Frequently Asked Questions
- How can you help me get/book more shows?
- What do your services cost?
- How much is your merchandise?
- How can your service help me grow my fan base?
- I already have a website; why do I need your services?
- Why can’t I use your services with my current hosting plan?
- How do your website referral programs work?
- How quickly can you get my website up and running?
- Can you give me a list of other bands who use your services and found successful results?
- How do your services work?
Everything we do here at Ultra Entertainment is about artist development. Our mission is to provide bands affordable tools, products, and services. All of those tools, products, and services are designed to get your band to the next level. We talk about the “Next Level” a lot here at Ultra Entertainment. What this means is simply a development process of learning and growing as an artist while at the same time growing your fan base.
So…what does all this have to do with booking??? Well, every booking
agent in the world is looking for bands to book, every promoter is
looking for shows to buy and promote, and every venue is looking for the
hottest bands. Coincidently, every band in the world is looking to fill
that call! So…what does it take to get booked? The answer is really
simple…people! If you can fill a club, you are a band that is bookable.
Many of you do very well in your home town, but getting out of your area
is the tough part. The reason it is tough is because you will show up to
your first gig and your band will out number the audience. When that
happens, businesses loose money…and when that happens…that is often your
last show in that town.
Before we go any further, Ultra Entertainment provides booking services.
We don’t flash it all over our website because we simply wouldn’t be
able to handle all the submissions from bands that we would receive.
Most agencies only book bands that are signed by major labels. The
reason for that is simply money. The record label will spend their money
getting your record played around the country, getting you radio
interviews, and putting your name and music everywhere they can. That
gets promoters excited because they know they will make money on the
show and that makes a booking agencies' job simple.
At Ultra Entertainment, we have a little bit of a different model than
most booking agencies. We will handle both signed and unsigned bands. It
is all part of our artist development philosophy. So, how do we select
the unsigned bands??? Well…that’s simple…we select the bands that work
the hardest. I know…your thinking “I qualify for that, no band works
harder than we do!” That may be so, but we need to see it. We need to
see you doing amazing things in your home town, we need to see a lot of
traffic on your website, we need to see many people registering on your
site and buying your merchandise. We need to see CREATIVITY! What makes
you different from every other band? We don’t want you to tell us…we
want to see it. “We” don’t even have to think it is great or
creative…only your fans have to think it! We want to see your fans getting
into what you do. Should you send us a video??? Sure…but point it at the
crowed! If you have something going on in your home town, there is
really no reason that can’t be replicated in every city across the
country.
Many bands ask if they have to use our website platform or any of our
other services in order to qualify for booking. Honestly, if you can
show results with your own website…that’s fine with us. We provide many
products and services all geared towards artist development. We would
like to think that we have the best products and services at the best
prices. If there is some deal out there that is better than what we
offer…go for it. Of course we would like to know who could possibly
offer that, if you wouldn’t mind.
Obviously bands that we work with to some degree are on our radar more
often. That’s just part of the politics of business…but we will never
make a promise of being able to book your band if you use any of our
services. We simply look at every band on their merits and the ones who
have it will get a call.
Over the coming months, we will be publishing information on our website
to help you develop your band. This roadmap to success will all be free
information. The bottom line is that when you are successful, so are we
and we want to do everything we can to help.
Well, we really wrestle with putting all of our prices right out there on the web. Perhaps you don’t want your fans to know what you pay for your merchandise, perhaps we don’t want our competion to know what are prices are, or perhaps that some things need some extra attention to give you an accurate price like graphic design or merchandise. For the most part, we have standard pricing for everything that we quote right over the phone. We don’t want to put you in a haggling situation. We simply want to understand what your needs are and provide you with the best value! Everyone’s first reaction is…wow…this must be way too expensive. Simply put, what we do should make you money, not cost you money. If it continues to cost you money month after month, than something needs to change. Think of your band as a business. When you start any business, you have to invest a lot of time and money to get things going. Time is often a substitute for money. What that means is you can start off small with us and build your business or band and things grow. We know…it isn’t about money…it is about the music right? Well, we love the music and what we do…but we still have to pay the bills at the end of the day or we won’t be here to help you tomorrow. The same goes for you! We really focus on making our prices lower than anyone out there…we have a unique business model here at Ultra Entertainment that gives us the ability to provide you with better products and services for less money. Give us a call…we would love to give you all the details!
