As the summer festival season is beginning, music lovers of all ages are traveling thousands of miles across the country to see their favorite bands play for quick, hot, and steamy 30-minute outdoor sets. But amidst the hundreds of bands that play over a 3-day festival how will you know when and where to find your favorite band? It would be horrible to travel long distances and pay heavy concert ticket prices to find out your favorite band played at an earlier time the day before. Well my friends, I have good news!

It first began with a college-grad by the name of Alex Rude who had enough spare time on his hands after graduation to create an iPhone APP for the Van’s Warped Tour. After being approved by Apple to sell the APP in the iTune’s store, the Warped Tour crew quickly found Rude and hired him (rather than suing for using the Warped trademark) and now has him working on APP’s for the tour’s brother and sister tours, the Mayham Fest and Country Throwdown. Rude’s Warped APP has been downloaded by over 30,000 users, showing that fans are looking for a more organized, convienent way to enjoy their favorite summer festivals.

The use of multi-media applications within music festivals is becoming a new outlet for festival organizers to connect with fans. Beyond the schedule aspect of the apps there are facebook pages, twitter updates, and accessible interactive band bios all integrated into the digital portitions of summer music festivals. Attending a concert today goes much further than arriving, watching the performance, and leaving. Photo contests are a vibratant part of the post-marketing strategies of monsters like Lollapalooza and Bonaroo. New media is changing traditional concert promotions.

For further reading check out http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6470CO20100508