Creative Allies is a free web-based service that facilitiates art contests for bands, films and festivals. A couple of years back Skyline Music used them to crowdsource a logo and Adam Blumenthal of Curious Sense, who I interviewed this week, also recommended them based on a recent contest. Now Creative Allies is offering a Facebook app to crowdsource designs through your band's Facebook page.
Creative Allies, based in Asheville, NC, was founded by Sean O'Connell, the CEO of music marketing firm Music Allies. Creative Allies offers a free service for running art contests to crowdsource designs for everything from logos to album covers to merch.
Contest winners receive a cash prize plus other goodies for their work while all artist submissions are considered for the Creative Allies Store where both artists and bands earn royalties.
Ween Merch: Little Monsters Poster
Recently they launched Band Art, a Facebook app for running such contests from your Facebook page. You can run the contest from there for free or upgrade to be a Featured Contest on Creative Allies for $80 plus a minimum prize amount of $200.
SoundCtrl reports that Creative Allies recently announced "cross-marketing partnerships with music industry leaders including InGrooves, OfficialFM, College Battle, Music Player Network titles including Guitar Player Magazine."
In addition, though Creative Allies is a by-invitation-only platform, the BandArt apps opens up the service to whoever wants to use it. It also offers a way to generate branded print-on-demand merch to be offered through the Creative Allies store.
Hypebot Features Writer Clyde Smith blogs about business at Flux Research: Business & Revenue Models and maintains an audio blog at snd1.mobi. To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.
