Dan Mangan:
I played a lot of house concerts and as you said, if you played at 30 people in a bar, you'd get paid in beer tickets and if you played to 30 people in someone's living room, you'd make like $500. And it was just sort of like, wow. This is total difference in terms of your sort of return on your time, and as the feeling of momentum, you're fanning a spark into a flame, that you're going to leave a mark on that town and next time you come back maybe there'll be twice as many people there.

Michael Walker:
It's easy to get lost in today's music industry with constantly changing technology and where anyone with a computer can release their own music. But I'm going to share with you why this is the best time to be an independent musician. And it's only getting better. If you have high quality music, but you just don't know the best way to promote yourself so that you can reach the right people and generate sustainable income with your music. We're going to show you the best strategies that we're using right now to reach millions of new listeners every month without spending 10 hours a day on social media. We're creating a revolution in today's music industry and this is your invitation to join me. I'm your host, Michael Walker. All right. I'm excited to be here today with Dan Mangan. So Dan is a two-time Juno Award-winning musician and songwriter. If you don't know what that is, the Junos are basically like the Grammys of Canada.
He's been featured on Netflix, CBC, AMC for scoring music and TV shows. And specifically one thing we're going to talk about today is his platform that he's created called Side Door. So Side Door helps to connect artists and hosts to be able to host memorable shows in any space. So I was looking into it and it just looks like a really cool platform. And specifically there's this idea of doing house concerts. I've seen a lot of indie artists who've had a lot of success connecting directly with their fans and booking house concerts in traditionally unconventional spaces. I know with Paradise Fears, my band, a lot of the house concerts that we did were some of the most memorable experiences that we did and also a great source of income for us as we were touring. So I'm really excited to talk more about Side Door. Thanks for taking the time to come on here today.

Dan Mangan:
Yeah, my pleasure, man. I mean, the whole idea did start with house concerts and when I was just getting going in my own career, I played a lot of house concerts, and as you said, if you played at 30 people in a bar, you'd get paid in beer tickets and if you played to 30 people in someone's living room, you'd make like $500. And it was just sort of like, wow, this is total difference in terms of your sort of return on your time and as the feeling of momentum, that you're fanning a spark into a flame, that you're going to leave a mark on that town and next time you come back maybe there'll be twice as many people there. And so the idea for Side Door really came from that time in my life and I always just figured, man, what if there was just like this network you could tap into?
So one of the big light bulb moments for us was in realizing house concert was the initial idea, but it doesn't have to be a house. And it also does not have to be a concert. All you need is sort of a online art marketplace for the arts where any space is a venue. So we've got living rooms and backyards, but also warehouses and coffee shops and bowling alleys, and basically where we're creating a platform that provides access for anybody to host the arts and for artists to find places that they would never find on Google by tapping into this greater community of hosts.

Michael Walker:
Super cool. Man, I love the idea as a platform, and it sounds like really what inspired it too was the roots of your own career and having these experiences, being able to connect with people through those shows, seeing the difference between those kinds of shows versus bar gigs, or you might say, getting paid in beer tickets. So maybe you could start off by... I would love to hear just a little bit about your story and how you got started discovering the platform of Side Door, or for creating it.

Dan Mangan:
For sure. Well, so I had a little record label and I had signed some bands that didn't have booking agents and I was trying to get them tours, I was trying to get them shows, but without an agent, that was really tough to do. So I just started creating this network basically, and it was very, very simple. It was spreadsheets and emails, and started running bands through this very sort of primitive kind of house concert network and to some success. And I met Laura, my co-founder, she's the CEO of Side Door, but we met in 2016, I think, I was in Halifax, I was doing a show with the symphony out there and she had been running this amazing house concert series in Halifax for quite some time. Me coming at it from at the artist's perspective, her coming at it from the host perspective.
And we met and just sort of realized that we had this sort of same vision coming opposite sides of the country and opposite sides of the coin. So we started in 2017, we kind of bootstrapped the platform, raised a little bit of money, hired a bit of a team, and so now, five years later, we've weathered the storm of the pandemic. We did some online shows in the meantime, but there's about 6,000 artists on the platform and over 3,000 spaces in North America. So the vast majority of what we do is in North America, although the platform itself is location agnostic, it can happen almost anywhere in the world.

