Musicians rely heavily on marketing to raise awareness of their releases and brand. Just look at MySpace, which, despite looking ground to Facebook as the king of social networking, is still thriving largely due to its focus on music.
Enter Florida-based Myxer, a once ringtone-only company which is expanding its business model into mobile marketing SaaS targeted at the music industry. The company just launched the suite of MobileStage marketing tools and is hoping to turn it into “MySpace Music for Mobile.” The MobileStage tools offer app marketing, analytics, mobile website creation and fanlist management. MobileStage is already partnered up with musicians and digital platforms including Pearl Jam, U2, ReverbNation, Kedar Entertainment, Amie Street, and a heaping of other respected players.
“We listened very carefully to a large cross-section of artists, and one universal theme we heard was the artists’ desire for more engaging and personalized ways to connect with their fans,” said Myk Willis, CEO of Myxer, in a statement. “We are thrilled to be working with industry leaders and expanding the breadth of our comprehensive suite of mobile products and services to help artists and labels across the spectrum.”
With nearly 30 million users, more than 70 million mobile downloads a month, and a catalog of over 2 million ringtones, wallpapers, videos, apps and games, Myxer is far from starting from scratch. The company will promote artist apps to its userbase, hoping that its current ringtone and other mobile promotional partnerships will turn into much more. Myxer currently works with more than 100,000 artists, from the independent to some of the industry’s biggest names, delivering customizable and feature-rich mobile content to help these artists connect with their fans via mobile technology.