Christopher Stolee is not in a band but does play rudimentary bass guitar when he’s all by himself.

First of all, the iPhone App is half the battle. It’s the CMS powering it that makes it a truely useful marketing tool. Mobile Roadie clients can change anything in their App and the update is pushed out instantly to all of their installed Apps worldwide. Putting a CMS like this together is far more complex than simply building a static iPhone App.

Secondly, we are investing a lot in R&D and product development; the features Mobile Roadie will be rolling out over the next six months would cost tens of thousands to create on your own, but are most will be available to our customers as part of their license fee (no additional charge).

It is possible that a popular artist could save money by developing their own App, but to then frequently update it, add to it, and push it forward, they’re going to have to be in the tech business, working with developers. I believe they rather do what they do best – make music – and leave the tech to the techies.

Michael

Go here:

https://www.mob...om/home/pricing

and look in the right column “What am I paying for?”

It clearly states the $.01/month/install, over 1,000 installs.

How is that unclear?

Michael

You say: “Our pricing is not meant to be misleading in any way and is clearly posted.” Really? I guess that explains why the additional bandwidth fees and the additional $0.01/month for every copy of your app that’s been downloaded are nowhere to be found on your “pricing” page.

Whatever you choose to charge for your apps is fine, that’s your business, but as a potential client I’m bothered by the fact that your “pricing” page doesn’t include the full details.

You are correct that after the first 1,000 there is an extra charge. The reason for this is we incur additional bandwidth costs to serve more music/photos/text and need to cover those, as the App gets more and more popular.

The flip side to this is if the App has 5,000 or 50,000 downloads, proportionally the band/artist is going to be selling a lot more music and show tickets via the App, which will more than cover the cost of the App. Additionally, if they are charging for the App, obviously the more they sell the more they’ll make.

Our pricing is not meant to be misleading in any way and is clearly posted. Additionally, we are continuously improving the product and adding features; I highly doubt it would be less expensive for any artist to develop and then maintain and improve this themselves. Our artists have the benefit of the entire Mobile Roadie team constantly thinking about and improving the product, included in the price.

In addition to the above they also charge $0.01/month for every copy of your app that’s been downloaded (the first 1,000 are included in the $29/month.) So if your app is actually successful, if it’s downloaded by a large number of fans then things get very expensive very quickly and the true cost of the app could be thousands of dollars per year. There are also potential additional bandwidth fees if you really drill down into the fine print.

So I did a little spreadsheet math to calculate what the true cost is over a two-year period:

If 1,000 fans/month download your app the total cost to you over two years is $3,855.

If 2,000 fans/month download your app the total cost to you over two years is $6,855.

If 5,000 fans/month download your app the total cost to you over two years is $15,855.

So if you just want an iPhone app to show off to your family and friends and you don’t plan on being very successful then Mobile Roadie looks like a good “vanity play.” If, on the other hand, your band actually has a following and a fan base then this could get expensive very quickly. There are probably other developers out there who could build you an app for around $5K that is more customized and won’t charge you anything/month/fan.

http://www.smartbloggerz.com

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