# Database Software



## Telemark (Feb 9, 2006)

Any recomendations for easy to use Data base software for Contact management mailing lists etc?

My band just completed a 4 day three nite tour where we were constantly faced with our lack of organization, lack of promotion and a lower than coulda shoulda been attendance. 

The music was great the audience loved it and they all told us you should have let us know we coulda filled the place.

So we have an agenda, that is to put all of our info in one place and get the word out. We are actually looking at this from a creative and practical perspective and aim to have some fun with it.

So far I am trying out this one: http://www.indiebandmanager.com

It is $35 US for the lite version. 

I have no experience, or connection with this company, just looking to see what other indies do.

Would be nice to find a package that is more homegrown :smilie_flagge17:

Mark.


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## drak10687 (May 24, 2007)

Well, just quickly looking over their site, you can download it and try it for free, so you should definately do that.

I can't give any spesific recomendations, as I have no experience with any myself, but I can give you some suggestions:

- for this, and any other product you find, you should try to find "independent" user reviews. The best way is to ask people, like you did, or google "name of product review".

- try to look at as manny possibilities as possible, even if they are not directly targeted at band management only.

- personaly, I'm a sorta "computer geek" so any time I am using software which alows for any degree of creativity or controll, I like it to be very felxible (as in, I don't like to use templates, or have to have do things "their" way, but instead have control over what everything looks like, and works like). So you should probably ask yourself if you are that type of person, or if you rather have all the "work" done for you allready, and make sure the product you get matches your needs. (it is not always the case, but often products which are aimed at one task, such as this one, are less flexible than those with a greater variety of posibilities)

uh, well, other than that just make sure you shop around for as long as time allows you to so really know what you are getting... good luck

EDIT-
btw, just noticed that your myspace link doesn't work, first, it's written wrong: http://www.myspace.com*\*drfishyband/ where it should be http://www.myspace.com/drfishyband/ but writing it correctly tells me that the page doesn't exist


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## Telemark (Feb 9, 2006)

*Some questions I don't need to ask!*



> So you should probably ask yourself if you are that type of person,


I allready know the answer to this question! I like templates if they are flexible, I found the one I checked out in this program to be completley customizable, you can build your own with the click of a button. 

That is cool, I have downloaded this and started to enter a bit of data, you can grab info from websites and populate that data base with a bit of editing. It willstill take time.

The US Zip code field is the first immediate bug I have found, the data parser ignores canadian postal codes and stuffs irrelevant data into the Zipcode field.

Not a big hassle, however the program also does searches by Zip Code, but I don't think it will search by Postal Code.:smilie_flagge17:


Thanks for the heads up about the link, it did work for me??!!
I have updated my Sig anyways.

Mark.


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## Guest (Jun 11, 2007)

Google is your friend. Sign up for a band Google account: you get mail, photo hosting, a calendar (that you can make public). And it's got a bulit-in contact manager. Give everyone the password and then you all have access.


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## Telemark (Feb 9, 2006)

I guess google is not my freind. 

I find their instance on loading a spying toolbar on IE everytime my wife uses the computer pretty trying.:sport-smiley-002:

Do you have an example of a Google Band Account? I couldn't find anything by my search.


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## Guest (Jun 12, 2007)

Telemark said:


> Do you have an example of a Google Band Account? I couldn't find anything by my search.


Uhh, just create a Google Account like you would for a human, but use your band name. For example [email protected] -- that's The Apollo Effect's (http://www.theapolloeffect.com/) Google account. Everyone in the band knows the password to that account. With that account you get: mail (which includes contact management), calendar (which you can make public and private events on and share with other people), a Picasa web album for sharing pictures, you can start a blog at http://www.blogger.com and post pics and videos and stuff and so on. To create a new account go here: https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount


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