About a month ago I spent a weekend holed up in my bedroom and walked out with this: BandwidthBeta

Here’s the premise.  Lets say this is you — you’ve got a band.  Lets say you’re doing it DIY.  Sure, you’ve got a MySpace or whatever, so people can discover you and hear your music.   People have heard your music and they like it, but you’re still bumping in the dark.  At the end of the day they might or might not remember you, and if they do, you don’t have any good way to keep connected to them.  It’s hard to convert online “fans” into real fans.  This is where BandwidthBeta comes in.  You offer your fans a FREE album download — single, EP, or whatever.  Make it a unique one-off that’s only available through Bandwidth.  If they liked your music, they’ll download it.  Now they’ll remember who you are, you’re on their iTunes (or whatever) rotation.  On top of that, when downloading the album from Bandwidth, they enter their location and agree to automatic show notifications.  That’s the trade: the fans get a free album in trade for their contact info and location.  Show info is pulled from Last.fm (and at some point other sites such as Facebook and MySpace), so the band needs to put no effort into it after the first upload.

The site is far from complete at this point.  Still lots to figure out.  Any ideas/comments are greatly appreciated.