Michael Walker:
Super cool. And one thing that I've noticed as I was checking out your website too, in addition to just providing an amazing service where you're connecting artists with fans directly in unique spaces, at the time of recording this, you've helped artists generate over, what, 1.2 million dollars as well in revenue from these kinds of shows, which is amazing.

Dan Mangan:
Yeah, I think I'm just looking at our numbers here. So we've done, I'm getting lost in my data thing, I'm not going to look at that because it's distracting me. Yeah, we've paid well over a million dollars, I think maybe 1.2, 1.3 million dollars to artists directly. And we created this really unique mechanism, so artists or hosts can create a show call. Show call is sort of broadcasting your availability to the world of where you want to play, when, what you have in mind, and all of the hosts near that location will get a ping, like an email notification saying, oh, so-and-so is looking to play near you. Those two parties can get together and to chat, but once they're ready to build a show, they build that show, they can create a unique revenue stream for every... Revenue split, I should say, for each show.
So you build it together, you both sign off. Once you have a show ready, it goes on sale, you sell the tickets. After the show is over, everyone gets paid out their cut automatically. So you don't have to ask to be paid, you don't have to go and settle with anyone. At any point, you can log in, see how many tickets have been sold, what revenue's been generated, see how much is going to your PRO, see how much is going to taxes, whatever, and then see how much you're going to take home. And then as soon as the show's over, your cut just goes right in your bank account.
 So it's super clean, super transparent and super friendly. And it's all based on this idea that if we succeed, if we can make this work, the world we envision has a massive middle class of artistry where people can make a living doing what they love, whether or not they're famous. This is like, it's supposed to be industry adjacent. We want people to be able to use Side Door to perform and do their passion and make a carpenter's wage. And then if the industry takes notice and you get to go sell out big theaters and stuff, then that's awesome. We're like the farm team.

Michael Walker:
So cool. Yeah, I love the idea for the platform and it seems like there's a big opportunity too, just in terms of, gosh, I wish all of the tours that we did and the menus that we played were able to settle as quickly and easily as that, just automating that. Amazing.
And one thing I would love to get your perspective on, as an artist, you've played house concerts and you've played, you have this type of special type of show that's a different vibe and a different kind of show versus what a lot of people might be more familiar with, which might either be a bar gig or it's a cover gig, or if they have built a bit of an audience that might be able to play a show in a local club or a venue and people can come out. So I'd love to hear you talk a little bit about the contrast between these special kinds of shows on Side Door versus what someone might think of normally when they think of a traditional show. And what are some of the benefits and differences that you see between those two types of shows?

Dan Mangan:
Well, the first main difference is that often these shows are quite small. A lot of our, I think the average audience count at one of our shows is 40 or 45 people. So you're dealing with living rooms and backyards, you're dealing with smaller spaces and often spaces that where the rent is already paid. The host is largely doing this out of a labor of love. On our platform, of course, the host can take a revenue split, but many of them, particularly the residential ones, they don't, they just want to give all the money back to the artists. And the reason they're doing the show is to curate for their community and do something awesome and make memories and all that kind of stuff. Maybe they love the artists. So from an artist's perspective, I mean some of these shows are without PA, some of them are with a PA, When I was playing in a lot of house concerts, I would tend to crash at the person's house after, you're not paying for a hotel that night, all those kinds of things.
But really, it's really important to us on Side Door that we don't prescribe how people have fun. We try and basically build the tool that sets up the situation where the host and the artist can sort of hammer out all of their expectations so that nobody's getting blindsided or shocked when the actual show comes to pass. And we've incorporated ratings and reviews and testimonials and all that kind of stuff to sort of help people gauge what makes the most sense for them. But it's really an access point and these shows are really intimate, really special. I mean, what I found was that people would walk away from the show feeling they not only enjoyed the music, but that they really got a sense of who I was as a person. And so as I moved on to the next town, they were now invested not only in my music, but in me.
They wanted me to succeed. And so the next time I came back to that town, they would invite all of their friends out, whether if it was another house concert or if it was a club gig or whatever. And that's truly how I built the bulk of my audience in the early days. And I went from playing to 30 people in house concerts, to here in Canada at least, selling out two 3,000 capacity venues. And a lot of those earliest supporters are still coming to the shows. I have people who go, I'll see at the merch table after, and they're like, I've been to 21 of your shows and the first one I saw was at a laundromat in San Francisco or something like that. And all of these people, they become your support base. And I think the context of the show is so important.
I think if you saw Feist play in the corner of a loud Irish bar, you'd be like, oh yeah, she's pretty good. But you see Feist play in a living room and you're standing or sitting 15 feet away from her, you're never going to forget that night. And I think that that's what it's about. It's the philosophy of when we say, if your footprint cannot be wide, let it be deep. If you can't sell a thousand tickets, have the most memorable evening ever with 45 people. And so truthfully, what we're about is making something of high quality, high return, a highly potent event, even though it's small.

