Music fans in certain countries do not get the concerts that they really want to see. Even if they are great in numbers, they do not have one concentrated voice to demand that they see their favorite artists perform live.
George Kollias, as a resident of a country that is often “ignored” as far as major live performances are concerned, felt that he and many other people had to have the power to let major artists know that they have an audience in their country, in more direct way. The initial idea came to George in 2012 at the Red Hot Chili Peppers concert in Athens, Greece, where he had the chance to talk about gigs and how fans do not get the live shows that they actually want, a discussion that eventually led to the Gigalize concept.
Gigalize is a concerts campaigning service; it enables users to discover, create, support and share campaigns for artists they want to see perform in their town. A campaign is considered successful when it gathers a predefined amount of supporters within a specific timeframe. Gigalize then contacts the interested parties (concert promoters and music agents) and uses the stated interest as a leverage to make the gig happen. This way, Gigalize offers a value proposition both for the fans, giving them a voice to demand the concerts they desire, and also minimizes the risk for producers by letting them know if a concert will be successful before organizing it. More than that, it can optimize logistically the tours of artists by informing them and their agents on their true popularity per location based on hard data.
In George Kollias’ words:
We understand that music fans and their united voice has the ability to shape not just an artist’s tour, but also change the way that decisions about where artists will perform live next are made.
Unlike our competitors, we put demand on the leading side of the equation and we give them the chance to influence the situation rather than just inform them where the gigs they want are happening (which most of the times is far far away).
The team, based in Athens, Greece, had already released version 1.0 of their platform in October 2014. Since then, Gigalize gathered more than 550.000 unique visitors in Greece, witch converted in 155.000 registered users. The team says they grow their user base by a monthly rate of 8-10% and currently host 330 campaigns in 4 countries.
The startup’s route to monetization is their Gigalize Pro: A music service for musicians, on witch artists own their dedicated page and can start campaigns for themselves (e.g. “My Band wants to play in San Francisco”) and even sell tickets. Fans who want to see them play live in their city support these campaigns and the artists gain leverage against promoters and venue owners.
The startup is bootstrapped but it’s actively looking for investment opportunities to help them scale and grow.
