Client:
Brian Vander Ark is a solo artist and the lead singer for The Verve Pipe. Like many artists today, Brian has bucked the system and chosen to bypass a record label and appeal directly to his audience. He's making his own rules, which we can certainly respect.

Situation:
Independent artists like Brian depend on grassroots efforts to grow their fan base, so they are constantly seeking out unique and interesting ways of reaching people. Brian already had a MySpace page, but needed a stronger internet presence than it  could achieve alone.

Objectives:
Give Brian a website rivaling those of today’s top major-label artists, and make it easy for him to update the site while on the road touring – thereby keeping the content fresh while maintaining a consistent look and feel.

Strategies & Tactics
Incorporating technologies such as Adobe Flash® and Adobe Flex®, and using our proprietary platform consisting of XML, PHP and MySQL, fans are immersed in everything Brian Vander Ark. In addition to the rich user experience for both Brian and his fans, Farstar implemented its unique behavior analytics engine – The Lead Machine – so Brian can quickly and easily learn about each user’s action – from time spent on each part of the site to analyzing buying patterns that would allow personalized, fan-specific marketing in the future. Not even the “big boys” are doing that.

We also built a robust yet easy-to-use content management system. With it, Brian can make updates from the road, adding new shows, the latest news, blog entries, and even uploading newly recorded songs on the fly – all showing up on his rich Flash Web site in real time. This flexibility puts Brian light years ahead of both other independent artists and major-label stars alike.

Results:
One extremely happy artist (see below).

Visit Brian's Website

Watch the Video Testimonial from Brian

Sample Screenshots:

Brian was exceptionally pleased with the aesthetic look and feel of the site. He can thank Randy for that. The home page provides Brian's fans quick info -- the napkin is an area that Brian uses for ever-changing promotional text. He can update it whenever he feels like it and can add links, etc. as desired. The most recent news item shows up on the right-hand side, which again is entered by Brian from the road (or home if he ever makes it back). We coded the music player in such a way that it can keep playing while the user switches to different pages, and so not to break the experience. Brian can add, delete or re-order any of the songs in the player at his discretion. This means he can write a demo for a song, record it, and upload it on the fly to his site.

Above is the Music page where fans can view all of Brian's solo CDs, track listings, lyrics (by clicking on the song title), and purchase either a standard CD or an autographed version with a custom message from Brian. When you visit the site, check out the behavior of the site's animation when you select an album from the lower row. Telling the browser to take whatever album is up there and replacing the album that you clicked was a little tricky at first. But the details make the difference. Way to go, Victoria.

Pictured above is the Tour page, which is driven by a custom-built content management system. Fans can see what's coming up, and click on links to see venue information or buy tickets.

Above is the Video page. We are doing some nice things with the embedded video here, and then letting YouTube handle the rest by throwing fans over to Brian's YouTube Channel.

Pictured above is a screen shot from Brian's content management system. Sean built a slick and simple Flex application to make it happen and then coded it to talk with the Flash site.

We're really pleased that Brian trusted us with such a huge part of his career strategy and can't wait to see what he wants to do next. And then help him do it.

Farstar has a real interest in enabling independent artists to compete with major labels and maintaining growth during the continued diversification of the music industry. Which is a fancy way of saying, "For those about to rock, we salute you."