Michael Walker:
So cool. And that totally rings true for me too. With our band, when we were getting started, very similar. I remember the first shows that we ever played. We booked the tour, realized pretty quickly you actually have to get people to come out to the shows, played to the bartender in the back of the room. And especially early on when we didn't have a big audience, when we started doing those house concerts, there was in some cases five to 10 people who had come, but they were huge fans of what we were doing and we had a chance to personally connect with them. And those were the people, like you said, that end up becoming lifelong supporters because they've built a real connection with you, they know who you are, and it's really cool that you've built this foundation or this network where artists can tap into an existing base of people who are excited and interested in hosting artists like them.
Kind of reminds me of the couch-surfing culture. With couch-surfing, I couch-surfed probably 30 or 40 times. And probably 29 of the 30 or so times were amazing and I met super cool people. There's only one experience that I have that, well, I won't go into details, but the warning signs were there. It was on me, I should look at the reviews. But the culture, I feel like with couch-surfing was so much so about the community and about the connection and the people were opening up their houses to, because they were looking for relationships and they were looking to provide a service and to be able to connect with people. And maybe they had traveled in the past or they meeting people. And so I bet with this community that you've built and these hosts who are showing up, a lot of it's really about this ability to build a relationship and the connection with the artists and themselves. So there's a value similar to the idea of a street team. With the street team back in the day, fans would just approach, fans waiting in lines for shows for free.

Dan Mangan:
I mean, it's wild. You see the look on a host's face toward the end of a show, even maybe their first one that they do, and they're just on cloud nine. They're like, I can't believe that this person is performing or whatever in my space. Never thought this would happen. And all of their friends look at them like, oh my God, how did you do that? They're like, it's not that hard. It's actually pretty easy. And you say street team, I think particularly in those early days, if you're going to try and get a gig at a club, you need a promoter. And there's lots of small indie promoters out there, but promoters are trying to market to your fans, let's say. But if you don't really have a lot of fans and it's the early days, performing at a host like a DIY space, the host themselves becomes your champion in that market and they're inviting their friends and their colleagues and their neighbors and their family to partake in an event in their space.
And it's a kind of a community touch in point. And so you're going to end up with people there, they have no idea who you are, they're just showing up because they're trusting the host. And so then what you get is this situation where the host develop a bit of a clout, and we have hosts on the network who have mailing lists with a thousand people on them. And every time they put up a show, they'll email all of their folks and say, oh, here's who we're doing. And people will just buy a ticket even if they've never heard of the band because they trust the musical taste of the host. And so these are not professional folks, these are just people who got in, who are interested, they got involved, they started bringing music through. And a lot of the cases, these people don't live right downtown.
I mean sometimes they do, but, well, kind of the cool thing about Side Door, one of the cool things about Side Door is that, say on Airbnb, as a host, your primary value is your proximity to other things. How close are you to other amenities or downtown or whatever. On Side Door, the value you bring as a host has nothing to do with proximity to anything and only in your ability to create an existentially enriching scenario for everyone involved, in your ability to invite out the community, your ability to cater to artists, your ability to be a great host. We have people who live in the Sticks, way out in the country who are able to get people from their community out to shows and they're getting 80 people into a sort of farm, like a barn or something like that on the regular. And the artists are saying, this is amazing.
We get to go and play in this cool place and it's outside the city. It really doesn't have to be, I guess what I'm trying to say is that we're trying to decentralize it a little bit. There's sort of these very specific funnels in the way that the music industry works, and agents and managers and labels and promoters, they all kind of work as gatekeepers to the venues and it's a symbiotic relationship because the venues need those gatekeepers to protect them and keep them full so that they can sell booze so that those venues can continue to exist. So it's a system that works, but what happens is that we know that only about 3% of touring acts actually have a booking agent. So 97% of acts are basically getting pushed out of the funnel. They can't make it through into the venues.
So what Side Door does is it sort of creates an ecosystem, an access point where absolutely anybody can get involved. If you love music, if you love a specific band, if you're a community minded person and you want to do something near where you live, that's going to be a cool community touching point and enriching for all the people and love. That's amazing. You can get involved, you can host a show, you're helping an artist make a living. You're doing something awesome with your life. Your friends and family will look at you like a total rockstar. It's an amazing thing that you can do and everybody wins.

