BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WBMA) – Local musicians and small venue owners in Birmingham said getting noticed was often a challenge, especially when competing with larger, more established businesses.
“We are a new business especially when you’re imprint isn’t as big as a bigger more established small business,” said Caleb Taylor, owner of House Eleven.
Birmingham natives Chris Hawkins and Joshua Thomas aimed to change that narrative by creating an app designed to help grow the city’s live entertainment industry.
“Small businesses have a hard time competing with all the ads that some of the larger places put out,” Joshua Thomas, co-founder of Crier, said.
After years in Birmingham’s entertainment scene, the two developers noticed smaller venues and artists were only getting attention by word of mouth. That led the two to create Crier, an app that tracks local shows and event spaces that sometimes go overlooked.
“We’ve been boots on the ground as well, going to venues and getting to know the people who run them,” said Chris Hawkins, co-founder of Crier. “We’ve also been partnering with some venues to do show and ticket promotions for the events they’re putting on.”
“So just from my perspective, we launched it three weeks ago, and on one of my bartending shifts, I had three groups of people come in and say they came in because they saw what was happening,” Joshua Thomas, co-founder of Crier, said.
The app currently lists more than 50 venues, but Hawkins said the goal was to have a broader impact on Birmingham’s live entertainment scene.
“So ideally, we’d love to see this app do so well that it’s creating jobs for people all over the city who work in the event space,” Hawkins said.
Local venue owner Caleb Taylor said the app simplified discovering shows.
“I had no idea what it was at first, but after scrolling through it, I saw it was a pretty useful app,” Taylor, owner of House Eleven, said. “It keeps you from having to dance between three different apps to find out what’s going on.”
The Crier app is available on Apple and Android platforms.