Hello World

My name is Jonathan, and I am the Founder of ArtistForce.

Music, Art and Technology are my passions. Creative energy defines me.

I occasionally daydream about living in space (although I’ve been too busy to do much of that lately). While a lunar mission is not currently in the budget, I’m planning a 15-minute holiday instead. 2009 won’t come soon enough.

Growing up with first hand experience of ‘the business’ - both on stage, and behind the scenes - I dreamed of integrating my passion for technology into my life experiences in entertainment.

I’ve had the unique opportunity of playing several roles in an entertainment transaction. While I’m not claiming life-changing success in any of these positions, I stayed around long enough to identify significant industry pains.

As an Artist and Music Producer I yearned for the tools to independently market, promote and book myself - now, more than ever, the industry can’t ignore the rise of the Independent Artist as an Entrepreneur.

As an Agent and Manager I struggled to adapt off-the-shelf software solutions to my needs, but they were ultimately not industry specific enough.

As a Promoter and Talent Buyer I was frustrated by the agonizing and antiquated process of booking entertainment. Constantly in the dark about the status of offers, and too overwhelmed by the tasks at hand to keep track anyway.

I found business resources available to entertainment professionals lacking, and plagued by latency due to third-party management of information.

I kept asking myself “What year is this?”

There’s no industry-managed resource to identify talent and respective representation.

There’s no central source to research historical performance, or verify availability in real-time.

There’s no industry standard offer form - yet everyone wants to see the same information on offers. Even the real estate business has this capability.

Once a buyer gets an offer out - by fax or email, it’s eventually entered in to a database on the agency side, who in turn releases the deal to management, who might re-enter the same data in to their own database, and in turn communicate with talent via telephone, fax machine, email, or maybe carrier pigeon.

The entire time all of this data entry, telephone tag and faxing is taking place, the deal participants are completely in the dark on its up-to-the-minute status - unless of course they’re the one who’s sitting on it.

As an Agent and Manager my administrative assistants were responsible for maintaining contact with and updating deal participants - venues, promoters, corporate buyers, managers, talent, publicists, attorneys, labels, A&R reps and noting status in our in-house database accordingly.

As a Talent Buyer I had an assistant whose sole task was to spend the day pumping agents, managers, A&R reps, publicists, and their assistants for information, so that when our clients called, we actually had some information to tell them.

And when the deal was FINALLY done, I’d start waiting for someone to FedEx 3 copies of the contract for me to sign and FedEx back. If I was lucky, someone might fax the contract - if they were super high-tech, I might get an email.

WHAT YEAR IS THIS?

The industry is overripe for a technological intervention, but one that works seamlessly with the status quo.

Believe in ArtistForce.

Now is the time. *j