Michael Walker:
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When you sign up, you unlock our best in-depth masterclasses from a network of world-class musicians and industry experts on the most cutting edge strategies right now for growing your music business. On top of that, you'll get access to our weekly live masterminds where our highest level modern musician coaches teach you exactly what they're doing to make an income and an impact with their music. Then once a month we're going to have our Music Mentor Spotlight series, and that's what we're going to bring on some of the world's biggest and best artist coaches and successful musicians to teach you what's working right now. And one of the most amazing parts is that you can get your questions answered live by these top level music mentors. So a lot of the people that you hear right here on the podcast are there live interacting with you personally.
So imagine being able to connect with them directly. On top of all that, you'll get access to our private music mentor community. And this is definitely one of my favorite parts of Music Mentor and maybe the most valuable is that you're going to have this community where you can network with other artists and link up, collaborate, ask questions, get support, and discuss everything related to your music career. So if you're curious and you want to take advantage of the free trial, then go click on the link in the show notes right now, sign up for free. From there you can check out all of the amazing contents, connect with the community, and sign up for the live masterclasses that happen every week. This is a gift for listening to our podcast, supporting the show. So don't miss it out. Go sign up for free now and let's get back to our interview.
Hey dude, I love this, such a cool idea. And for the record, I'm sold, I'm going to sign up as a host. I want to try that. Cause one thing that you brought up that is so cool, cause yeah, I think a lot of the people who are listening to this right now, are watching this are coming from the point of view of the artist. They might not necessarily understand quite as much as it relates to being a host, and understanding the value of being a host. And so when you described the value for the host in this case is that they get to have this amazing experience where they have an artist come to their house or a place nearby. It's a community touchpoint, It kind of feels like a really nice organic community builder.
For me as a host, I'm thinking about a few of the people in our neighborhood that I would love to connect with. It's a relatively new neighborhood that's been around for about five years. There's a Emmy award-winning video guy who lives a couple... We've hung out a couple times. I'm like, yeah, I want to get him to come out to a show and a few other people. And it would just be very cool to have that type of experience. So it's awesome that there's a platform, both from the host standpoint, but also for the artist to be able to show up and be able to provide that value to the community. So a couple of questions that come up because when we were doing these, unfortunately we didn't have a super cool platform that we could use to carry of a lot of the logistics of this.
So for us, there might be five, 10 people, 20 people. And more often than not when we did these kind of house concerts that weren't always at houses, but a lot of times were for private parties, or different events, or [inaudible 00:21:45] there'd be one primary person who is paying for the cost. And it might be, when we were just starting out, like $500 or $1,000 or even like $6,000 for a show.
And generally how it worked is the person who was hosting the concert would be the one that was paying and sometimes they would be able to split it with a few different fans who just really wanted to bring us out. In one case, I remember there was an amazing concert that, I mean, the host over-delivered and she sold tickets to it and she made a bunch of money on hosting the house concert. Wow, that's cool. But I'm curious, with Side Door, how the payment processing works. Is it you're able to set it up as a ticketed event, so all the community members pay for a ticket to come in? Or do you ever see that sometimes the hosts, they cover the house concert so that they can invite their friends for free? How exactly does that work?

