Bill Donabedian, founder of
Bunbury Music Festival and
Midpoint Music Festival and a fixture of the Cincinnati music and entertainment scene, has teamed with Ian and Nathan Bolender of
Cincymusic.com to create
CloudPressKit. CloudPressKit is an online tool that allows bands/artists to create a press kit that they submit to venues, clubs, festivals and events. For event promoters, it offers a simple way to review artist submissions in a streamlined way.
For those in the music industry, this may sound similar to sites like
Sonicbids and
Reverbnation; it’s supposed to. Donabedian had the idea for CloudPressKit after dealing with these sites one too many times.
“This sector is dominated by Sonicbids and Reverbnation, and I’ve never liked their services,” Donabedian says. “I’ve used them on both ends, as a band and also while running Midpoint; I never felt like it was a good deal. So I decided while doing Bunbury that we needed a new system, one that was easy, elegant, user-friendly and was a good deal for both bands and promoters.”
Donabedian tapped Ian and Nathan Bolender, who, in addition to Cincymusic, have also worked with Bunbury,
Nederlander Entertainment and
the Southgate House in the past, to develop the platform.
Instead of monthly fees, CloudPressKit requires that bands submit to a single promoter/event per year and that automatically renews their press kit online for a year. And on the promoter end, instead of negotiating a contract and dealing with a much more cumbersome system, users simply create an account, create an event and are ready to go.
“The great thing about CloudPressKit is that we don’t need to be out there aggressively selling it,” Donabedian says. “It’s something we developed to help what we were already doing and simplify parts of the process of working on a festival like Bunbury. If it starts to pick up traction, that’s great, but we have the luxury of time to get it to work really nicely; we don’t have to be first to market.”
In addition to Bunbury and CloudPressKit, Donabedian continues to work on creating new events in and around Cincinnati. He’ll debut the
Buckle Up Music Festival, focusing on Americana, country, bluegrass and folk music, this summer at Sawyer Point. Donabedian promises that there will be more to add to the list soon.
By Mike Sarason
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