Booksmart

Tour management has never been easier.

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Booksmart 2.1 Release Notes

We couldn’t be more excited for our first update in over 8 months.  Version 2.1 combines over 100 new features, improvements and fixes to help make Booksmart the best tour management platform available.  Read through to learn more about what is included in this massive update for Web, iOS and Android.

10 New Features:

Guest List Restrictions and Requests

Now you can setup your tour to require that comps are approved, you can restrict the number of guest spots per show, and even what types of tickets can be requested per crew member. 

Bandsintown Integration

With a simple Bandsintown search, build your tour in a matter of seconds.  Dates and venues are automatically populated, and private events or shows that are not listed can be added after.

Venue Profiles

Once any Booksmart user finds a venue through Google Maps, we create public and private profiles.  Public profiles can be viewed and edited by any Booksmart member, and private profiles allow you to store details just for yourself.

Hotel Profiles

We’ve added the same functionality for hotels that we created for venues.  Add amenities, explore your local surroundings, and let the rest of the community know how your stay was.

Profile Searching

Search by city to find venues that others have played, or hotels where others have stayed.  Can’t figure out where to stay in Chicago?  Look at the hotels that other users have booked and learn more before you commit.

User Profiles

Users can add loyalty numbers, dietary preferences, emergency contact details and more.  The possibilities are endless, and with a simple click, you can adjust what other connected users can see.  Crossing borders and booking flights just became a bit less painless.

Custom and Restricted Notes

Create as many notes as you want, restrict who can view them as well as who can edit.  Front of house can can have their own section, as can the carpenters or the band.

Off Day Functionality

Now you can store documents, add locations and find things to do on your days off.  With new functionality, complete your itinerary for every day of the tour.  

International Preferences

International preferences allow users to set the mobile experience to their liking. Accounts can be customized for 24 hour schedules, date format preferences, and Celsius or Fahrenheit choices.

Finances

With the addition of income tracking, a high level overview of your cashflow is easy to manage.  With a section for notes and the ability to upload images, now you can keep track of settlements and merch finals with a few clicks. 

20 Major Improvements:

Expanded views for daily schedules

Ability to hover over events for extended details

Added support for charter flights

Uploads will automatically adjust file name for cross platform access

New hotel views on iOS and Android

New dashboard shortcuts on iOS and Android 

Ability to set how early and late events show on daily schedules 

Added welcome screens to iOS and Android

Improved step process for creating tours

Improved functionality for adding daily events

Improved workflow for quickly adding guest list requests

Updated guest list request view on mobile for crew

Updated contact list reflecting connections

Now archiving old tours to increase sync speed on mobile

Ability to upload profile pictures from the mobile app

Preferences to adjust push notifications

Updated list of flights

Updated contact profile view

New dashboard for Android

Updated view for finances on mobile

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Essentials to Bring on Tour

From the obvious items to the easy to forget products, we covered the most important things to pack before leaving for life on the road. Follow this guide to smart packing to ensure you have the most pleasant experience touring with your band.  

1. Backups of…Everything!

Portable chargers, socks, underwear, headphones, guitar strings, sticks. You always must be prepared for something to get lost, broken or run out right when you need it.  Did we mention socks and underwear? 

2. Extra Van Key

Someone else should always have a spare copy of the van or trailer key.  If you get locked out, not only do you lose time, but locksmiths are expensive.  Especially when you have a difficult lock to pick at 3 in the morning in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

3. Rolling Bags

Don’t bother with bags that you have to carry, you will just make your life a lot harder and your body sore…unless you want to get in an improve workout and make up for lost gym time.  Tour life is stressful on the mind and body.  Do everything you can to take care of yourself.

4. Ear Plugs & Headphones

Traveling in a van with a bunch of people means a lot of noise, make sure you pack headphones or earplugs to ensure you catch your much needed Z’s - even if it’s an hour or two here and there.

5. Vitamins

Constant flying, driving and staying up all night can take a toll on your body. Make sure you pack the essential vitamins and Immune C tablets to stay healthy on the road.

6. Healthy Snacks

It’s way too easy to get fast food while on the road but after a while this can really take a toll on your body’s health. Try to pack healthier options such as hummus, nuts, fruit, veggies, rice cakes, peanut butter and protein bars. Good alternatives to potatoes chips are plantain chips, vegetable chips and popcorn.