Dan Mangan:
Yeah, we do have some scenarios where the hosts will just basically foot the bill and they'll say, look, I'll pay you a thousand bucks for you guys to come and play. I'm going to host this awesome party for all my friends. I'm going to invite everyone, we're going to have the best time. So in that case, the sort of liability is all on the host, the liability of the financial obligation. And so that's one way that it occurs. But I would say probably about 95% of the time these are ticketed shows. So the hosts and the artists are sort of assuming the shared responsibility to market the show to the artist fans, friends and family, et cetera. Both parties kind of try and get as many people as they can out to the shows and that's how most of them happen. And early on when were building the platform, we were thinking, is this a service where people can purchase a performance or is this a sort of connection community thing?
Because what we worried about is that then you're hanging all of that financial obligation on one host, or maybe that they can find some friends that'll help them out. And so we built this really sophisticated ticketing system where you can first connect, chat, build the show, sign off on everything mutually, run the ticketing. And the ticketing is very similar to most other ticketing platforms except it's much less expensive and the fees are lower and it's very transparent. And then after the show, because you can actually figure out, you can say the artist is going to take 60% of the revenue or 80% of the revenue, you basically move a knob back and forth and it splits the revenue between the parties.
So I guess to answer your question, most of these shows are traditionally ticketed shows, but on Side Door they don't have to be, you can use Side Door just to connect with hosts or just to connect with artists. And then if you want to hammer out a deal and take it offline or use a different ticketing system, that's fine too. The primary function of Side Door is to connect those parties. Obviously we like it best if it's ticketed on the platform and listed on the platform because then it sort of continues to add to the community, but it doesn't have to be.

Michael Walker:
Very cool. So in terms of the ticketing and in terms of the different users of the platform, we've got the main hosts, which is obviously a big user base and the network and the connection from people who are hosting events. Awesome that they get pinged if there's an artist that's exploring different dates. Then there's the artists of course who are actually playing the shows. Is there a third type of user that are the fans, or the people who've gotten a ticket, and how does that work if someone, I don't know, is listening to this right now and they're like, well I'm not quite ready to host a show myself and I'm interested in playing one of these shows, but also I'm going to be interested in attending one of these shows first. What does that process look like for that?

Dan Mangan:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I cut my teeth as a musician, so business speak was not my first language, but in figuring out this tech platform, we've had to pitch it and sell it and you could look at a marketplace like Airbnb or eBay or whatever. Those are all two-sided marketplaces. You have a purchaser and a seller. Side Door is even more complicated because it is a three-sided platform. You have the artist, you have the host, and as you say, you've got the audience. And in order for an event to occur, the host and the artist has to connect and then they have to sell tickets. So you have to market it to a third party. So it's very complicated from a technical standpoint and figuring out who Side Door is for. And we have always operated artist first. We are a tool for artists to connect with hosts and put on shows.
That said, we built the ticketing to make it all seamless and all built into one kind of business in a box for artists. And so, yes, if you are an audience member, if you are someone who loves music, this sounds interesting, but you're not ready to host yet, you can totally go on and see if there's a show near you. I mean there's a couple hundred shows on sale right now all over North America and lots to choose from. And if there isn't one near you, well, maybe you could consider... The other thing is, you can create a host profile. It doesn't obligate you to do anything, you could create a host profile and just see, because you never know. You might get an email six months from now from a great act going, oh, we're looking for a show near there. So it's building.
It's slow in a way, because it's kind of coming out of the pandemic, but it's really exciting to see when things come together. And I have to say, the whole Side Door staff, when we get pictures of a show, or we get video of a show that happens from the platform. There is a big existential high five that goes on of just knowing that we are helping to give artists a place to perform and helping them make money. Side Door is a very lean operation and we're very, very proud that on most shows, 90% of the ticketing proceeds goes directly to the artist.

