Difference between Artist and Band Management Software

What's the difference between Artist Management Software and Band Management Software? As part as our do you need a band management software? article we're doing a deep dive into the section on "Artist vs musician vs band management software". In this article we'll discuss the key difference between Artist and Band management software.

What Can Artist Management Software Do?

Artist management software are usually designed for musicians and their management team to manage upcoming shows and gigs for people who usually perform their own original work. These software allow artists to manage every aspect of their business from providing quotes to potential new gigs, to managing confirmed bookings. They are useful for booking book musicians, venues and track stuff specific to the industry such as merchandise, hotel and travel bookings. Most also provide some sort of invoicing functionality, contract creation and file management system build it. The more high end software allow for multi-user management too.

What Can Band Management Software Do?

Band management software help band managers or band leaders organise their band, gigs, rehearsal, musicians and invoicing. They are a popular option for musicians who run large function bands, or need a little more help organising their own schedule. There's usually not much difference between artist management software and band management software, the differences are often in what features the software provides and to what level of detail the features are in.

Key Differences Between Artist & Band Management Software

We to be completely honest, there's not a lot of difference really as they all pretty much do the same thing, but there are some key features you should look out for. Usually band management software are very good at helping musicians and band leaders manage every aspect of there business. If you're a touring artist you need to be looking at the top end artist management software, or even some custom made solution. You can use a hybrid, but the features may be limited.

The key differences to look out for are:

Audit Tracking & User Management

If you have several users working on one platform you need some sort of audit tracking to be able to see who changed what. This links in with user management to be able to set privileges to certain users. Often these privileges don't allow users to delete, or edit certain information.

Hotel & Travel Booking

This is sometimes included in the budget management software, but the top end software are the one that can do this the best. From tracking flights, to booking hotels this can be a complex features so one not to be overlooked, if you deal with this.

Merchandise Tracking

Again like hotel and travel booking, the budget software will usually have something to allow you to do this, but if this is an important aspect of your business, be warned they won't be very useful to you. If you're serious about this, you may need a third party solution to this problem.

Price Difference

Like everything in life the more features you want and the more powerful you want the software to be, the more you will end up spending. As a very general rule of thumb, Artist Management Software will usually cost from $1,000 to $10,000+ per year, in some cases much more. Band Management Software on the other hand is much more affordable starting from around $20 to $50 per month.

Artist Management vs Band Management, Who Wins?

They are usually two very difference software, so it is really tricky as one person's winner will not be suitable for another. Unless you are doing a serious amount of gigs and require a lot of features you can get away with using band management software. Band Pencil is used by some pretty big artists and their management teams and they do just fine. Remember, a lot of them won't be using any software before so there will always be something missing from any software.

Our winner: Band management software. It's probably suitable for 90% of bands and musicians!