BandPage, Facebook’s top app for artists trying to stream and promote their music to fans, now powers 500,000 musician Pages. Just 6 months ago that number was 250,000, showing the rapid shift in focus of bands from MySpace and standalone websites to Facebook where fan retention is better. BandPage also just announced new features that allow listeners to tell friends about favorite songs through their Facebook Timeline and the Ticker feed with a single click.
Publishing to Ticker helped Spotify score massive growth and it could do the same for BandPage. BandPage needs to do whatever it takes to keep growing its artist count since it can’t rely on big checks for custom development work from the world’s most popular acts — a model that’s helping other musician marketing services turn quick profits.
BandPage recently rebranded from “RootMusic BandPage”, following the footsteps of fellow GGV Capital investment Pandora (formerly Savage Beast) which also changed its name to simply be its product. BandPage has raised a total of $18.3 million to pay for the engineering costs of scaling, as well as marketing and product development.
Some of that funding, as well as profits from its $2 a month premium service of enhanced customization and viral features, are paying for a big presence this year at SXSW. BandPage has its own laser light-filled venue in the center of town where it’s putting on concerts for 10 straight days.
To keep attracting bands, BandPage today releases an update that lets it take advantage of Facebook’s new Timeline for Pages. Musician profiles are now wider, and Open Graph integration lets visitors post songs to the Ticker without having to fill out a share prompt. They can also post that “I want to go to” or “I’m going” to tour dates. These shares fill out a dedicated BandPage section on a user’s Timeline that shows what acts they’ve been jamming out to most.
27.9 million music fans interact with BandPage each month, and 870,000 do per day according to AppData. Those numbers were stronger a month ago before Timeline for Pages launched, which means Facebook’s redesign that prevents admins from setting an app like BandPage as their default landing page could be hurting developers. The service’s user count was even higher 6 months ago before the Facebook music streaming platform launched and more people began discovering songs through Spotify.
BandPage must continue cranking out improvements so it can fend off long-time competitor ReverbNation’s Band Profile and fast-growing upstart Tracks.by. There’s a ton of runway for these companies as MySpace withers, but the well-funded BandPage has a solid lead in capturing the long-tail of bands. BandPage now has to hope fans are as eager to splash their favorite artists across their Facebook Timelines as they’ve been to wear them on t-shirts.