Michael Walker:
So awesome. Yeah, I'm excited about this. I'm excited to create a host profile and see what kinds of things are nearby Orlando. Cool. So, I mean, as it relates to the three different types of people who are using the app, one thing that came up was maybe something similar to Bandsintown. You know how with Bandsintown, as a fan you can get pinged or notified when there's shows playing near you? So we interviewed Fabrice Sergent on our podcast a couple of times, their founder and CEO. but is that something that is currently available on Side Door for the fan or is it something in the roadmap or how does that work?

Dan Mangan:
Yeah, totally. So, a little bit of the different thing is that on Bandsintown you get a notification when the artist has booked a show, when they have a show on sale, which is awesome. Side Door sort of takes it one more step behind the curtain and says you get an email, you get a ping when the artist is looking to perform a show. So when they're hunting for a show, you get the opportunity to perhaps host them. So it's a slightly different engine, but we love Bandsintown and they've done a really amazing job of aggregating band audiences and knowing where they're located and helping bands with data and touring analytics and stuff like that. So it's a slightly different tool, but it is all in the same sort of ecosystem of trying to help bands have a touring model that works.

Michael Walker:
That's super awesome. Man, I remember thinking about this a couple years ago and I'm so glad that someone has been able to take an idea and do something kind of like this because, yeah, I had this thought around, with the band, so with Paradise Fears, my band right now, for example, the pandemic has happened and we stopped touring full-time probably about five years ago. Before The pandemic, we would get together and play a few shows on the East Coast and we could sell out maybe four or 500 cap room, But it's been a few years since we've toured and so people are flying from all over to come to these one-off shows. And we've talked about before how it could be fun to play a tour again, but now we don't even know what to expect in terms of who's going to come out to all these different shows.
And yeah, I had this thought where, man, if there was a crowdfunding or almost like a Kickstarter type of form where you could just propose ideas for this venue and this place or that you could propose, we're thinking about doing this tour, and if enough people said yes, if enough people kind of pledged, then the tour happens or the date happens. When it sounds like that's kind of the platform that you've created with the ability to ping fans in cities when you're considering playing a show and even before committing fully to the show, you're able to gauge the interest.

Dan Mangan:
Yeah, it's pretty cool. So for instance, you could set up a show call for a few handful of areas you were looking to set up a tour, and then you could take that show call, you could send it to your email newsletter, send it to your socials, put it on Instagram, et cetera. You can a video saying, hey guys, here's the deal. Paradise Fears is thinking about maybe doing a little bit of touring, nothing crazy, but we're going to get back out there a little bit. We want to do something cool, we want to do something that feels good, that feels like a community reconnection after all this time. Hit the link and let us know if you're interested in hosting near you, kind of thing. And then people can click on that show call and then they can create a profile message you directly in Side Door.
You can sort of filter out the places that don't look very good and focus on the ones that do or what have you, manage all of your incoming. And then the ones that look great, you just build a show, and then with each show you sort of mitigate all the details with the hosts. And it's nice because it's all kind of compartmentalized in one place and you can check on your sales, you can find new shows, you can make new show calls, you can add new two rates, get paid through it all, it's all happening through one device. And what we've found is that existing hosts do pick up show calls and they do host artists that come through, but mostly if they've heard of the artists. And so one way that we've found that artists can have a great deal of success is by creating that show call and then posting it to their existing fans, their existing supporters.
And then what happens is that those people are like, oh my God, I could host Paradise Fears, I got this great gazebo out back or whatever, I got an acre of land and I've been thinking about doing a big outdoor show. Let's do it. And then this seems like the perfect opportunity. And so what you're doing is you're setting up a show, Side Door is helping you figure out all those details and run the ticketing and then you are helping to build the community even more so that when other bands are touring, they are potentially also going to be able to use that host that you brought to the platform. So it's amazing. Every time there's a show call, we have new hosts joining and all of those new hosts help the existing artists. I think a lot about how I want the platform to feed the commons, if that makes sense.
And when I was young and I was doing a lot of house concerts and just starting out, I found, I was like, man, these are so much fun and they're so such a great return on them and I'm making good money, I just don't know how to find them. You always had to know someone who knew someone or get an email address or a phone number from somebody. And I love the idea that the more people use Side Door, the more hosts are on there, the more it's going to help more artists, that there's sort of just this viral effect to it and it keeps growing and growing.

