Any working bands out there use Reverbnation to any real effectiveness?
I'm thinking of closing our account...just seems to be part of the increasing "white noise" that is social media. Plus it distracts me from building KP a real website. Whadda y'all think?

https://kingpelican.bandcamp.com/

Last edited: Nov 06, 2013 21:16:44

I plan to keep our facebook page and twitter account...but it seems that reverbnation is just fabricated interest. Also thinking of cutting our digital distribution ties for our record (CD Baby, Spotify, iTunes, etc.) 'cause I think we losing money 99 cents at a time.

https://kingpelican.bandcamp.com/

Everyone, seriously, do the work to establish your own band page. It really shows that you are serious about your music! Relying on a Facebook or Reverbnation page just shows that you are looking for a free way to promote your band. A dedicated website, preferably yourbandname.com, really shows that you are in this for the long haul, and I think you'll find that any costs associated with developing the site will be more than made up by revenue from sales through the website. CD Baby has a Host Baby service, but there are many others out there that work well too (I use www.bigcommerce.com, but www.shopify.com is another option).

Sean
Double Crown Records
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As somebody that's not in a band, reverbnation never really appealed to me for finding bands or following them. It seemed bloated and never gave me clear options on how to obtain the music. What was I supposed to do, go to the page and stream the song whenever I wanted to hear it?

I've said a bunch of times that I really like bandcamp for finding bands, being alerted to material from those bands, and buying their music. But I do think Sean's right, you ought to have a real website for me to actually find out what you're about, when and where you're touring, etc.

Storm Surge of Reverb: Surf & Instro Radio

I am thinking of shutting down our Reverbnation page as well. It brings us nothing. A dedicated band website and Facebook page should do the trick.

On top of that I strongly recommend all bands to start a bandcamp page. They have the best embeddable players for your website, Facebook posts etc. 85% of all the proceeds from sales go to the artist.

We have Twitter, MySpace, Soundcloud and Reverbnation as well but I don´t really have the feeling they contribute something:

• Reverbnation never brought us anything from the start even though we even tried some paid options.
• Twitter: I think our fans are not very active here and if they are they check Facebook as well.
• MySpace: the new version is even less user friendly than after the previous makeover. People without an account can´t even listen to your music anymore. MySpace is dead if you ask me. Seriously considering closing that as well even though we have thousands of friends who, if you ask me, have not been there for very long.
• Soundcloud is great for making and embedding playlists but not really necessary for bands if you have Bandcamp. It does come in handy is you want to make your new album available to press only by sending a unique url.

For a nice visual way of displaying your pictures I personally like Pinterest a lot. Here´s how we used it: http://www.pinterest.com/thephantomfour/
But for embedding slideshows Flickr is better.

Also did some stuff on Foursquare, Tumblr and Google+. Don´t know why. Adds nothing.

Niels Jansen
Program Director
North Sea Surf Radio

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We use our main band page to drive our other social media sites. It's fairly easy to set up and manage and costs nothing to maintain (other than occasional use my time).

It really depends on where and how your fans or potential fans/customers will find you. We've received the most traction from Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest of all places. Is it interesting? Sometimes. Jan Davis and Lester Chambers found us on Twitter. So, that was cool. Is it effective? Debatable but, put me in the camp that thinks most social media is just a novel distraction.

As for ReverbNation, I don't find it particularly useful but as with all of our social media sites, once the time investment is made, it costs nothing to maintain. So, we let it run with content generated through our main band page. And if nothing else, it helps elevate the band in Google search results. Which, has been both a positive and created some interesting challenges.

The Boss Jaguars!
www.bossjaguars.com

Some very good suggestions and input.

As our other guitarist pointed out earlier this morning "ain't nothing really free."

Like many other musicians we try to save $$$ when ever possible, (thus FB & RN) but I'm thinking a full-fledged website and maybe bandcamp is the way to go. At least bandcamp has a monetary dividend.

METEOR IV on reverbnation

HankTX wrote:

It really depends on where and how your fans or potential fans/customers will find you. We've received the most traction from Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest of all places. Is it interesting? Sometimes. Jan Davis and Lester Chambers found us on Twitter. So, that was cool. Is it effective? Debatable but, put me in the camp that thinks most social media is just a novel distraction.

Jan Davis is on titter? Watusi Zombie, Boss Machine and a whole lot of Flamenco Jan Davis? ...do you know his handle?

Storm Surge of Reverb: Surf & Instro Radio

Yes, if you can trust the profile photo it appears to be @JanDavisGuitar.

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My main objective in regards to an internet presence for our band is to have one site that promotes, communicates and allows commerce...i.e website. I think having too many satellite sites (reverbnation, soundcloud, bandcamp, etc.)can distract or dilute the effectiveness of a proper website. So, my plan is to keep our facebook page and twitter account open for promotion conduits but focus commerce (record/t-shirt sales) and communication (calendar/video) thru our soon to be re-vamped website. Plus I don't want other people's branding piggybacking our product.

Also, I'm thinking of cutting our ties with CD Baby and our Digital Distribution package. I feel that sites like Spotify are taking $$ out of our pockets... I want to work more with outlets like Double Crown, Deep Eddy and local record stores for sales and work with podcast and radio show producers like North Sea and Radio Free to get our new releases heard.

I wanna work with people...not just templates.

https://kingpelican.bandcamp.com/