7. AAA Membership/ Insurance

AAA will solve all your emergency problems you incur on the road. Tour Managers - look into this and figure out what makes sense for your band.  A flat tire or empty gas tank could cause you to miss your load in. 

8. Business Cards/ Flyers

If you are a small emerging band, this is essential as you never know who you will be along your tour. Always be prepared with a quick pitch about yourself and your goals since you are on the road to promote your band.

9. Hygiene Products

This includes shaving supplies, deodorant, mouthwash and all the little things that are easy to forget. A great idea is to bring dry shampoo; in case you ever have to skip a few showers, this product works wonders.  

10. Books/ E-Books

You are going to be doing a lot of traveling which means hours and hours of doing nothing. You might as well use this time to catch up on some good reads.

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10 local food spots to consider while on tour

Finding time to explore the best places to eat is difficult when you and your band is on tour.  Tour managers have no fear! We’ve created a list to make it easier for you to guide your crew and deal with eating on the road. You can rely on Booksmart’s Yelp feature to tell you where to eat,  but take a look at the best restaurants we have found in 10 different cities, all picked by local food masters in each area.

Philadelphia, PA

When in Philly, having an authentic cheesesteak is a must.  Stay classy though, don’t fall for Pat’s or Geno’s recommendations.   Hit up Reading Terminal Market for cheesesteaks and just about any type of food you can imagine, all fresh and handcrafted to perfection. While you’re there, stop by Beiler's to pick up their signature doughnuts or Termini’s for the South Philly famous cannoli.  

Located: 12th and Arch Streets, PA

Link: http://www.readingterminalmarket.org

Seattle, Washington

In need of some post-show carbs to keep you going? II Corvo is the place to go for the best hand crafted pasta dishes made with high quality ingredients.  Enjoy this local favorite before sound check or after load out!

Located: 217 James St, Seattle, WA 98104

Link: http://ilcorvopasta.com

Denver, Colorado

Can you ever go wrong with Mexican on tour?  El Taco de Mexico is the spot to go if you want to blend in with the Denver natives.  If your drummer is in the mood for tacos, satisfy their needs to keep ‘em happy.

Located: 714 Santa Fe Drive Denver, CO 80204

Link: http://eltacodemexicodenver.com/

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Tabla Santa Fe offers a farm to table, organic, fine dining experience in a beautiful historic hotel. This Contemporary American cuisine is a breathe of fresh air if you don’t want to go the typical Mexican food route while in Santa Fe.

Located: 210 Don Gaspar Ave,. Santa Fe NM 87501

Link: http://tablasantafe.com/menu/

Boise, Idaho

As the nation’s first restaurant distillery, Bardenay’s menu also includes vegan friendly and gluten free options. Pretty sure they serve potatoes.

Located: 610 W Grove St Boise, ID

Link: http://bardenay.com/community/

Minneapolis, MN

Revival Fried Chicken is the hot spot where you should cater to your Production Manager’s obsession with fried chicken.  Don’t get it anywhere else on tour.

Located at: 4257 Nicollet Ave Minneapolis, Minnesota 55409

Link: https://www.revivalfriedchicken.com/menu/dinner-mpls/

Memphis, TN

When in Memphis, there’s no doubt that you should add some high quality BBQ to your list of BBQ cities.

Central BBQ has been ranked in the top 3 BBQ restaurants in Memphis since 2003 and taken top honors ten times.

If  you are looking for a place to eat late night after your show, the top two burger

spots to hit after the show are the Soul Burger at Earnestine & Hazel’s, and the Greek Burger at Alex’s Tavern.

Central BBQ: 2249 Central Ave, Memphis, TN 38104

Link: https://cbqmemphis.com

Soul Burger: 531 S Main Street, Memphis, Tennessee 38103

Link: http://earnestineandhazelsjukejoint.com/about/the-soul-burger

Alex’s Tavern: 1445 Jackson Ave, Memphis, TN 38107

Asheville, NC

If your merch seller is in the mood for “mouth-wateringly fresh, Southern and scratch-made” food, then  Tupelo honey cafe is the place to eat around your performance in NC.