Michael Walker:
That's such a good idea. So being able to reach out to your existing community and let them know that you're looking for hosts and that you're thinking about playing these shows. So if I'm understanding it right, as a band, you create an intensitive or potential show call and then you can send out a message to your audience and let them know you're thinking about doing this and they can see the opportunity, wow, this should be really cool if I want to be a host. Then from there they might apply, they might create a host profile and sort of ask to claim the show call.

Dan Mangan:
So basically when they land on the show call, there's a big thing that says respond to Paradise Fears and they can type in a message to chat with you and then in the process of doing that chat we say, hey, well that's cool. Do you have a name for your space? Can you give us a picture? Can you give us a short description? And then that's all, it takes two seconds to do it. They build a very lean profile, and then now you can chat with them and you can figure out, is this the right place?
But it's nice because then when you're in your inbox looking at all the incoming requests that you have and they're just chats, you can immediately see the photos of the places and get a sense of them, et cetera and sort of do your own filtering. And then when you're ready to book a show with one of them, you just say book a show. And then you get into a different thing and both sides have to sign off on all the ticketing details, the price, you can do ticketing, so you can do a minimum but a pay what you want kind of scenario and then you create to the revenue split, you figure out where all the money's going.
It's very, very simple, very intuitive, but basically allows you to log in and book your tour.

Michael Walker:
Very cool. So is there an option, I imagine if we send an email to our audience and they see this is even a thing, they're excited, they're like, oh my gosh, this is so cool. Some of those people are going to be like, that would be amazing. I would love to host one of these shows. And there's probably going to be a lot of people as well who are like, oh my gosh, that's so cool. I live near this area. I might not be interested in hosting this show myself, but I'm definitely interested in hearing more about it or maybe going out to this show and this show call, is there a button below host the show that's like, keep me notified or I'm interested in this?

Dan Mangan:
Oh, wow. You know what? There isn't. But that is a great idea. I think that would be awesome if basically you could join a mailing list for that area or for that show, I think that that's really, really cool, I'm going to write that down and mention that to the team. I love that. That's great.

Michael Walker:
 Awesome. Yeah, cause I'm sure there's a lot of people who will see that and they're very interested in being a part of it or hearing about the show if and when it happens as a part of the show call, and then when the show is selected, then you could send a ping or a notification and now all those people, I don't know, a hundred people might get notified and say, hey, the show's happening. You can get a ticket here if you want to come out to it.
Cool. Man I mean, my brain is going. I think it's just an awesome service, like a bridge that you've created to connect artists with their fans and with these hosts. Also, my brain is just going, so yeah, we have a platform called street team that is basically a CRM software that helps artists to build an audience with an email list and an SMS list and be able to say connected and communicate with their fans.
And so maybe there's some cool stuff we can do in terms of linking together our software so that all of their people, because I would say the majority of our artists are... We have some artists who are coming in and they're already very successful and have seven figures per year, music income. But I would say the vast majority of people are coming in and they have music that they're really passionate about and they're just getting started with trying to build an audience and we can help take them from zero to a thousand initial core fans, and a platform like what you offer would be the perfect sort of starting initiation point if we were able to work it into their community where it's like we could embed it on one of their pages within street team so that all of their fans can see, wow, there's a cool opportunity where I can actually host a show from this artist, or I can attend one of these shows. There could be something worth exploring there.

