You know your band is rad — you have tons of Facebook fans mooning over your every ironic hair metal-inspired profile photo — but you still can’t book a gig. A soon-to-be-launched service called NuevoStage aims to help you finally bring your air kicks to a real stage
NuevoStage recently won the $50,000 grand prize at the Rethink Music Conference, in a business plan competition sponsored by Berklee College and Harvard Business School.
Like a Groupon for concerts, as founder Maxwell Wessel dubbed it, NuevoStage relies on buyer participation in order to book shows. Wessel has found that there are thousands of venues in the U.S. that are not using their performance spaces at least one night per week, which is a loss when it comes to cash.
NuevoStage allows artists to search for venues with open nights and create a listing for a potential show, which they can then pump through social channels. Bands then ask their fans to buy a ticket to the show (fans will have to enter in their credit card info), and if enough fans sign up, the show will go on. If only, say, four people buy tickets, there will be no show, and the fans will not be charged. Wessel plans to monetize the site by charging a ticket processing fee.
Wessel, a student at Harvard Business School, says that the site is still in private alpha, so we haven’t had a chance to check it out yet — aside from the demo above. However, he and co-founder Chris Allen plan to launch it this summer.
“I created this product because of an awesome University of Vermont band called Bearquarium,” Wessel says. “I saw them perform at the Middle East nightclub, a great alternative club in Cambridge, as an opener. When I approached them after the show I asked whether they ever headlined the club, to which they responded no.” Wessel then decided to create something that would help bands like Bearquarium levera ge fans to get...
