Reggae.com LLC has partnered with Adva Mobile Corp. to launch a mobile-optimized extension of the music and entertainment Web site, letting reggae fans buy tickets and merchandise on their mobile phones.

The Web site will expand its event listings, artist and new release promotions, entertainment news and travel offerings and provide this information on the new mobile site. Much of the Reggae Mobile content will be free, but the mobile site will also be an outlet for event tickets and merchandise that users will be able to purchase via their phone.

“Reggae.com is increasingly interested in reaching its audience anytime and anywhere through their always-with-them personal mobile phones,” said John “JB” Brodie, webmaster of Reggae.com, Fort Lauderdale, FL. “Visitors to the Reggae.com site are increasingly accessing the site from their mobile phones, so we needed a mobile-friendly version.

“Also, the ability to proactively reach our fans through targeted marketing programs, for those who have opted in, was compelling,” he said. “We want to be the go-to mobile site known by the millions of reggae fans throughout the world and are taking things a step further by adding travel, events and live concerts, as well as lifestyle components.

“For us, our Reggae.com brand starts with the wonderful music established by artists such as Bob Marley and extends to an array of lifestyle activities—reggae music is a worldwide phenomenon, that, because of its roots in island culture, has become closely associated with good times, whether at a beach bar or backyard barbeque.”

Reggae.com, founded in 1994, features reggae and world music performers, related news and reviews, features on tropical travel and support for various nonprofit organizations.

Adva Mobile provides a software service that helps music artists and advertisers create closer relationships with their audience through mobile fan clubs.

The experience includes mobile messaging, mobile Internet pages, mobile social sharing features, mobile commerce and mobile content fulfillment.

Reggae goes mobile
With nearly all mobile devices now capable of receiving this rich content, Reggae Mobile represents a major focus of the Web site for the future.

If consumers want to find a music event in their area, listen to an exclusive mix or tweet another Reggae Music fan, they can do it with the Reggae Mobile Web site.

For an introductory period, Reggae Mobile will provide advertisers with free event listings and artist promotions.

Reggae.com will be expanding its focus to cater to what Mr. Brodie calls “a reggae lifestyle.”

The site has done travel promotions in the past, but this area will be expanded considerably.

Adva Mobile provides Reggae.com with mobile marketing services such as text messaging, commerce, contests and voting, fan administration and content distribution.

The pilot release of Reggae Mobile can be accessed by texting the keyword “getreggae” to the short code 88704.

While not required, fans that register will get a free MP3 download.

Individual pages providing background on many top Reggae artists is available to all.

Blog postings will provide a variety of information from inspiring ideas to Reggae music news, history, special promotions and “Ras John Picks” of the best CDs and videos.

There is also a tweet link where visitors can post tweets that are then displayed in the Reggae Mobile “tweet log.”

The Reggae.com Web site is ad-supported, and initially the site plans to offer its current ad partners space on the mobile site.

“The Adva Mobile platform has a good tracking system for advertisers and so it will be interesting to compare the performance of ads on mobile pages with the performance of ads on our main Web site,” Mr. Brodie said. “It may surprise you to learn that the target demographic of Reggae.com is older—typically 30-55 years old.

“This demographic is increasingly purchasing smartphones, which make for a compelling rich-media experience, now available on our mobile site,” he said. “Like rock music, whose fan base now extends to plenty of people in their 50s and 60s who grew up in the 1960s, the same is true for reggae, which was born in the same fertile time period for music and the arts.”

That said, the genre continues to add new generations of fans as its popularity with college students has consistently been strong, according to Reggae.com.

“This younger part of the demographic is also very mobile-device-savvy and is where we find many of the early adapters of the medium,” Mr. Brodie said. “This broad combined demographic has made classic reggae very mainstream and gives it great potential as a genre to develop commercially.”