Dan Mangan:
Well, and I think that that's great. I mean, it would be awesome to do something kind of directly tied in, however, in the interim, there's nothing stopping you from setting up a show call in Albuquerque and then sending that show call link directly to the people in your street team in Albuquerque. And I know that with a lot of SMS technology and the community is another one of those, you can direct it by location, which is so handy because then you're not spamming everybody with your Albuquerque show call. You're sending your Albuquerque show call to the people who live in Albuquerque. And I mean, what a gift to be able to connect directly there.

Michael Walker:
Absolutely. If we could sync up our databases so that if a fan says, yeah, I'm interested in coming out to one of your shows, doesn't matter where it's at, or just let me know when you're near me, and then we could add them to a workflow where they send a message when it's confirmed.

Dan Mangan:
I love that. I love just having a little button saying, even as you mentioned before, keep me posted on this show call. I'd love to come to that show, pipe them right into a street team kind of thing where all of a sudden now they're following on behalf of that area, that location. Also, all of our shows on Side Door do automatically populate to Songkick, so then they do populate to Spotify and all those other places through there as well.

Michael Walker:
Cool. Awesome. And yeah, I bet, like you were saying too, just sending out that message both from the standpoint of fans who would come out to a show, but I bet if we just said, if we sent out a notification to all of our artists who are using street team or like, hey, there's this really cool app integration that we just made, we're going to give you a template for an email that you can send out to all of your existing community and you can fill it in with their own details, but this is going to allow your fans to basically host events and there's no commitment, but you can kind of see what's possible here. I bet that we could get a bunch of hosts to join the community, that outreach process.

Dan Mangan:
Love that. That's super cool.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. One other element too that could be interesting to build an integration with is with street team, one thing that is a core part of the software is we help the artists create what we call their inner circle. And basically there's like a three tier like Patreon where there's three different tiers of access, and fans can get access to either the bronze, silver, or gold tier by getting one of the artist music relics. And their music relics are basically a limited edition music NFT from the artist that unlocks access to the inner circle. So I wonder if there even could be a special thing where it's like, hey, if you're in my gold inner circle, then that means that when you come out to one of these shows at Side Door, then yeah, we're going to go out for dinner afterwards or do something special.

Dan Mangan:
Yeah, yeah. Who knows? I mean that's cool. I dig that.

Michael Walker:
Awesome. Well, hey man, it's been great connecting, and again, I love what you're building and I love the root of it too, is that it really sounds like you came into this because you started out as an artist yourself and you saw the impact, you saw the connection that you were able to have with those fans doing those concerts, and now you're creating a network and doing what music does best. You're bringing people together and building these community ties. So thanks for helping to build that and for sharing it on the podcast. And for anyone who's listening to this or watching this right now who is interested in checking out the platform, either becoming a host or setting up as an artist, what would be the best place for them to go to get started?

Dan Mangan:
Definitely just right to Side Dooraccess.com. That's the site. If you Google Side Door, it'll probably come up right there at the top. But yeah, Side Dooraccess.com, you can sign up as an artist, you can sign up as a host, you can browse and see what shows are happening maybe near you. And the community is growing all the time. So yeah, it takes two seconds to sign up. It's very, very easy. And a lot of artists and hosts alike are getting a lot of value from it and it's exciting for us and we're just trying to basically foster great experiences through the shared experience of art and help artists get paid. That's what we're doing.

Michael Walker:
Very cool. And yeah, if you're listening or watching this right now, then if you look in the Orlando area, you may or may not see me hosting a space out here as well. So, thanks again. Well, like always, we're going to put the links in the show notes for easy access and yeah, looking forward to talking again soon.

Dan Mangan:
Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you so much. Have a great day.

Michael Walker:
Hey, it's Michael here. I hope that you got a ton of value out of this episode. Make sure to check out the show notes to learn more about our guest today. And if you want to support the podcast, then there's a few ways to help us grow. First, if you hit subscribe, then I'll make sure you don't miss a new episode. Secondly, if you share it with your friends or on your social media, tag us, that really helps us out. And third, best of all, if you leave us an honest review, it's going to help us reach more musicians like you who want to take the music careers to the next level. The time to be a modern musician is now. And I look forward to seeing you on our next episode.