Home / Back On Stage vs. Stagent: Representing Artists vs. Running Your Own Band

Back On Stage vs. Stagent: Representing Artists vs. Running Your Own Band

A bandleader in a dark suit sings into a microphone mid-song at an upscale evening event, surrounded on the bandstand by his own saxophone, trumpet and trombone players, upright bass, drums and keyboard, with guests watching behind

Stagent and Back On Stage both send contracts, both raise invoices, and both put a calendar in front of you. If that is where you stop looking, they seem like the same purchase.

They are not, and the difference is not a feature-count argument. It is a question of which half of the job you actually do.

Stagent was built for the person who represents an artist. Back On Stage was built for the person who is the artist, and who also has to staff the gig, brief the players, get the charts out, play it, and pay eight people on Monday morning.

If you run a booking agency with a roster of acts you do not personally perform with, Stagent is a serious product and this page is not going to talk you out of it. If you are a bandleader, keep reading, because the part of your week that hurts most is the part agency software was never asked to solve.

What Stagent actually is

Stagent is an all-in-one artist management and booking platform aimed at booking agencies, artist managers and touring artists. It is European, and everything about it is built around a roster: multiple agendas side by side, contracts and eSignatures, invoices and digital payments, itinerary management, advancing, and per-artist finance statements.

The things worth knowing that do not show up in a feature grid:

Its unit of account is the artist. Plans are literally sized as "manage up to 10, 20, 30, 40 or 50 artists." That tells you exactly who the product imagines you are.
It handles non-exclusive artists explicitly, with a separate allowance for non-exclusive bookings per month. That is an agency problem, and it is a real one they have thought about.
Integrations run through Zapier, which they count as 5,000+ options. That is flexible, but it also means the connections are ones you build and maintain rather than ones that ship working.
There are iOS and Android apps, which is genuinely useful on the road.
Data import is not a priority. Their own FAQ says so, in their own words: the feature exists, but it "is not our top priority for now." If you are moving years of history, ask about that before you commit.

What Stagent costs

Stagent publishes its pricing, which is more than most of this category manages. All of it is in euros.

Solo: €39 per month billed yearly (€468 a year), or €49 billed monthly. Unlimited team members, contracting and eSignatures, invoices and digital payments, itinerary management, the mobile apps, and the Zapier integrations.
Agency: from €119 per month billed yearly (€2,388 a year), or €129 billed monthly. Everything in Solo plus up to 10 artists, non-exclusive artist handling, up to 50 non-exclusive bookings a month, advancing and statements. The artist ceiling scales to 20, 30, 40 or 50 for more.
Enterprise: €799 per month billed yearly (€9,588 a year), or €849 billed monthly. Unlimited artists, unlimited non-exclusive bookings, API access and a dedicated success manager.
Startup rate: up to 5 artists for €59 a month or €589 a year.

There is a 14-day free trial with no payment details required, and artists invited by their booking agency get a free seat.

If you are billing in US dollars, price the currency in. Euro-denominated software means an exchange rate you do not control sitting on top of a subscription you do, plus whatever your card issuer charges for a foreign transaction. That is not a criticism of the product, it is just a real line item that a comparison table will not show you. Worth noting for Canadian readers: Back On Stage bills Canadian customers in CAD and everyone else in USD, at the same figure either way, so there is no exchange rate on our side wherever you are.

The pricing unit is the whole argument

This is the clearest way to see the difference between the two products, and it costs nothing to check.

Stagent charges by artists managed. Back On Stage charges by admin seats, and every plan includes unlimited free musicians and crew.

Now run a nine-piece band through both.

To Stagent, a nine-piece band is one artist. One entry on a roster of ten. That is entirely coherent, because from an agency's point of view the band is a single sellable unit and how it assembles itself is the band's problem.

To you, that same booking is nine humans who each need to be offered the date, chased when they do not answer, replaced when they take a better gig, sent the right chart in the right key, checked against your other act on the same Saturday, and paid afterwards.

Agency software prices the first view of the band because it is built for the first view of the band. Neither product is wrong. They are answering different questions.

