What We Built in June 2026: GIGXCHANGE Android Launch, Smart Match & a Full EPKThree releases in one month, ending with the big one: the GigXchange app is live on Google Play. Here’s everything that shipped

June was the busiest month GigXchange has had: four releases across both halves of the platform, from v0.3.2 to v0.3.5. The app started June with a creator toolkit and ended it on the Google Play Store. The website turned into a genuine reference for UK live music. We have split this roundup the way the work split: everything in the app first, then everything on the website.

If you missed last month, read what we built in May 2026 first. June builds directly on top of it.

The App: Mainstage (v0.3.2 to v0.3.5)

The Mainstage app is where artists, venues, agents and promoters run their bookings. Across four June releases it gained a proper creator toolkit, Smart Match for venues, promoters and artists, safety and trust tools, a rebuilt payments view, a redesigned light mode, and the milestone that closes the month: a native Android app on Google Play.

Now Live on Google Play

The GigXchange Android app is live on the Google Play Store. Search "GigXchange" on Google Play and install it. It wraps the same experience you already use on the web (same account, same data, same features) in an installable native app, with a branded icon, a brand-dark launch splash, and proper edge-to-edge handling so it sits correctly around your phone’s status and gesture bars. The full story is in the launch post.

Signing in got easier at the same time. You can now sign in with Google or Microsoft, on the website and in the Android app, instead of an email and password. On Android it opens your system browser and hands you straight back to the app, so it feels native. One tap, no new password, and it links to the same GigXchange account either way. The iPhone app has now been submitted to the App Store and is in review; for now iOS users can add the web app to their home screen.

Creator Tools and a Full EPK

Every artist now has a full electronic press kit plus four promo generators: a flyer maker, a tour-poster maker, a setlist-poster maker, and a new stage-plot maker. Each exports at 2× native resolution, so what you post looks sharp on every screen and in print. The setlist poster ships with square and story formats, multi-sheet smart import, and a create-from-Song-Bank flow.

The stage-plot maker, added at the end of the month, is the one working bands keep asking for. Tap your instruments, amps, monitors and mics onto a top-down stage from a 14-icon palette, drag them into position, add your input list and tech notes, then download it as a PNG or a proper PDF rider, or share it straight to a venue or organiser in chat. The sound engineer knows your setup before you arrive, which turns a stressful line check into a calm one.

Alongside the kit, your public profile is now AI-readable: structured so search engines and AI assistants describe your act accurately when someone asks for a band like yours. It is the difference between being a name in a list and being the result that gets recommended. These build on the free Setlist Builder and Booking Contract Generator on the Free Tools hub. For the whole kit in one place, see the complete gigging toolkit for UK bands.

Smart Match, Favourites and a Verified Community

Smart Match now works for venues, promoters and artists. Tell it what you’re looking for and it surfaces the right people to approach (venues and promoters find acts, artists find places to play), then you invite your shortlist together in one guided step. It is now the heart of your For You page, instead of a venue-only feature, with agents next.

Two more additions make the platform easier to navigate and trust. Favourites is your own shortlist of the artists, venues, agents and promoters you rate, each showing their availability for the weeks ahead, so you can see who’s free without opening a profile. And the new Verified badge is a clean tick on a profile that tells you who’s a real, active member before you reach out. To keep things safe, you can now report a profile or block a user straight from the conversation header, enforced at the database level, not just hidden in the interface.

Open to Everyone, and a Map in Explore

GigXchange is now open to everyone. You no longer have to be in the trade to use it: anyone planning a wedding, a party, a festival or a corporate event can find and book a band directly, with the same secure payments and reviews the rest of the platform runs on. That opens the door to a much wider audience looking for live music, which means more work reaching the artists and venues already here.

