Grammy-awarded alternative rock band Muse has selected Finnish direct-to-fan service Mobile Backstage as a winner in the GSM Association’s Band App Challenge, which tasked developers with creating mobile apps for world-leading music artists seeking innovative ways to interact directly with their fans.

The Muse Mobile Backstage app creates a private place for fans to engage with the band members and co-create material and share that experience within their own exclusive “tribe”. The app serves as a central hub for first-hand updates and behind-the-scenes coverage, directly from the bands personal mobile phones.

“Even though we’ve already had the honour to work with names like Dizzee Rascal and You Me At Six, it’s great that the members of Muse themselves selected our Mobile Backstage service as their weapon of choice for direct-to-fan engagement,” says Mobile Backstage CEO, Paavo Bäckman. 

There were two other winners. Mediagates app for Faithless includes content, online ticketing, games, and voting on remixes of selected Faithless songs, while Darius Khan’s app for Enrique includes news feeds, forums, a discography, media players, image galleries, tour dates, biography and social currency/merchandise. It also has Augmented Reality viewers, and a built-in mCommerce solution, with the ability to perform micro transactions.

The Band App Challenge was part of the GSMA’s Mobile App Challenge series of skills-based competitions aimed at the app developer community.