If you grew up around Cincinnati music, you already know Annie's. It's the largest independent, family-owned venue in the city, and the history runs deep. Metallica played Annie's back when they were just an up-and-coming band pulling 500 people. That's the kind of room it is. Legends came through before they were legends, and Cincinnati was there for all of it.

Starting today, Annie's is officially a Seatfun partner. And because this one is personal for us, we're going bigger than a logo swap: Annie's indoor and outdoor stages will now be known as the Seatfun Stages.

Two Cincinnati Companies, One Belief

Seatfun is proud to call Cincinnati home, and we partner with venues all around the nation. But there's something different about putting your name on stages in your own backyard.

Annie's has spent decades proving that independent venues are the backbone of live music. We've spent every day since we started Seatfun proving that ticketing should work for venues, not the other way around. Same city. Same fans. Same belief that live music runs on relationships, not transactions.

"It's a completely different experience having a ticketing partner instead of a platform I can't reach when I need them," says Tim Jordan, Owner of Annie's Music Center. "That's what the ticketing industry has been missing."

That sentence is basically our whole company in two lines.

A Partner, Not a Platform

We say it constantly because it keeps being true. Legacy ticketing lists your events and then disappears. When the on-sale crashes, when the settlement is late, when you need a real answer on a Friday night, you're on hold with a help desk that has never seen your room.

Here's what our partners get instead, at Annie's and everywhere else:

• Instant payouts. Money in your account daily, not weeks after the show.
• A full box office in your pocket. Event management, ticket scanning, and Tap to Pay from a phone. No hardware required.
• Marketing you actually own. Your customer data, unlimited SMS campaigns and email blasts, deep tracking links, and smart pixel tracking across Meta, TikTok, Google, and Snapchat.
• Deep customer analytics. See your top spenders, your VIPs, and customer trends happening in real time, so you can spot them and take action.
• Real human support. A real person who knows your room and answers in minutes.

And here's the part we care about most right now: everyone in this industry is racing to use AI to automate everything. We're doubling down on the opposite. One-on-one relationships with venues. Showing up at shows. Knowing the room.

"The more AI automates our lives, the more people are going to crave the things it can't touch," says Daniel Mastropietro, Co-Founder and CEO of Seatfun. "I believe the world is about to shift analog in a big way. Live events, getting together, being in a room when something real happens. The tools are getting commoditized, but humans aren't. And watch the next generation coming into their early twenties. They grew up with a screen in their hand, and they're the ones craving real-world experiences the most. Venues like Annie's are about to matter more than ever, and we want to be the partner standing next to them when it happens."

That's the bet Seatfun is making, and Annie's is exactly the kind of partner we're making it with.

What's New at Annie's

The partnership lands alongside a season of upgrades at the venue, so your next show at Annie's is going to look and feel different:

• StageWater is in the building. Annie's is now pouring StageWater, the premium canned water created by touring roadies with a mission to support the people behind live music. With 15% of profits going back to music industry nonprofits, every can helps keep the music flowing. Grab one at your next show and hydrate like a headliner.
• Fresh turf in front of the stage. The area in front of the outdoor Seatfun Stage is now fully turfed. Better for dancing, better for sitting, better all summer.
• A new partnership with Bluegrass Pride. More roots music and community programming are coming to the venue.

Come See It for Yourself

The Seatfun Stages are live, the calendar at Annie's is stacked, and the turf is ready. Come out to a show and see what it looks like when a venue and its ticketing company are actually on the same team.

And if you run a venue and you're tired of platforms that list your events and disappear, request an invite to Seatfun and see what ticketing looks like with a partner behind it.

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