze, which was launched in March of 2013 as App of the Week during SXSW.

After successfully building a consumer-facing product with Band of the Day, we built Applauze as an artist-facing utility to help them connect directly with their most dedicated fans, and learn more about them through powerful data analytics.

Applauze: Monetization For Artists

Applauze is now the leading technology-driven fan club ticketing platform serving the artist and event community, with exceptional service and end user experience. As much as we all love Band of the Day, and have been able to keep it running for nearly four years, we’ve decided that now is the time to fully concentrate on Applauze by putting all of our company’s focus on it. This decision does not come lightly, especially given the community we’ve built around Band of the Day, but we’re 100% confident that it is the right one.

While Band of the Day app won’t be around after July 31st, we’re doing everything we can to ensure that our users aren’t left behind. Over the next month, we’ll be rolling out a series of blog posts on how we discover new music, and various playlists made up of bands that have been featured in the app throughout the years. We will also revamp bandofthedayapp.com to include an archive of all the bands we’ve ever featured in the app. After July 31st, we welcome you to still interact with us through @bandoftheday and facebook.com/bandoftheday.

Our love for discovering new music and sharing those discoveries is something that will never go away, and we hope to continue those conversations with you all even when the app isn’t around anymore. Until that time, I just wanted to give a huge thanks to all of the bands, labels, managers, and publicists who have worked with us over the years; to all of the users who evangelized the app and engaged with it every day; and to everyone who was involved in the creation of Band of the Day app. It’s been an amazing journey, and I’m honored to have been a part of it from the very beginning to the bittersweet end. 

Three years. One thousand and ninety-seven bands. Back in late summer of 2011, in the heart of Silicon Valley, we — a tiny group of designers, developers, and music writers — weren’t sure if we’d ever hit this milestone. In an industry that’s increasingly automated, how would an app that runs 100% on human curation even survive? What would happen if people didn’t like our taste in music? Luckily for us, there has yet to be a music discovery service that can entirely replace the human touch, and from all the feedback we’ve received, you’ve appreciated our taste in music thus far. Today, as your virtual music geek friend (Amanda Van West - hi!) behind Band of the Day app’s sleekly-designed facade, I’m proud to have chosen Sydney, Australia’s The Vines as the band to celebrate our third birthday.

Many of you might already be well-familiar with The Vines. After all, their debut album Highly Evolved (2002) sold over 1.5 million albums worldwide, with singles like “Get Free” and “Outtathaway!” topping the charts and getting significant airplay. This was followed by 2004’s Winning Days, and had the band touring all over the world. One of those stops was in April 2004 at The Warfield in San Francisco, California. It was part of what was dubbed ‘The Aussie Invasion Tour,’ with The Living End and Jet rounding off the lineup. I was a senior in high school at the time and — after reading all the praise about The Vines in music magazines like NME, Rolling Stone, and Spin — my friends and I made the trek from the suburbs to the big city to finally see what all the hype was about.

As soon as they hit the stage and struck the first few notes, I was in awe of the wild and raw punk rock energy sparking through the air. Frontman Craig Nicholls’ face would distort as he’d snarl out self-loathing lyrics like, “She never loved me/why should anyone?” (‘Get Free’), with beads of sweat flying off of his shaggy ‘do. To put it briefly, it was a ferocious, electrifying performance. Anyone who was there that night wouldn’t have been surprised to see The Vines blow up even further.

But like many bands who experience a meteoric rise to fame, it’s not without consequence. After 2006’s Vision Valley, which didn’t achieve as much commercial success as the previous releases, the band was dropped from their record label. Still, they persisted and two years later released Melodia, the first album for their then-label Ivy League Records. This was followed by 2011’s Future Primitives, which was self-funded by the band. Both were solid releases, but still didn’t achieve the accolades of their first two albums.

Now in September 2014, The Vines are back with a two-disc album, Wicked Nature — arguably their finest album since 2002’s Highly Evolved. It’s been released completely independently, funded through a crowdsourced PledgeMusic campaign (http://www.pledgemusic.com/projects/thevines). This album sees a new band lineup, with the rhythm section now made up of Tim John on bass and Lachy West on drums. Nicholls is still at the helm as lead vocalist and guitarist, but for the first time ever he’s also taken on the role of producer (with Paul Mckercher as co-producer for disc one). The result is a 22-song journey through everything from explosive punk rock (“Out The Loop”), to sludgy grunge (“Metal Zone”), to free-spirited psychedelia (“Truth”). It’s The Vines being true to their very core, a band that knows what they do best and have done it with fearless gusto. This is the type of album that we’ll be shamelessly blasting over and over again here at Band of the Day HQ, and we hope that no matter where you are in the world, you’ll take the time to crank it up and join the virtual party on our third birthday today.

We've been hard at work crunching the numbers over here at Band of the Day HQ, to determine the top-performing bands we featured over the past month. 

We looked at a combination of: most song plays, most song/album purchases, most shared/tweeted, and most read. And the results are in!

The #1 spot goes to... MisterWives!

As for the rest, the breakdown is:

#2 - The Strokes/Ed Harcourt (tied)

#3 - James Apollo

#4 - Conway/The Bones of J.R. Jones (tied)

#5 - Melaena Cadiz/Jarekus Singleton (tied)

Honorable mentions: The Faint, Streets of Laredo, The Holmes Brothers, Bestfriends, PINS, and The Lottery Winners.