Foursquare’s Tools For Musicians And Promoters

With more and more emphasis being placed on both location-based social media and group commerce, Foursquare, which launched two years ago at SXSW, is taking steps to incorporate music and live events into their product.

The service, which lets users “check-in” at different locations, also awards points and lets users leave tips for other users about check-in locations.

Recently, Foursquare’s Jonathan Crowley, who heads up business development for the media and entertainment space, spoke with Billboard about how Foursquare is being utilized by artists.

Crowley talks about “Celebrity Mode,” which lets a confirmed celebrity account holder (current users include Outkast’s Big Boi and Adam Duritz of Counting Crows) send selected check-ins to their entire group of fans and followers, while other check-ins are seen only by small groups of friends and followers. Celebrity Mode also taps into this year’s SXSW Interactive buzz topic: group messaging.

It’s interesting to think about the possibilities for Foursquare and group messaging and social commerce for the music and events space. Events are inherently social, so it won’t be surprising to see more artists, promoters, and music clubs and venues adopting location-based social media to promote shows and sell tickets.

In fact, Crowley says that’s already happening in bigger markets like New York. “Venue owners are looking at the check-in data and using it to create specials to cater to the people who are there, like drink specials or free coat check,” Crowley says in the interview.

Read the full interview with Crowley here.