Montreal Tech Watch

I had a quick interview this week with Chris Vinson, a Montreal bassist who became a web entrepreneur. He founded Bandzoogle, a service that lets bands and musicians create their own professional website, with no web design skills needed. The bands can have a blog, an events manager, a mailing list, a forum, and a music store. Of course, the service is for musicians, so there are many multimedia features, among them music players, photo galleries and video clips.

I have posted below two bands websites that were created with Bandzoogle.

MTW: I saw the Bandzoogle birth story on your website. Chris, can you share your background? I think many would like to know how you managed to be a bassist, a web developer and a web designer at the same time

Chris: I started working on the web in 1997, creating Canadian Scene Music (now defunct) offering free sites to Canadian bands. I was in a band with a website, and saw how they can help draw fans to shows. Surprisingly, I couldn’t even give free sites away back then. I think we peaked at 120 bands on the system. It was just too early for bands to take hold of the idea of a web presence.

Our band for signed to Aquarius Records in Montreal in 1999. Donald K Donald liked our band site enough, he hired me to build sites for other bands on the label. I ended up building some pretty popular sites, for bands like Sum 41, Sass Jordan, April Wine. In 2003, the band thing didn’t work out, and we had a parting of ways with our singer. I was so busy with web design though, I decided to learn how to build a content management system so that the managers could update their own sites. I didn’t have any experience in programming at all, so the learning curve was steep.

In late 2003, I thought of offering this content management tool to any band. Donald thought it was a good idea, and invested in my new company, Bandzoogle. We’ve since grown to thousands of members around the world and are arguably the best band website builder out there.

MTW: Most bands have already a page at myspace, which has become the place to be for bands and musiciands. So how do you guys “differentiate” from myspace?

Chris: Myspace is great as a networking tool, but has significant limitations. You are limited to 4 tracks, one page. Bands who want a store, multiple photo galleries, a more comprehensive forum, are out of luck. Not to mention you are not in control of your myspace address. Several Bandzoogle members have had their myspace address deleted or changed with no recourse, even after they printed the address on their CD jackets!

Myspace wants you to direct traffic to them, as they earn money for each eyeball on your profile. I think we will see a backlash against this type of profiteering in the near future

MTW: Many web entrepreneurs have a difficult time getting their service known. What was the most efficient tool for you? Advertising, blogging, search engine optimization, word of mouth?

Chris: Word of mouth is our number one promo tool. We invest in customer service, considering it our main marketing tool.

Chris Vinson

MTW: I figured it out by reading the blog posts. I was impressed by the all the positive feedback. Many websites and companies are just dreaming to get this level of customer satisfaction.

Banzoogle logo

MTW: I saw that BAndzoogle signed up this month with Amazon S3. Why did you decide to go there? Was there any technical hurdle along the way?

Chris: We are still working out the details in the migration. The move to S3 was easy — but it required us to switch from windows 2003 servers to linux, which was a bigger change. We’re 90% there now.

The beauty of S3 is that it is infinitely scalable. We are growing fast, and adding servers is not a “linear” way to grow. S3 transparently lets us expand our service without too many technical hurdles. I can’t speak of the reliability yet. We’re keeping live backups of all files locally until we are sure there are no kinks in the system.

MTW: thanks!

I invite you to visit their website. I liked their approach: “Bandzoogle is run by musicians for musicians“. Their dedication and love for music can be seen everywhere. A very cool service indeed.