Located: 12 College St Asheville, NC 28801

Link:http://www.10best.com/destinations/north-carolina/asheville/downtown/restaurants/tupelo-honey-cafe/

Milwaukee, WI

The Standford is one of Milwaukees must go-to’s. “Our food, in large part, is described as Modern Ethnic.  We like to take taste profiles and food traditions from the world over and integrate them into modern dishes.”

Located: 1547 N Jackson St, Milwaukee, WI 53202

Link: http://sanfordrestaurant.com/menu-3/daily-menu

Lawrence, KS

Since 1989, Free State Brewing Co has been one of the most popular places to stop by

while in Kansas. If you are in the mood for a burger, The Burger Stand at the Casbah was named by Zagat as one of the top 25 burger joints across 25 American cities.

Located: 636 Massachusetts Street, Lawrence, Kansas 66044

Link: http://www.freestatebrewing.com

Located: 803 Massachusetts Street Lawrence, KS — 66044

Link: http://www.burgerstandrestaurants.com

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Tour manager for the likes of Sinéad O’Connor, David Gray and The High Kings, Paddy McPoland recounts his experiences on the road after 30 years of touring.

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Touring App releases 20+ New Features

We strive to be the leading app in the tour managing industry. Booksmart Touring focuses on great user experiences, while building the most efficient solutions for tour managers, artists and their teams.

You spoke, we listened! With hard work, we are excited to announce that we were able to add a lot of the requests we’ve gotten from our users. Below are a few of those suggestions that we have recently implemented.

Download the app here , or sign up here

Contact management

Add artists, crews and venues to your contact list

Keep detailed profiles on every member

Create groups for easy hotel and flight reservations

Updated Information Entry

No more reloading the page

No more pop-up windows

New Tour Building Features

Build a full tour in a matter of minutes

Add default schedules and contacts

New Calendar View on Mobile

Export custom day sheets as PDF on mobile

Google Maps Venue / Festival  Integration

Updated Web Dashboard

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Booksmart’s Major Updates

Booksmart has progressed immensely since we first started. As our platform continues to grow, so does our team! Lets check out what’s new at Booksmart...

An Updated Team:

Our founding team has all graduated within the last year from Drexel University in Philadelphia. Josh is holding down the fort, full-time, at Booksmart HQ working with our interns and making Booksmart look and work beautifully, while Ben and Mark work on Booksmart during the grave yard shift. Mark is on the data analytics team at Spotify in New York, and Ben is in Philly booking a 600-cap music venue called Coda. The three co-founders have proved to be a great trio executing projects and continuing to build the company from the ground up.

James is our amazing graphic designer who works remotely from St. Louis. James has built all of the views you interact with, and works closely with the team on integrating them into the platforms.

Our technical team also includes two part time engineers. Evan and Derek work on the Android app and back end respectively. Joining them this fall will be additional engineers to work on expanding the platform. We also have Harshil, our technical writer who does sprint planning and guarantees quality assurance.

On the business side of Booksmart we have Sara, who is our Marketing assistant working side-by-side with Ben to execute all business, customer-relations and marketing needs.

An Updated Platform:

Booksmart Version 2.0 has been our main focus for the last year.  We started from scratch, and have built features and functionality based on the feedback we received early on.  We continue to critique the platform as more and more users use the system and provide suggestions.  

Recent updates include:

Re-designed web platform

Android app live in the Play Store

Offline mode for both Android and iOS platforms

Daily Drives times with Google Maps integration

Day Sheets with enlarged daily schedules

Push notifications for upcoming events and changes

Support Center with guides, Q&A’s and more

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New Feature Coming Soon!

View activities near you!

With Yelp integration, you can now find entertainment, restaurants, shopping spots and much more based on your current location.

Never miss out on your chance to experience that classic Philly Cheesesteak or to visit the Rocky Steps.

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New Feature: Drive Times

Now you can view the time and distance it will take you to travel from state to state throughout your entire tour. With Google Maps integration, we can also tell you the estimated time of arrival based on traffic.

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DJ Fresh is quitting touring

“I cannot continue to be part of this industry. I hate everything about it.”

DJ Fresh explains that he is retiring from touring because he needs to move onto the next chapter in his life and take care of his health. Not to mention, he “hates everything about the music industry.” 