Feature comparison

	Back On Stage	Stagent
Built primarily for	Bandleaders and entertainment companies who deliver the gig	Booking agencies, artist managers and touring artists
Priced by	Admin seats (1, 3 or 5), with unlimited free musicians and crew	Artists managed (10, 20, 30, 40, 50 or unlimited)
Currency	CAD for Canadian customers, USD everywhere else, same figure either way	EUR
Contracts with e-signature	Yes, auto-generated from the booking with custom tokens	Yes, on every plan
Invoicing and online payments	Yes, client portal with online payment	Yes, on every plan
Musician roster with roles and call order	Yes, custom roles with a saved default call order per role	Not listed publicly
Automated gig offers to musicians	Yes. Auto-Book cascades first call to second to third on decline or expiry, Shotgun Book offers to everyone at once, or book manually	Not listed publicly
Conflict flags across your own acts	Yes, a conflict warning appears on the call list before an offer goes out	Not listed publicly
Paying your musicians	Yes, Auto-Pay schedules per-musician payouts off the booking, plus an exportable payout report	Not listed publicly
Setlists, charts and reference audio	Yes, per-song PDF, key, tempo and reference recording, distributed by role, with bulk export to forScore	Not listed publicly
Advancing and per-artist finance statements	No	Yes, on Agency and above
Non-exclusive artist handling	Not applicable, you are the artist	Yes, with a monthly non-exclusive booking allowance
Native mobile apps	Mobile web	iOS and Android
API access	Not listed publicly	Enterprise tier only
Free trial	30 days, every feature unlocked	14 days, no payment details required
Entry price	$19/month billed annually, $29 monthly	€39/month billed yearly, €49 monthly

Every Stagent cell we could not verify from Stagent's own published materials says "not listed publicly" rather than "no." A feature that is not advertised is not the same as a feature that does not exist. If you are seriously evaluating Stagent, ask them directly.

Where each one wins

Choose Stagent if

You represent artists you do not personally perform with, and your roster is the thing you manage.
You need advancing and per-artist finance statements as a core part of how you work.
You handle non-exclusive artists and need that modelled properly rather than bolted on.
You are billing in euros anyway, so the currency is a non-issue.
You want native mobile apps and are comfortable building your integrations through Zapier.

Choose Back On Stage if

You are the bandleader, which means you are also the staffing department, the music director and the payroll department.
The expensive mistake in your week is a double-booking or an unfilled chair, not a mis-sold date.
You pay musicians after every gig and want that to stop being a Sunday-night job.
Your subs need the right chart, in the right key, before they walk in the door.
You run more than one act or lineup off the same pool of players.

The money question, answered honestly

The comparison people usually make is subscription against subscription. On that measure Back On Stage starts at $19 a month billed annually against Stagent's €39, and the agency tiers are $63 against €119.

That is a real gap, but it is still the wrong number to decide on, because it prices the software rather than the work.

Nikki Green manages talent for Liquid Blue, a San Diego band with a heavy schedule. Before Back On Stage, this is what the after-the-gig half of the job looked like:

"I used to manually check 35 invoices, inputting every single amount into direct deposit. I can't imagine that anymore. It used to take me 3 hours to get everything set and scheduled for a gig. Now it takes me 15 to 30 minutes."

Nikki Green, Talent Manager, Liquid Blue

Three hours down to under thirty minutes, per gig. No agency-side platform is built to move that number, because paying your own band is not a job agency software is asked to do.

Seth Sealfon runs Uptown Groove, a New York event band. He went from around 50 gigs a year to over 200 on Back On Stage.

It is worth being precise about what that means, because the dishonest version of this story is everywhere. The software did not win Seth those gigs. Nobody's software wins you gigs. What it did was remove the reason he could not accept them, which was that every additional booking landed on one person's plate and eventually that person, not the demand, becomes the ceiling.

Across the platform, bands on Back On Stage have grossed over $25 million, with more than 10,000 musicians and 8,000 gigs booked.

Can you use both?

If you genuinely run an agency arm representing other people's acts alongside your own band, then yes, and the overlap is smaller than it looks. Stagent would run the roster you represent, Back On Stage would run the band you play in. Pick one to be the source of truth for client-facing paperwork so a client never receives two different contracts, and let each do the half it was designed for.

For most bandleaders this is not a both situation. It is one question: is the painful part winning the work, or delivering it?

Try it before you decide

Back On Stage has a 30-day free trial with every feature unlocked, a 90-day guarantee, and unlimited free musicians and crew on every plan. Add your real roster, build one real gig, and time how long the payouts take.

See Back On Stage plans and start your 30-day free trial

Compare Back On Stage to other tools

Stagent is not the only agency-shaped tool bandleaders end up evaluating. We have written the same honest comparison against several others: