Bandpage has been trying to rebuild as a cross-web tool for managing musician presences since it got steamrolled by Facebook Timeline. Today it took a big step towards its “publish once, update everywhere” dream with exclusive deals to be how artists manage their profiles on VEVO and Xbox Music. These platforms have tens of millions of users, meaning Bandpage is suddenly somewhat of a necessity.
I’ll try to make a long, painful story short. Bandpage started as an app bands could add as Facebook Pages to show off streaming music, bios, photos, and tour dates. The old Pages design let musicians set Bandpage as their default landing tab. It quickly grew to host 500,000 artists, see 32 million monthly visitors, and raise a $16 million Series B. But in early 2012 when Facebook switched Pages to the Timeline design and removed the default landing tab ability,
Bandpage lost 90% of its traffic.
With so much investment it needed a
new strategy, so a year ago it settled on helping bands keep
their whole web presence synced and up to date from a central dashboard. That included their websites, Facebook, WordPress blog and more. Then in March of this year it launched
“Experiences” to allow artists to sell unique merchandise, backstage passes, meetups, and more as an extra revenue stream.
The problem was that Bandpage wasn’t totally necessary. There were other ways for artists to update their Facebook, website, blogs, and other presences, so it looked to sign deals with the new music streaming services and platforms. My sources tell me and Bandpage CEO J Sider confirms that it was in talks with Spotify to power artist management of profiles, but “that didn’t end up happening”.
Luckily it’s getting its second chance at relevance with today’s deal. If artists want to customize and manage their profiles on Vevo, the YouTube-based music video platform, or Xbox Music, Microsoft’s new gaming console music streaming service, they have to go through Bandpage.
Bandpage free tools will let artists update their profile picture, biography, and tour dates on Vevo, and their pic and bio on Xbox Music. Sider tells me the goal is to help these artists forge a stronger connection with their fan, get more engagement, and eventually earn more money.
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