Bandtastic - Help

Help - Band Features And Functionality

Bandtastic provides you with powerful online management functions to manage your own band or venue right online, from anywhere in the world. Our emailing & calendar tools will help you get the word out to your fans about your gigs. We'll also help you get new gigs by listing your band in our directory for venue owners and event coordinators to use for their bookings. If you already have a website, even better! Bandtastic data can be used to power your existing site which means you would make changes in one place to update both websites! You'll be up and running in less than five minutes with fully-functional, database driven, website that people will actually be able to find on the web! All of your information, such as email addresses, are 100% private and can only be altered by specified profile users! Go ahead...give it a try! First, view the profile for the band 'Demo'. Then log in using BUSER/DEMO; click the Bands link.
	"I appreciate your advice and wanted to thank you for this incredible service. It is hard to imagine as the booking/contact guy, what a pain handling all the info & data would be w/o Bandtastic....it makes things so much easier and streamlined, and if nothing else we are keeping everyone's personal schedule separate and avoiding many conflicts due to double bookings or guys being unavailable or out of town when the clubs come a calling...Cheers to you and Bandtastic!" - Mike McKenney from The SquirrelHeads (Atlanta, GA) "sweet! you guys rock! bandtastic has got to be one of the greatest tools created for bands! and reasonably priced too. thanks for your help bro!" - Mike Genett from Withstand (Charlotte, NC)

Look for the above help icons throughout the system. You can click on these to open a help window pertaining to the page where you clicked the icon. Click here if you have any questions or would like to report an error in our system.

This help section is to explain how to use each feature that is available to bands who have joined Bandtastic. General band information can also be found available in help. The typical method of navigating in Bandtastic is to click the Bands link on the left to recall your menu items. You should never need your back button!

Online Functions
Email Members - Send an email message to your band members
Calendars - Update your public and private calendar
Journal - Manage your band journal entries
Guestbook - Manage your public guestbook entries
Songs - Manage your songs
Play Lists - Manage your play lists
Expenses & Income - Manage your expenses and income
Contacts - Manage your contacts
Emailing - Manage your email list and send messages
Contracts - Manage your performance contracts
Member Access - Manage user access to these menu items
Photos - Manage your photo gallery
Merchandise - Manage your merchandise
Profile - Update your profile
Integration - Integrating your data into another site

Send an email message to your band members [Top]
This feature allows you to quickly send an email message to one or more of your members directly from this page. The message will be sent with your address in the FROM field so that when they reply to your message, it will go to your current email account. There is no need to open your usual email software to send this message since it will be sent directly from the Bandtastic server. Sorry, no attachments can be sent using this email feature.

Update your public and private calendar [Top]
This is probably the most important feature that you'll use the most often. Public and private events and details can be stored on-line. Your calendars can be incorporated into your own website by adding the appropriate link to your site. This is an example of what your Bandtastic calendar management page will look like. The X's and P's represent dates that are no longer available for booking. The P's represent dates that you are displaying to the public. Read more on this below...

Incorporating The Calendar Into My Website
This page can be incorporated into your existing website by adding the appropriate link to your website. Click the "Integrating your data into another site" menu item to get these links. To see an example of how this works, go to this site and click on the Schedule and Available Dates link at the bottom left.

Public Dates
Here you can store all of your event dates which are shown to the public when a Bandtastic viewer clicks on your calendar from your Bandtastic profile. With each date you can store any private details about the event such as the price and personal comments regarding that event. You will always see a calendar (shown above) on the left which will help you know if a date is available. If you click a date that has an event already, you will be taken to an Edit form, and if there is no event, you will be taken to an Add form. You can also edit a date by clicking on the icon to the left of each event which is listed on the right side of the calendar page. There are also two options that you have for each date. The first option asks if you would like the date to be viewable by the public, and the second asks if the date is still available for booking. The second option is important for situations such as displaying an event to the public that may not involve your band playing on that date. For example, if you wanted to display a fund raiser party on your calendar, you could still keep this date available for your band to be booked. This is also an important feature for "tenative" gigs. In this situation you would mark the date as "not viewable to the public" AND as "still open for booking". The "Open Dates" calendar view will reflect a closed date by placing an "X" over that date (see below).

Private Dates
Private dates, such as black-out dates for a member not being available, can also be stored where they are not shown to the public, but are instead used for your own management.

Media Notification
Here you can select the number of days in advance that you want our system to notify the media about your event. Enter your media email addresses by clicking the link to Update your profile. You can set your default number of days in advance that you want to automatically be selected when you add a new event.

Open Dates Calendar
By clicking the link on the top right, you can print a quick calendar view that will display the dates that you have available for bookings. All dates that are marked as 'No Longer Bookable' will be displayed as an 'X' on the calendar.

Tips And Tricks

To speed up these pages, set your calendar months to display to be the lowest number possible to reduce the amount of data that gets delivered back to your browser.
You can include "nested links" in your calendar event descriptions. For example, to display a link to the organization that you are playing for, use the following...
<a href="http://www.organization.org" target="_blank">Organization Name</a>
The target="_blank" piece is very important so that a new browser window opens with this link. To display an image, use the following...
<img src="http://www.organization.org/logo.jpg" border="0">
Obviously, you would only want to use small images so that it doesn't take up your whole page.
You will have 1000 characters to store your description but it's still better to keep it short and to the point.

