Launching Treble
Devon Estes •
The story behind Treble
Music has always been a huge part of my life, and a great number of my friends (and my wife!) are involved in world of classical music in one way or another - as an artist, manager, publicist, arts administrator, or in some other way. But for my job these days, I write software.
Going back to my time working for 21C Media Group, I've always known that software and classical music have a tendency to not mix very well. Classical music is a small market (when compared to other genres) with very specific requirements, meaning that when people are looking to build software, they're probably not going to build something for the classical music industry.
But I'm not most people 😀. I'm lucky enough to have a really good day job that pays me a good salary, and I've still got a little time left over for me to build side projects that don't take a whole ton of my time but which can still solve some problems for people. I've built two of these products before, and after some successes with those products, I wanted to find some way to build something that would benefit the classical music industry.
After speaking with some friends of mine who are still working as artist managers, I learned that the existing software they use to help manage their business just wasn't cutting it. As usually happens, the product they use kind of works for classical music, but the company who makes it really makes their money from DJs, event planners and other non-classical folks. And so this application had a ton of features that were of no use to a classical artist manager, and was also missing a lot of important features that they needed.
That was it - I needed to make a product that really worked for artist managers.
So what does Treble do?
The gist of idea is pretty simple - Treble is an application that helps artist managers manage engagements for their artists. All the features you would expect are included, like being able to keep track of the status of an engagement, keep track of artist calendars, generate invoices for clients, and to schedule and send reminder emails to clients and other contacts.
But from speaking with a few other managers, that's not all they need! So Treble has a few features that other products on the market don't have, and that's what really sets it apart.
The data you need about your artists
Far and away the thing I heard the most from artist managers was that they wanted more and better ways to track information about their artists. Just keeping a repertoire list isn't enough these days - you want to be able to answer questions like "which of my artists has performed the Brahms Violin Concerto in the last two years?" or "who has worked before with the newly announced music director of the Paris Opera?" These are the sorts of questions that you ask every day, and now you'll have a much better way of getting these answers.
A dedicated Artist portal
Working as an artist manager doesn't just mean working for your clients, it means working with them. There are few things that can hold up the process of confirming an engagement as much as a busy artist who takes a long time to send you the information that you need. Treble's dedicated Artist portal allows artists to keep all their information about their upcoming engagements in one place, and they'll also be able to sign contracts and share documents directly through the app! This means that no matter where they are, they'll be able to easily do everything they need to do as long as they have their phone - no more delays becuase they couldn't track down a printer and scanner while they were waiting for their next flight.
A better view of your finances
Yes, you want to be able to make invoices for artists, but what you really care about is the full accounting for that artist. Being able to see a full accounting of their work with you, including paid and outstanding invoices, is an important part of your work and isn't something that you get with other applications. But you get it with Treble.
All the integrations you need
This is one thing I'm planning to really emphasize in the continuing work on Treble. Being able to have things automatically entered into Treble is what will really set it apart from all the rest. If you're thinking that this could be helpful and have something that you want me to integrate with in some way, just let me know and there's a really good chance I'll be able to make it happen!