Keeping in line with our recent mobile theme, I wanted to present another mobile option to you this week. Last week we talked about Mobile Roadie’s free mobile ready website option. Mobile Roadie is also quite adept at making mobile apps. While they are a leader in app creation platforms for musicians to consider, their price points can be prohibitive for many independent artists. But have no fear, ReverbNation has been creating free/inexpensive solutions for independent musician’s since their inception. Here again they have come up with an affordable solution for mobile app creation. ReverbNation can get you up and running with a customized app in 6 quick steps.
1. You choose the color scheme your app will be built with. You only have 5 options here, so there’s not a ton of choice, but there’s enough. The color scheme presents itself across the entire app.
2. In the next step you choose several photos that will rotate through on the home screen. The idea is to keep this home screen variable and exciting instead of just static.
3. Here you upload a photo that becomes the app icon. This is an important step as this is the photo fans will see when downloading the app from the app store and when opening the app on their phone.
4. You’ll also need to upload a photo to act as a loading screen (lots of photo uploads, eh?). This is a nice touch to make sure you have branded loading screen so your fans don’t just look at a blank screen as the app loads.
5. This can be the longest step of the process. In this step you will load up the rest of the content that will populate the app. You have the ability to load up your music (which can be made available for stream, download or both, and can include buy links), photos, bio, blog and social links.
6. The final step is also the most boring. Now you just need to enter some final information about yourself and the band and voila, you now have an app ready for the Android and Apple app stores. Like I said at the beginning of this article, ReverbNation has managed to bring this idea to the market at a very reasonable price. For $299/year you can make your app available on both the Android and Apple app store, or just the Android app store for only $99/year. Compared to their competitors, this is an extremely competitive price point.
Have you built an app with ReverbNation? What do you think of their app creator? How important has mobile been for you in communicating with your fans?
Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.