Update your journal entries [Top]
Here you can record all types of comments, memories, good times, bad times, meetings, people, details, etc. about your band. Think of it as sort of a diary for the band. Years from now, you can print your journal to look back on the best times of your life!

Update your public guestbook entries [Top]
Here you can manage comments submitted in your publically viewable guestbook. There will surely be some pranksters who will attempt to tarnish your profile with stupid comments, so this feature will allow you to make any corrections, additions, or deletions of guestbook entries.

Manage your songs [Top]
Songs can be categorized so that you can run them through a flow of start to finish. Start with a songs on your "Wish List", and upgrade their status until they are "Ready To Play".

Tips And Tricks

You can tag songs with a "cheat sheet note" by using the "Special Tag" field. For example, you could tag a song with what key it is in, or to remind you of anything special you need to know for that song. These tags will only appear on your Play List print out.

Manage your play lists [Top]
Quickly organize your songs! There are two list boxes that will be used to create set lists. These are "Available Songs" and "Custom Ordered Playlist". When adding new set lists, click songs from the "Available Songs" that you want to go into the "Custom Ordered Playlist", which is your new set list. Use the buttons to add, insert, move up, move down, or remove songs from your list.

Add: Select your available songs from the "Available Songs". These songs must be labeled as Ready To Play or Almost Ready for them to appear in the list. You can highlight more than one song at a time by holding the CTRL key. Click the ">" button to move the selected songs to "Custom Ordered Playlist". Added songs will be appended to the bottom of the list.
Insert: Select a song in the right list box that will indicate the song that should be pushed down with the new song that is about to be inserted. All songs below this song will also be pushed down. Next, select a song, or songs, from the left list that you would like to insert into that position. Click the "Ins" button to insert the songs from the left list into your new set list on the right.
Remove: Click the song that you would like to remove from your play list. Then, click the "<" button to pull that list back into your "Available Songs" list. This song will appear at the bottom of the list. You can also double-click a song to be removed.
Move: You can slide a song, or songs, up and down using the Up and Dn buttons. To highlight more than one song at a time, hold the CTRL key down, or drag your mouse over several songs.

Manage your expenses and income [Top]
Add and delete from a running general ledger form. The key rule to remember is that you need to balance every expense with an income item. For example, suppose the band made $1,000 at a gig. You would make an entry called "Cool Bar Gig on 3/17/01" and would enter an amount into the income section of $1000. At this point, your balance should be $1000. Now, to pay the band, you would make an entry called "Payday (200 each)" with a total dollar amount of $1,000 as an expense. This expense will now offset your income of $500 and your balance should become zero again. Also, always enter a "correction" entry which simply negates previous entries. For example, if you accidentally entered an expense of $100 incorrectly, you would "erase" or "correct" that entry by creating an opposite income entry of $100 labeled "Income Correction for XYZ reason".

Manage your contacts [Top]
Set alarms for when you are supposed to contact someone again. Bandtastic will remind you of who you were supposed to contact by showing a warning at the top of your band menu items after you are logged in. You can also categorize your contacts as Agents, Club Owners, Booking Contacts, etc.

Manage your email list and send messages [Top]

Click here to see an HTML email example that you could send to your fans!
Allows you to upload your existing email addresses!
Automatically handles your Add requests...fans can add themselves via your Bandtastic profile. You can add this form to your existing website too!
Send your email message to your distribution list right from Bandtastic. No more software to load or cutting and pasting of addresses into your TO and BCC box. Messages are sent individually with just their address listed so it protects the privacy of other listed addresses.
Automatically handles your REMOVE requests via a link that is delivered with your mail.
Automatically handles your FAILED DELIVERY messages by prompting Bandtastic to look at the messages in your POP account for key words indicating a failed message.

Manage your performance contracts [Top]
Fill out a form with gig information, then simply click the print icon to create a full blown contract containing your form information. Allows you to save, edit, and copy your contract profiles. Creates a professionally worded, and clean looking, contract.

Manage your photo gallery [Top]
You can upload pictures into your photo gallery and give them a brief description that will appear below the picture when a viewer clicks on your band profile. IMPORTANT: Be sure that your pictures have been resized so that they are approximately 200 pixels wide. Keeping your pictures small will allow the viewer to download them more quickly from Bandtastic. If you do not know how to shrink your pictures, please email them to support@bandtastic.com. Only GIF and JPG files will be able to be uploaded.

Manage your merchandise [Top]
You can sell your music related merchandise right online! In short, customers take orders on Bandtastic and we notify you via email about the purchase. You are then responsible for shipping the merchandise and Bandtastic will pay you for your merchandise after the first business day of the following month. Bandtastic currently charges 10% of the total purchase price which can be allocated back to the consumer's cost if necessary.

Each product that you sell can have it's own person associated with that product. For example, one person could be responsible for selling your CDs and another person could sell your T-shirts.

Manage user access to these menu items [Top]
Add members and choose which menu items that you want to give them access to. For example, if you don't want a member to see your Expenses and Income, you can turn off that feature for just that one member.

Update your profile [Top]
Use this form to make changes to your Bandtastic profile that appears when a user drills down to your band in the search links.

Integrate your data into another site [Top]
Once you are logged it, this page will give detailed instructions and customized links that you'll copy and paste into your other website so that you can "pull" your data from your Bandtastic profile. You can pull calendars, song lists, photo galleries, and an email list sign-up/remove form. For an example of how this is working, see Dead Letter Office.