Mobile Apps and Music Festivals

By Andrea Remmert 

I’m not sure the term simple life was directed towards touch screen phones and digital lineups. I don’t think the term “at the tip of your fingers” was pointed at the concept of application maps that’ll get you from point A to point B, or rather main stage to the side stage when artists change. But today, those old sayings have new meanings. Mobile applications have given way to a simpler life, including festival living by way of making everything readily available at your fingertips. Really.

Whether your desire to make an app is a free ticket or an aspiration to change the tech world, innovators are designing applications for every need. The music festival and mobile app are newlyweds, yet this relationship has been an impactful one. The music festival experience has changed immensely since this marriage, for better or worse. Eliminating one infuriating object at a time, mobile apps have replaced the need to bring anything but your mobile phone. Ticket? It’s mobile. Lineup? Don’t scrunch it up in your back pocket anymore, check the app to see who is up next. How do you get there? The map says go left, just by the bathrooms you were trying to find. Glad you didn’t have to go ask someone for directions in this crowd, right? The folks at CrowdTorch understood the need to eliminate chaos at a festival and executed an at-your-fingertip experience better than we could have imagined. Festivals like the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and Big Day Out reached out to CrowdTorch for festival apps- both turning out to be a helpful hit.  Eric Eden, the VP of marketing at Cvent, a company coalition with Crowdtorch,  explained that the concept behind these creations were simple; make the experience smoother for the attendee and easier for the event organizer. How did they do it? The processes available on these apps allow the user to carry less to the festival, and yet be empowered with more. Schedule, updates, webcasts, eateries, maps and more are available from your mobile device, eliminating the need to carry excess items and ever be stuck dubiously at the festival. The limit is not reached just covering the event analytics; beyond those specifications lays a sociality of untapped networks. One of those is social outlets. One can connect, tag and share the experience through platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. It is an update for the festival goer’s feed and free advertising for the festival. Reciprocated relationship, eh? Another aspect of the mobile app is the ability to grow. The design allows for updates to be made and shared, making it a reliable source of information. The event apps they design have compelling forces behind them, making events as solid as the ground they stand on. Don’t have an app for your event yet? Maybe it’s something to look into.

With a multitude of features available on festival applications, what does the future look like for them? Eden was happy to share the visions in store for CrowdTorch’s top rated apps. Think about the only other thing one would need to bring to the festival- a wallet, right? RFID will make it possible to purchase things via your mobile device.  Another incident the event attendee may run into- lack of, if any, phone service. When trying to meet up with friends, it is nearly impossible to call or text them. Behold, the answer CrowdTorch has revealed (and it isn’t a walkie talkie) is a specification that can help reference you to where your friends are at the festival. Another step of improvement is by way of media. CrowdTorch’s innovative techies will find ways to improve video, radio and podcast actions for their apps, building a stronger platform for the arts. For those unable to imagine the vast forthcoming of mobile technology, it’s ok; a lot of us can’t. We must have faith in the mobile processors who are backed by solid ideologies of helping us and making things easier. CrowdTorch is a leading provider of applications and is coming closer to the reality that there is an app for everything. They have executed a mobile app music festival world to help the consumer, to help the festival organizer, the attendees and the work force. The motive and mentality to have a simpler life wasn’t about the finesse of events, but they sure took that idea and ran with it.

Interested in learning more about the leading event mobile app designers? Join the International Music Festival Conference and CrowdTorch for their webinar, “The Festival Mobile App They Won’t Stop Talking About” on October 17, 2012 at 1PM EST. It is a free event where topics will cover tactics, success and strategies revolving around the app world. Click here to register.

Information graciously provided by CrowdTorch and Eric Eden of Cvent.
Image courtesy of TheyMakeApps; http://theymakeapps.com/appmakers/view/4430/crowd-torch/