Reverb Nation

What more can music social networks offer bands and artists today other than a place to post their music and content for others to see and use freely. Where are the real time tools to help artist promote themselves and and help organize their content and careers. One up and coming music 2.0 company, Reverb Nation, is trying to fill the gap between social networking and quality marketing tools for artists, musicians, and venues. As this has proved to be a very daunting task which no site today has fully grasped, Reverb Nation is by far the closest in achieving those goals and has potential in being the go-to site for musicians, venues, and promoters.

As a very feature rich site, Reverb Nation has a large list of free tools to help musicians promote and sell their music/brand. At a quick glance , lets go down the list of free offerings from this site. Artist Profile, Band Equity, Street teams, Tune Pack, Facebook Applications, Bebo Applications, Gig Finder, Buzz Tracker, Fair Share, Widgets, Store link, Retail links Widget, Detailed Stats, Fan Reach.

Not everything is free on Reverb Nation though. They carry some specialty tools for musicians and promoters that come with a cost. These features include their digital distribution package, Reverb press kits (which is more of a summary page of your profile than an actual deliverable press kit), fan 360, mega song storage, and fan reach pro. While Reverb Nation has become rather popular recently, the fact remains that they are taking a 'strictly business' approach to artist promotion, charging a premium for many of their services, and employing devious methods of driving fan traffic, such as their 'Exclusive Content' feature. Forcing fans to hand over personal information for access to full streams of your posted tracks doesn't seem much different than forcing them to pay money, and Music 2.0 is all about embracing Free and casting a very wide net to capture the attention of fans rather than shutting them out by making them pay.

Reverb Nation was founded in October of 2006 and has been gaining a steady stream of users and popularity since its conception. Popular musicians such as Depeche Mode and Maddona to Lil Wayne and Pantera have profiles on the site where you can view their information and listen to their music. Obviously Reverb Nation has a relationship with one or more major record labels and many more independent labels but they are not disclosing that information to the public. As a tools and social networking site for marketing your band or music, Reverb Nation is a good avenue to promote your content. I am a bit skeptical of the company in some way's though. Since they do not disclose their standings with major and independent record labels and do not discuss their stance on how your information is used or not used by their company. Its hard to say where their standing is with the privacy of your content and information and how it is used by their company , investors, and partnered labels and other company's. In today's world of marketing sharks and big name partnerships, who knows how safe your content and user information really is.

Reverb Nation Summary:

• Music source: Major Record Label Catalogs, Independent Record Label Catalogs, Independent Musicians
• Platform: Basic HTML based web service with flash Application in Web Browser
• Target Audience: Mainstream followers, Independent music fallowes, Bands and musicians, Facebook and Twitter Users