Two things make day-to-day use easier alongside it. A new notifications bell on your dashboard gathers everything that needs your attention (offers, messages and booking updates) in one place, so nothing slips past. And Explore now has a map view: tap the map icon to see artists and venues across the UK, click a city to see who’s there, switch between pins and a heatmap, and jump straight to a profile or a filtered list. It is a faster, more visual way to find who is near you. Explore also gained a Compare tool, so you can line up to four artists or venues side by side before you reach out.

Venue Tools: Tech Riders, Teams & 9 Link Types

Venues can now describe their room properly. A new Getting Here & Access card captures the practical things an act needs before a gig (transport, parking, load-in, step-free access and curfew), and a full technical rider sets out what the room actually provides: PA and mixing desk, stage size, monitors, mics, backline, power and house sound limits. An artist can see what to bring before they ever send a message.

There are also 9 venue link types: YouTube, TikTok, X, Songkick, Resident Advisor, DICE, Skiddle, Eventbrite and Fatsoma. All of it surfaces on the public venue listing, so an artist or agent can size up a room in seconds instead of trading three emails to find out whether there is parking or a backline.

A venue is rarely one person, so June added team and multi-site management. You can invite your staff to run the live-music diary together under one venue account, and an operator with several rooms or sites can manage them all from the same place instead of juggling a separate login per venue. The booker on shift can reply to an act without everyone sharing one password, and nothing slips when someone is off. For everything a room gets, see the complete toolkit for UK music venues.

A Clearer View of Your Money

The Payments overview is rebuilt into a proper earnings dashboard. A headline band with count-up totals and a month-on-month change, an earnings trend, and rings that show what’s held in escrow versus released to you, plus a simple breakdown of where your money sits right now. The Transactions and Payouts views were redesigned to match.

The wording adapts to your role too, so venues, promoters and agents see language that fits how they pay rather than how they get paid, and the other party on every transaction is named correctly whichever role you are. My Reviews and My Roster also became full, fast pages, with brand-styled review stars and a one-tap Invite Artist action for agents.

Premium Polish and a Redesigned Light Mode

The app got a real interface pass across the month. Every card (profiles, gigs, bookings, events, featured media and the dashboard carousels) now has a gradual, GPU-smooth hover-zoom. Setting a profile photo opens a crop-and-zoom tool that fills the avatar or fits the whole photo with clean black bars instead of cut-off edges, and large images are compressed automatically on upload. Media uploads gained instant preview and drag-to-reorder Featured Media.

The bigger visual change is light mode, fully redesigned across the entire app: cards, menus, date and time pickers, modals, payments, profiles and Explore all share one clean, consistent finish. Switch between dark and light whenever you like. On-brand tooltips now reach every remaining corner of the app, replacing the last default browser tooltips, and reduced-motion preferences are respected throughout.

Account Deletion and Your Privacy

You can delete your account end-to-end from Settings, with a 28-day grace period you can cancel any time by signing back in. After 28 days your financial records are anonymised. The ledger is kept for legal and accounting reasons but stripped of identifying detail. Your stored files are purged, and the rest is permanently removed. This satisfies the UK right to erasure and the Google Play data-deletion requirement. The rest of the app-store groundwork landed too: restored cross-fade page transitions, a branded 404 page, and a privacy policy aligned with the Play Data Safety form.

Faster and More Reliable

Under the surface, June made the app quicker and steadier. The invoices page loads roughly 3× faster, the dashboard unread-message badge is faster and more accurate, and a hard-refresh fix means My Gigs, events, bookings and payments no longer flash an empty skeleton on a cold load. Every action now runs on one consistent, hardened foundation with error-watching built in, so if something does trip up, we’re alerted and can fix it quickly, often before you’d need to tell us. A platform-wide backend-hardening pass tightened data-access controls and indexed the fastest-growing tables for scale.

The Website (v0.3.2 to v0.3.5)

The public website is how people find GigXchange before they sign up. Across June it became a genuine reference for UK live music, with the GX Index at the centre and a new home for understanding the whole platform.

