Laylo's AI-Enabled Platform Is Reinventing the Music Industry's Fan Engagement Model

Kristin Snyder

Kristin Snyder is dot.LA's 2022/23 Editorial Fellow. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.

Laylo's AI-Enabled Platform Is Reinventing the Music Industry's Fan Engagement Model
Evan Xie

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Typically, when a band announces a new tour, they pin the information to the top of their Instagram or Twitter feed. The hope is that when tickets go on sale, fans, who ostensibly visit said feeds on a regular basis, will be reminded to purchase tickets. But Laylo, a customer relationship management company, wants to eliminate so much uncertainty from the equation.


Launched in 2021, the platform lets artists create a page where fans can sign up to receive notifications about announcements including new merch, content and tour dates. Those fans are then notified by SMS, Instagram DM, email or Facebook Messenger when the time comes to buy tickets or products.

“Even your biggest fans don't want to do extra work to be a fan of yours,” says co-founder Alec Ellin. “They just want to know when the cool stuff comes out.”

Initially, Laylo was set up to work solely with musicians. But Ellin and his co-founder Saj Sanghvi found that people across other industries also sought ways to connect with their audiences. As a musician performing with the band No Suits, Sanghvi was one of the first artists to use Laylo drops to announce tour stops and music video premiers. Now, Laylo sends over 30 million messages every month on behalf of companies, musicians and content creators to alert fans when there’s new content to be consumed.

Having amassed a network that includes the likes of Sam Smith, Reese Witherspoon and Shaquille O’Neal, Laylo is looking to streamline its messaging system and optimize engagement. Last week, the company introduced Clutch, its Chat GTP integration. Sanghvi says the feature isn’t meant to entirely draft new content for artists. Instead, it suggests edits to maximize the number of fans who actually respond to the messages sent out by the artists. Some of those suggestions include adding a greeting at the beginning, moving the link to the end, and adding emojis.

“When you're creating your brand, or you're sending out these drops, it's really important to get the fan to actually take the action that you want them to whether it be to buy, watch, listen, whatever it might be,” Sanghvi says.

Sanghvi’s personal understanding of how touring works informed Laylo’s new multi-drop feature. Previously, artists made a page for the general tour or multiple pages for each stop. Now, a band visiting multiple cities on tour can now create one page with every date listed and let fans pick which one they want to be notified for.

If enough fans sign up to be notified about ticket sales for a specific date, bands can add new tour stops in those cities to meet the demand. The EDM duo ODESZA, for example, added a second night to their recent tour stop in San Diego after tickets for the first show sold out immediately. According to Sanghvi, the band didn’t have to advertise the additional show on social media because they could directly message fans who had signed up for the Laylo drop but didn’t manage to get tickets.

Ellin says these efforts boil down to trying to create a “seamless” fan experience—one that, according to him, makes the relationship between an artist and their fans “dead simple.”

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LA Tech Week: Local Climate Investors Assess and Vet Green Startups

Samson Amore

Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.

LA Tech Week: Local Climate Investors Assess and Vet Green Startups
Samson Amore

In a region known for being a national trailblazer when it comes to climate policies, there’s no shortage of green energy startups in L.A. looking for funding. There’s also a plethora of investors and incubators, which means founders looking for cash flow should be extra specific about their value proposition when they pitch to cut through the noise. At least that was the message coming from the panelists at the UCLA Anderson School of Management on Tuesday.

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https://twitter.com/samsonamore
samsonamore@dot.la
Here's What People Are Saying About Day Two of LA Tech Week
Evan Xie

L.A. Tech Week has brought venture capitalists, founders and entrepreneurs from around the world to the California coast. With so many tech nerds in one place, it's easy to laugh, joke and reminisce about the future of tech in SoCal.

Here's what people are saying about day two of L.A. Tech Week on social:

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LA Tech Week: Goldhirsh Foundation and the Positive Effects of Technology

Decerry Donato

Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.

LA Tech Week: Goldhirsh Foundation and the Positive Effects of Technology
Photo taken by Decerry Donato

On Monday, Los Angeles-based philanthropic organization Goldhirsh Foundation hosted the Technology and Storytelling For Social Good panel at Creative Visions studio to kick off LA Tech week.

Tara Roth, president of the foundation, moderated the panel and gathered nonprofit and tech leaders including Paul Lanctot, web developer of The Debt Collective; Alexis Cabrera, executive director of 9 Dots; Sabra Williams, co-founder of Creative Acts; and Laura Gonzalez, senior program manager of Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI).

Each of the panelists are grantees of Goldhirsh Foundation’s LA2050, an initiative launched in 2011 that is continuously trying to drive and track progress toward a shared vision for the future of Los Angeles. Goldhirsh’s vision is to make Los Angeles better for all and in order to achieve their goal, the foundation makes investments into organizations, creates partnerships and utilizes social capital through community events.

The panelists shared how the work they are doing in each of their respective sectors uses technology to solve some of society's most pressing challenges and highlight the importance of tech literacy across every community.

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