This interview with Ben Wratten, artist, venue owner, and co-founder of technology company Stage Portal, is part of Hypebot's Backstage Pass series. Here, we feature conversations with people working behind the scenes to help artists navigate live music industry economics, logistics, and trends.
Live music runs on a tangle of WhatsApp threads, scattered PDFs, and apps that don't talk to each other. Stage Portal is an operating system built for independent artists and live venues that replaces all of this tangled communication with one connected system for putting on shows. Here's our conversation. Enjoy!
Backstage Pass is sponsored by venue, festival and promoter marketing solution Bandsintown PRO.
Hypebot: What is Stage Portal?
Ben Wratten: "Stage Portal is the operating system for live music. It brings together dedicated apps for artists, tour managers, venues, and event organizers, tools that work great individually but unlock the full potential of the platform when used together."
The core job is simple: keep all the information that usually ends up scattered across WhatsApp threads, email chains, spreadsheets, and people's memories in one place. Bookings, advancement, band and crew communication, guestlists, schedules, expenses, setlists, everything that needs to happen before a show, organized and accessible to everyone who needs it."
Our goal is to make it easier for everyone involved to deliver a professional show, night after night."
H: You and your brother started Stage Portal based largely on your own experience as artists and venue/festival managers. What was it that led to figuring out how to solve the pain points you experienced?
BW: "We realized that almost every problem we experienced wasn't actually a music problem. It was an information problem. We have been the band waiting for confirmation from a venue. We have been the tech team chasing a rider that should have arrived weeks ago. We have spent time advancing festivals, booking artists, and trying to keep hundreds of moving parts organized."
Every time something went wrong, it came back to the same thing: the right information hadn't reached the right person at the right time."
Eventually we stopped asking how to solve each individual problem and started asking a bigger question: why is everyone managing live music with half a dozen different tools that don't talk to each other, and 400 messages across different platforms? We found large-scale enterprise solutions but nothing built for the independent grassroots level."
H: The software is billed as “A platform built for grassroots music.” How did you address the specific challenges of independent live venues?
BW: "Grassroots venues don't have large teams or dedicated production departments. The person booking the band might also be running the bar, handling the marketing, and fixing a leaking pipe before doors open. We wanted to build software that respected that reality."
Rather than creating another complicated enterprise platform, we focused on saving time and making things genuinely easy to use. If we can save a venue manager or band manager an hour or two per show by keeping all the information in one place and automatically getting it to the right people, that's time they can spend looking after artists and audiences instead of chasing messages."
Building Stage Portal as a platform rather than a standard SaaS product has also let us offer tools at rates that work for independent venues and bands operating on tight budgets. Grassroots venues are the heartbeat of live music. If we can reduce the workload for the passionate people running them, the whole ecosystem benefits."
"Every time something went wrong, it came back to the same thing: the right information hadn't reached the right person at the right time."
H: Why is live music so important to artists in 2026?
BW: "Live music is one of the few places where people still share genuine experiences together. You can stream any song in the world from your phone, but you can't stream the feeling of standing in a packed room when your favourite band walks on stage."
For artists, live shows have never been more important. Streaming made music more accessible than ever, but it also made earning a living from recorded music significantly harder. Live shows aren't just where artists connect with fans, for many, it's where they build a sustainable career. The better the live experience is for artists and venues, the healthier the whole industry becomes."
H: What’s the hardest thing people don’t understand about running a venue?
BW: "Most people only see the doors opening. They don't see the weeks of work that came before it. It's very much like an iceberg."
Every show means advancing artists, organizing crew, scheduling staff, confirming technical requirements, planning hospitality, managing guest lists, handling suppliers, and preparing for dozens of things that you hope never go wrong. When everything runs perfectly, nobody notices. That's usually because someone has spent weeks making sure it would."
H: What are the biggest advantages of having an organized administrative dashboard that artists don’t realize?
BW: "People assume organization is about saving time. It's actually about reducing stress. When your information is ready, your EPK and tech specs are current, everyone knows where they need to be, and your documents are all in one place, you stop firefighting. That lets you focus on the performance rather than worrying whether you've forgotten something."
What we hear from bands using the platform is that the whole experience of gigging changes: smoother load-ins, calmer soundchecks, and a sense of being prepared when they walk on stage. Professional artists aren't necessarily more talented than everyone else. They're usually just better organized behind the scenes."
H: Is there something you learned along the way on that journey that’s become essential to you?
BW: "The biggest lesson has been that communication beats perfection. A lot of smaller bands feel they need to reach a certain level before they can send a rider. But from our experience on the tech side, we always welcomed as much information as possible in advance, because it meant we could actually prepare."
Nobody expects every show to be flawless. What people expect is to know what's happening. There has been a long-standing attitude in parts of the industry that the chaos is just part of the grind starting out. We're out here showing people there's a better way."
When venues, artists, and crew are all working from the same information, problems stay manageable. When everyone is working from different versions of the truth, small issues quickly become large ones. That has become a core philosophy behind everything we build."
"We believe the future of live music isn't about replacing people with technology, it's about giving people better tools."
H: What was one recent concert that blew you away?
BW: "Our local heat of Metal to the Masses, the battle of the bands competition that gives new acts a shot at playing Bloodstock Festival."
Watching local bands pour everything into a performance when there is something real on the line is something else entirely. Every act brought their best, and you could feel what it meant to them. That energy and the talent in the room, that sense of genuine stakes, is exactly what grassroots live music is about."
H: If you could only eat desserts or appetizers for the rest of your life, which would you choose and why?
BW: "Desserts, without hesitation. I can never turn down a sticky toffee pudding or a chocolate brownie."
H: What is your perspective on how AI is shaping live music infrastructure?
BW: "We believe the future of live music isn't about replacing people with technology, it's about giving people better tools."
There is a lot of noise right now. AI-generated products, vibe-coded platforms thrown together overnight, tools built by people who spotted a market opportunity and decided to serve it. We are not that. Stage Portal was built by humans who have come from exactly the same position as the people using it. We have been on the stage, behind the desk, behind the bar, and behind the booking inbox. We know what the problems actually feel like because we lived them."
The relationships between artists, venues, promoters, and tour managers are what make this industry special. Our job isn't to automate those relationships away, or the music. It's to remove the admin that gets in the way, so everyone can spend more time creating extraordinary live experiences."
Learn more about Stage Portal.
Hypebot’s Backstage Pass series is sponsored by venue, festival and promoter marketing platform Bandsintown PRO. Join leading live event professionals saving time and selling more tickets with their automated, self-serve and custom solutions.