GX Index: A UK Gig & Band Rates Pillar

The headline is the new GX Index: a free, public reference for UK gig and band rates. It gives real market fee ranges by city, role and act type, refreshed regularly, with a confidence range on every figure: the clearest public answer to "how much do gigs pay in the UK".

Around it sits a growing reports library: the monthly GX Index issues, the UK Live Music Yearbook 2026, the UK Musician Earnings 2026 report, and a UK Market Statistics page, all gathered in the Reports Hub. There is also a quick, anonymous UK Gig Pay Survey so performers can benchmark their fees and feed the next Index.

A New Platform Page and Easier Discovery

A new Platform page in the main menu walks you through how GigXchange fits together: the website, the app, and the data behind your bookings. It is one place to understand what the platform does and where to begin. Discovery got richer too: the home, about, blog and contact heroes carry relevance-ordered quick-link rails with live member-profile cards and Open Mic Finder shortcuts, and the booking guides open with an interactive page-turning "book" hero.

The blog and guides are easier to browse, with most-read and related reads gliding past in a carousel with real artwork, and a "Get the app" card (Play badge plus add-to-home-screen instructions) now sits on the home, about, user-guides and Platform pages.

Profiles and EPKs That Show Up in Search

Your public profile and EPK now show up properly in Google and look right when shared on social. That means the venues, agents and fans looking for someone like you can actually find you, rather than your best work being invisible to search. The whole site is faster and the imagery crisper, with smarter caching serving the parts that rarely change almost instantly.

The Live Music Map

There is now an interactive Live Music Map for finding live music across the UK at a glance. Zoom into any city, tap an area to see what is on there, switch between pins and a heatmap, then jump straight to the local list. The same map runs on the Gig Directory, the venue and open-mic pages, and on member profiles (where it shows the artists, venues, agents and promoters in any UK city), so wherever you start, you can picture the scene around you instead of scrolling a flat list. It already plots thousands of venues and open-mic nights across 100+ UK cities, and the same map view is built into Explore in the app.

Open Mic Finder Upgrades: Directories Re-Verified

The Open Mic Finder was upgraded so the data stays accurate. Every listing is checked against the venue’s own details, closed nights stay visible rather than silently vanishing, and listings without a venue page are flagged. It tracks 1,100+ weekly nights across 120+ UK cities, with 98% free to play, each showing day, signup time, slot length, PA and any entry fee. A dependable re-checking cycle keeps it fresh, and the Grassroots Venue Directory is re-verified alongside it. A platform-wide security and privacy review tightened data-access controls and updated disclosures across the site.

We Now Publish Release Notes

GigXchange has a dedicated, public Release Notes page. It tracks every Mainstage and Website version (what shipped, what was fixed, what is coming next), updated as work lands, not once a month. These platform-update posts remain the narrative roundup; the Release Notes page is the running changelog, so you can always check the latest without waiting for a blog.

What’s Next

1. iOS app: the same native shell on the Apple App Store. Submitted and in Apple’s review queue as June closed; live as soon as it clears.
2. EPK Builder v2: mobile-optimised editing and full widget stability, plus richer public profiles with verified booking history and review scores.
3. Data download (DSAR): a self-serve tool to download a copy of your personal data, completing the GDPR set alongside account deletion.
4. Backstage preview: a first look at the next-generation app layer, with advanced analytics and intelligent tools.

If you missed what came before, read May 2026 or April 2026. The community feedback board inside the app feeds straight into this roadmap.

If you are an artist looking for gigs, a venue looking for talent, or a promoter running events, the platform is free and takes a few minutes to set up. See how booking works, then sign up at gigxchange.app and build your profile, on the web or the new Android app.

Annual refresh commitment

This guide was published on 19 June 2026 and is refreshed every June. Platform features and roadmap priorities evolve month to month, 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 support@gigxchange.app and we will update it within 24 hours.