Rewards and the element of friendly competition can be a great way to generate interaction between artists and the fan community, and utilising new technology can be a great way monitor and benefit from the information gathered.

The increase in adoption of geo-location services, such as Foursquare, present such an opportunity.

For those of you still unfamiliar with Foursquare, the general premise is that users can notify friends of the restaurants, bars and venues they are in when out. The point of which encourages you to find friends when you’re out and discover new locations and parts of your city you never knew existed. The inclusion of reward points and ‘badges’ that can be earnt add an extra element for users.

How could this be useful for independent artists?

Having an artist/band profile and checking in at venues for shows and appearances serves two purposes:

1. Increased exposure of the band on venue pages (user profile pages also offer links to Twitter feeds and Facebook profiles for people to give easier access for people initially discovering the band)
2. Fans checking in at the shows are rewarded and it is possible for the band to see which others users have checked in the most times with them

For a band, offering an ongoing promotion for the most die hard attendees of shows (in a similar way to how increasing numbers of venues are rewarding their Foursquare ‘Mayors’) in which they are rewarded with either an item of merch or special token from the band, or even just for those seen to be attending a number of gigs can help to fix a name to the face of audience members for relationship development.

While bands can often be snowed under with the number of different social media and interactive platforms, something like Foursquare is useful in that it can be updated in seconds from a large number of mobile devices, and allows an easy extra level of interaction with fans.

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