$15.00…isn’t that great! Well…that’s a tough question to answer. We have many products that come in a variety of styles. For example, T-Shirts…light colors, dark colors, printing on the front/back, how many colors, do you need in a design, etc. In spite of all the options, we have put together a simple pricing matrix for a couple reasons. One is because we can’t afford to spend a lot of time working up a quote for you because we make a very small margin on our merchandise. Second is because we want to make things very simple for you. Simply, we buy in volume since we deal with so many bands and we pass that savings along. Small quantities, good quality, low price…that’s what we are about. Most products start at a quantity of just 50! Of course if you are looking for 500 shirts we will take more time to optimize your order and save you every cent we can on each shirt.
The main product and service that we offer is our Fan Management System Platform. This is a website platform that gives you all the tools required to be successful. If we are going to help you develop your fan base, build your street team, or organize contests and promotions, the FMS platform is really a requirement. Honestly, if you have something that you are using that can do what our platform does, we will be happy to work with you and allow you to keep your existing platform, but the simple reality is that we have the only system available today. You might find pieces here and there hobbled together, but our platform we designed from the ground up to help you market and promote your band. In addition, we didn’t pull together a bunch of off the shelf programs in an effort to make them all work together. This is one complete platform developed specifically for Fan Management and band promotion!
See…we aren’t really looking to build you a website. We are looking to attach a bunch of services to your existing website so that it does a better job for you than it does today. Specifically, it does a better job of getting fans to come to your site and continue to come back often. If you don’t have a website, of course we can build you one, but if you already have a website that you like, it is quite inexpensive to convert that site to be used in our platform. In fact, many of the bands we work with do that.
We have looked at licensing our platform so bands could use it on their own servers or with another hosting company. It is really as simple as this; if you were to go to another hosting company with the list of requirements that you would need to run our software, you would end up spending more money than you would by having us run the whole thing for you. We work on such a small margin; we couldn’t afford to set this system up on another company’s servers without losing money on the deal. In addition, our hosting plans are geared towards band websites and most other hosting companies are not. We provide you with much more bandwidth and Streaming Media servers at no extra charge. Finally, we also include state of the art email and website statistics at no extra charge.
This is one of the key features in the Fan Management System platform. This feature gives your fans the ability to send new fans to your website and have that referral counted! This opens the doors for many special contests and promotions. In addition, for the first time, it gives you the ability to quantify the work your Street Team members are doing so that the ones who are truly helping you out get the biggest rewards! Give us a call and we will be happy to discuss some of the unique things some of our bands are doing with the referral component of the Fan Management System platform.
It is hard to say. It really depends on how many bands we have in the queue and exactly what we need to do in order to develop your site. A simple conversion takes us about three days once we get started on it. We have a goal to not be more than two weeks backlogged. As you might imagine, our services are in high demand, but we are brining in more help all the time to keep up. Every project is supervised by our senior managers to ensure that quality is always at 110%.
For the past four years we have been developing our Fan Management System platform and our business practices with a small number of key bands. Bands like Tesla, Copper, and Mighty Sideshow were early adopters and have played a key part in our product and services development. We would be happy to discuss our client list with you as well as the successes they have had. Remember, we provide you with the tools and knowledge and it is up to you to use them effectively. It takes hard work and dedication on your part to realize success. We do have services at Ultra Entertainment where we will even do that work for you. Depending on the stage of your career, one way or the other will make sense for you.
Really, all of our services are quite independent from each other. The hub of everything however, is our Fan Management System platform. It is what really ties everything together. It is necessary in order for us to work with your promotions, street team, merchandise fulfillment, etc. We have products and services for any budget. The idea is that as your band develops, you move into other services as they make sense. The ultimate goal is that what we do is help you make money rather than help you spend it!