Austin company spins off app to help smaller music venues book talent

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Matt Ford, Solstice founder

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Chad Swiatecki

Staff Writer- Austin Business Journal

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Live music venues in Austin could soon have an easier and faster way to fill their calendars, thanks to the new music app Solstice Live.

The app is a spinoff of Solstice's platform created for "distributed" music festivals such as South By Southwest that are spread out in small venues throughout a city and need to coordinate booking dozens of acts in multiple clubs and concert halls.

That distributed festival service has 23 clients in the U.S. and abroad. The early release of the Solstice Live club platform has signed up more than a dozen Austin venues as users, including Swan Dive downtown club and Strange Brew coffee shop and listening room.

It enables music acts to create online profiles that efficiently showcase their style and experience, and search for venues that would an appropriate booking match. Clubs then have a reliable channel to look for bands to fill their calendars, rather than sifting through hundreds of emails and queries that arrive in their inbox.

Matt Ford, the company's founder, said Solstice makes its revenue from licensing fees on its festival platform, as well as branded events it promotes monthly in Austin. The club-level app is free while it builds its user base. Ford said Solstice is focusing on providing a valuable experience for users now and will build a business model around it as it grows and users shape its features.

The company has four employees and some outside contract help and was created with $90,000 in funding and $25,000 in in-kind legal work. Ford said no new funding will be sought until late 2015 and plans to start expanding Solstice Live into other cities by fall 2015.

Chad Swiatecki covers Austin's creative industries, health care and education.