The Musician Board Is Live

Five days after saying “we're building this in public,” the musician board went live. No seeded fake posts, no seven ghost accounts to make it look busy. Real posts only, from day one, which meant it looked genuinely thin for the first while. We decided we'd rather it look honest and small than fake and full.

The gig guide went out the same day: every upcoming public gig from every band's own diary, pulled into one searchable place, searchable by date, by place, by venue. It's completely dependent on bands actually keeping their gig diary current, which is either the platform's biggest weakness or its best feature depending on how you look at it. A stale gig guide is worse than no gig guide, so it only ever shows what's real.

This is the point where Bandhamster stopped being just a tool we use for our own bands and started being something other bands' choices actually shape. That's a strange feeling. You build a board for bands to find members, and then you have to just… let it be quiet for a bit while real people find it. Patience isn't really our strong suit. We checked it about forty times that first day.