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The average Canadian indie artist earns a whopping $7,228 a year playing music, plus some other industry stats

A new Canadian Independent Music Association study on the economic impacts of musicians surveyed more than 1,500 artists and industry workers

Research has found that those bearded, vintage-clothed guitarists darkening the doors of independent coffee shops and hole-in-the-wall bars across the country are contributing an incredible amount of money to the economy.

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Justin Bieber's Purpose Tour Has Earned Over $40 Million (So Far)

Justin Bieber's Purpose World Tour leads the newest Hot Tours roundup, as the trek's total earnings so far climb past $40 million.

Check out the “Hot Tours” of 2016, ranked by gross, based off of box-scores reported April 26-May 2

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Billboard Touring Conference: From Hilarious to Harrowing, Tour Managers Swap Stories (Like How Billy Joel Is a 'White Knuckle Flier')

Dealing with hungover musicians, food-poisoned drummers and music icon with harrowing flying habits was the focus of the aptly titled panel, "My Pyro Won’t Py, Bro: What To Do When Things Go Wrong."

At a panel for the Billboard Touring Conference, hilarious road stories from tour managers and other industry vets were shared. These experts have mastered the art of fixing situations when problems arise on the road. Issues with tour buses and weather are among the most common problems to have while on tour. Touring apps that tell accurate weather forecasts and other information are a must for tour managers to avoid trouble!

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Beyonce’s Formation World Tour is Shaping Up To Be One of 2016's Hottest Tours | Zumic - Free Music

Beyonce’s recently announced Formation World Tour will kick off this April in... Read more »

Beyoncé is taking the lead as her Formation World Tour is set out to be one of this year’s biggest and most popular tours. With an average ticket price of $276, the Queen Bee’s tour has managed to take in over $100 million. She might even top Taylor Swift’s highest grossing tour of 2015!

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2015: a year in review

2015 was a big year for team Booksmart Touring.  From incredible interviews with tour managers, artists, production managers and many other key touring players, we learned a lot in 2015 about how to take our platform and transform it to be a valuable tool that can help all parties.   

Our alpha and beta testing phases were a huge success, providing us with suggestions and feedback to help us grow into a much more stronger platform for tour life.

Here are a few quick stats from our beta in 2015:

Over 300 sign ups from artists and managers

Over 150 tours entered

Over 100 guests added to guest lists

Over 50 crew members added to tours

One of our biggest highlights in 2015 was our drastic management change. Booksmart has added 2 master developers who took co-founding roles and have played a prominent role in building Booksmart in addition to the rest of our technical team.  With deep passions for music and technology, Booksmart now has the infrastructure required to quickly build and grow.

With the new team in place ,we decided that it would make the most sense to re-build the tour manager platform from the ground up, and consider scalability and maximum efficiency. We will be writing another post that includes all of the details of Booksmart v2.0 that releases on January 20th. 

We couldn’t be where we are today without the support from all of our early day one advocates.  From the artists and tour managers who we talk to once and a while, to those who we speak to on a weekly, and even daily basis, we are forever grateful and are excited for a thrilling 2016.

Happy New Year!

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Madonna's Rebel Heart Tour: $46 Million Grossed (So Far)

Madonna heads up Billboard’s weekly ranking of concert touring artists, landing at No. 1 on the Hot Tours recap (see list, below) based on $25.4 million in sales reported from her Rebel Heart world tour. This tally includes the final 12 stops on the first leg of the tour that played 20 cities in North America during September and October.

The 57 year old entertainer still manages to keep herself relevant and on top of the Billboard Hot Tours chart. Madonna recently just grossed $46 million on her Rebel Heart world tour and isn't even done yet! Talk about a timeless talent right? Check out the rest of the article to find out who else is on the Hot Tours list.

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Jazz is smooth and cool. Jazz is rage. Jazz flows like water. Jazz never seems to begin or end. Jazz isn't methodical, but jazz isn't messy either. Jazz is a conversation, a give and take. Jazz is the connection and communication between musicians. Jazz is abandon.

Nat Wolff

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Republic Records Announces Partnership With Global Artistic Community Through Talenthouse

FMQB: Your daily source for radio industry news, music industry updates, nielsen ratings, music news, artist information, radio programming tips, show prep and more.

Check it out, Republic Records and Talenthouse are partnering together to create “The Republic Records Creative Studio powered by Talenthouse.” Republic Records Creative Studio links the label with emerging artistic talents around the world and pushes original content to help market themselves.