Tuesday, July 7, 2015

OCCUPY YOUR MUSIC - Part 8a

Reverbnation conclusion - and kudos to Taylor Swift!

First of all, Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas!

Before I conclude my experience with Reverbnation, I have to, again, give HUGE kudos to Taylor Swift who in recent battle for us all with Itune Music won a historic battle.

She proved exactly what I've been talking about in this series of my blogs called - Occupy Your Music. She, in case you didn't know, took her last album off the Spotify because she refused to have them use it without the right remuneration, and her CD sales broke all the records! She also refused to give her music to Itune Music for their 30 day free trial without the proper royalties to all the artists. They listened, and at the end changed their initial plan! Now all the artists are receiving the royalties, not only her. This is nothing but revolutionary. And she deserves all respect for her integrity and fight for the importance of music in general.

Now the time will show what the further changes are coming. For this, all of us should step in and start respecting our music more and fight for the right treatment. I can't wait to see what happens next!

Back to the Reverbnation story, as I tried to explain in my last post, my general experience with Reverbnation was positive. For truly free service you really get a lot, tailored to artist needs. However, for anything more substantial (and this is not the fame or fortune! Only a little more listens and comments, fans, and ranking) you still need to spend a lot of time working on your profile.

This work brings me to the main point I want to make about Reverbnation. The ranking system, the way it's working to date, is only based on your hard work. They even state that in their promo. The more you work on your profile, communicate with other fans and artists, send emails, etc - basically the more you bother people in your network, the higher your ranking will be. This is unfortunately NOT a reflection of your music and profile popularity.

Everybody there is working for the same purpose - to bring their ranking higher. Most of the artists there are hardly listening to others, unless you beg them or drag them to your profile to do it, which is in my view not the way. You can, for example, get ten followers from twitter in a day, and if it's linked to your profile it will directly influence your ranking to put it to #1 in your category, although those people never even check your profile, not to mention listen to your music! This should somehow change, but given that most people online are there for their own self promotion, I don't really believe much can be done to change it.

Another thing that I have to add that I'm noticing is that slowly what once was completely free, now has a price! This seems to be the direction where most of similar services are targeted to. First they start truly free, and then it all changes. On Reverbnation, submitting to the opportunities was free, now you have to pay the basic plan for that! I am curious to see how much the public will be patient to sustain that and remain on their sites.

Over time, it has become the least of my concern how high my profile in their ranking is. What is good though is the opportunity to connect with people, promote your gigs, share songs and videos, and if you really have time, to listen to other artist's music. It is mind boggling how much good music is out there, unfortunately, music that will never have a chance to get to a place it really deserves. Why? I will try to explain that in my next post...

Thanks for reading...