GigXchange Is Now on Google PlayAfter three months of late nights, the UK's peer-to-peer live music marketplace is a one-tap Android install. Here's the story, how to get it, and what's next in v0.3.4.

GigXchange is now on the Google Play Store. If you have an Android phone or tablet, you can open the Google Play listing, tap Install, and have the whole platform — profiles, bookings, real-time messaging, payments — sitting on your home screen in under a minute. It is free to download and free to sign up.

I want to be honest about what this milestone actually is. It is not a flashy product launch. It is the moment a one-person project that started as a website became something you can find and install the same way you install everything else on your phone. For the last three months, most evenings ended somewhere between midnight and 2am — build configs, signing keys, store listings, screenshots, policy forms, and the kind of small infuriating problems that only show up at the very end. Today it is done, and it is live.

Three Months of Late Nights

I started gigging in 2009. Getting booked back then meant cold emails, Facebook messages into the void, and fee agreements scribbled on the back of a setlist. I built GigXchange because that still hasn't really changed for most of the UK circuit — and I wanted one place where artists, venues, agents, and promoters could find each other, agree a deal, and get paid without the chaos.

The website came first. Then Mainstage — the rebuilt app you can use in any browser. But “open this website and add it to your home screen” is a hard ask. Most people don't know what a web app is, and they shouldn't have to. When someone wants an app, they open Google Play and search for it. So that became the goal: get GigXchange where people actually look for apps.

Getting onto the Play Store is not a button you press. It is a native Android wrapper around the app, a signed release build, a developer account, a store listing with the right screenshots and descriptions, a privacy policy that holds up, and a review process that has to pass. None of it is glamorous. All of it had to be right. Three months of late nights later, here we are.

How to Download GigXchange on Android

Installing takes under a minute. Open the Google Play Store on your Android device, search “GigXchange”, and tap Install — or use the direct link below. The app lands in your app drawer with its own icon, ready to open.

1. Open Google Play — on your Android phone or tablet, open the Play Store, or tap the GigXchange listing directly.
2. Search “GigXchange” — tap the official result. The publisher is GigXchange.
3. Tap Install — wait for the download to finish. The app appears in your app drawer with its own icon.
4. Sign up or log in — open the app and create a free account as an artist, venue, agent, or promoter. If you already have an account, just log in — everything carries over.

Prefer not to install anything? You don't have to. The full app still runs in any browser at gigxchange.app/app, and your account is identical whichever way you open it. The public tools — the Rate Calculator, Gig Directory, and Open Mic Finder — are free and need no account at all.

What Being on Google Play Actually Means for You

This is the same Mainstage app you may already use — now wrapped as a proper native Android app. That changes three practical things, and they all work in your favour.

It's easier to find and share. “Search GigXchange in Google Play” is a sentence anyone understands. When you tell a bandmate, a venue, or an agent about the platform, they can install it in seconds instead of fiddling with browser menus. That lowers the barrier for the whole network — and a booking marketplace only works when both sides are actually on it.

It updates itself. The app refreshes in the background through Google Play. When the next release ships, you get the new features automatically — no reinstall, no “please update” nag, and nothing lost. You stay on the latest version without thinking about it.

It behaves like a real app. Its own launcher icon, full-screen with no browser bar, and a home in your app drawer. It is the groundwork for push notifications — so a booking request or a message can reach your lock screen instead of waiting for you to open the app and check.

Under the hood, the Play Store app is the GigXchange Mainstage app — built in SvelteKit and wrapped for Android — running against the same backend, the same Stripe payments, and the same data as the website. There is no separate “app account”. Log in on Android, log in on the web, log in on a friend's laptop — it is one platform, one profile, everywhere.

What's Next — v0.3.4 and Beyond

Being on Google Play is not the finish line — it is the delivery channel. From here, significant updates ship straight to your phone through the Play Store, automatically. The next release, v0.3.4, is already in progress, and these are the things I most want to land for you:

1. Push notifications — booking requests, new messages, and payment confirmations delivered to your lock screen, so you never miss a gig because you forgot to open the app.
2. Smart Match — the matching engine that puts the right acts in front of the right venues automatically. If a venue books your genre on the nights you're free, you should be in their inbox without either of you searching.
3. iOS App Store — the same native treatment for iPhone and iPad. Android first, Apple next.
4. Deeper device integration — making the app feel even more at home on your phone, building on the native foundation Google Play gives us.

Because the app auto-updates, you don't have to do anything to get these — install once now, and v0.3.4 arrives on its own. If you want the full picture of what the app already does today, read the Mainstage launch post, and for the running monthly log of everything shipped, see the platform updates hub.

If you've been following along, thank you — genuinely. If you're new: GigXchange is free, it takes a couple of minutes to set up, and it's built by someone who has stood on the other side of every one of these problems. Whether you're an artist chasing gigs, a venue looking for talent, an agent running a roster, or a promoter filling events — it's now one tap away on your Android phone.

Annual refresh commitment

This guide was published on 10 June 2026 and is refreshed every June. App availability, store links, and feature roadmaps change as we ship, so we verify this post regularly, so annual verification matters. We re-verify every reference, recommendation, and data point once a year. Next scheduled refresh: June 2027. If any claim is outdated before then, email hello@gigxchange.app and we will update it within 24 hours.