fuck this shit facebook.

bands should leave that closed ecosystem

yes, because myspace worked out so well...

Those are hardly the only two options.

I always prefer the artist's own web site and generally ignore their FaceBook and Myspace pages, and certainly don't bother with the Twitter misfeed.

Best,

- Versus

so glad I didn't spend the money to develop a music app for Facebook yet.. I'll let the dust settle before I get our developed!

I bet Spotify and Vevo will have nice shiny apps glowing brightly in our faces soon...

Who cares? Work on your own website. Don't give away your traffic to Facebook. One day you will wake up and it won't be there.

Fuck Facebook. Go out get your own domain. Load all your content onto it. Create a fanbase and interact with them directly - BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT FACEBOOK DID.....

Do you think THE SEX PISTOLS would have made a 'new format' FACEBOOK PAGE in 1977???

I don't fuckin think SO!

OPEN UP YOUR MINDS!

The Sex Pistols wouldn't, but Malcmolm McLaren would have made one for them.

Calm down everyone.

Check out @cashmusic tools.

Smells like opportunity.

If Facebook pages are used as they are supposed to be used ie: NOT for commerce, they will shine.

I like the previous comment about building up your own website.

Facebook & other social networks are supposed to compliment & drive traffic to a "real" web presence. It's so true, that we may wake up one day & FB will be gone. It happened to MySpace, why is it crazy to think it would happen to FB too?

Lora said it best. 

DIY and Facebook can't be used in the same sentence. If you are trully independent and got your own opinion (like artists are supposed to be, remember?), you got your own domain and you are throwing serious time and effort at it.

Guess who stands out from the crowd when I go through a list of e-mails from bands, asking me to get their songs on my publishing company's catalog.

Only 1-2 from 100 have their own domain. Fucking pathetic. This goes on every week. Here is how I translate the message from those 1-2 with their own site: "we care enough to spend $10 a month on hosting". I only talk to those and just delete the rest of that Facebook noise. Hey, why do business with people who don't take themselves seriously. Maybe Mark "laundry" Zuckenburger can buy them a burger and fries.

I'm no fan of Timeline, but I find it a little problematic that this article is so critical of Facebook while cheerleading for ReverbNation, since ReverbNation is a top-listed sponsor for Digital Music News.  Are any of these claims about the user reaction to Timeline independently verified?  It seems like ReverbNation is the only entity telling us how horrible this is going to be.

Look, I really like ReverbNation, but I already get their promotional emails.  Some fact-checking (or full disclosure at least!) would have been useful information for us Facebook and ReverbNation users.

Its a very fair and appropriate question, and I would absolutely be asking the same thing if I were in your shoes.

For the record, we (ReverbNation) did not say that the new timeline was going to be 'horrible' for artists, nor that their facebook pages were going to be decimated - that appears to be the opinion of Digital Music News editors. 

What we said was that fans were not able to quickly figure out how to play music, locate the concert schedule, etc. under the new layout where the all-in-one apps like our Band Profile no longer played the role of the default landing page.  We decided that this was an opportunity to revamp our approach to facebook apps for bands in a way that would be mutually beneficial for the Fans (b/c they would have an easier time locating content and information they were seeking), and the Artist (b/c a fan that finds what they want is a more satisfied fan than one that does not).

Whether you feel that the timeline change is a net negative or net positive for the Artists who use facebook (and I have already heard credible arguments both ways), one thing I hope we can all agree on is that Artists will need to always adapt their approaches based on the new realities of the environment.  The actions we've just taken with our apps are evidence of our belief in that.

I use Reverbnation, and as my band page on Facebook, however, while I like what it has to offer, the user interface & explanations I find to be quite lacking. Finding out how to do things, especially when there's problems, is IMHO, overly complicated & confusing. 

We don't have time to spend 30-60 minutes (or more) attempting to find out how to get past an obstacle (such as adding as app refusing to do so, etc), as we're configuring our page. I wish RN had a centralized manual, with more in-depth explanations of how various elements work, so we can easily do what we have to do, and not spend more time screwing with all this online stuff than we do playing, writing & recording the music our sites are intended to promote! Seems like many of my friends & I feel we are spending far too much time getting bleary-eyed and frustrated, dealing with all these pages & software & virtual complexities, than playing our axes, and that's not a good thing....

In terms of reaction to these changes, only two companies have approached us with researched information and plans to completely re-orient.  Those are ReverbNation and Nimbit.  There's certainly alot floating around and there may be releases and blog posts we've missed, but so far, that's what I've seen.

paul

Quick! Everybody panic! (or not)

Beyond the "panic" it is my personal opinion, formed immediately upon viewing a Timeline page for the first time, is that it offers an extreme inefficient, unwieldy, and counterintuitive interface.

It looked to me as if Facebook wanted to look like MySpace, and was ignorantly taking that fork in the road towards stupidity.

The silver lining in that cloud may well be that it drives most of us to get all the action going on our own sites.

Paul! "Fewer than" or "Under", not "Less Than".  Come on!

Ha - is this gonna be good???

BE READY!!

Let's all panic for no reason, shall we?

Here again... why you need to establish and maintain your own website that you direct everyone to.

These are important Facebook updates that artists MUST know about. 

Bring it on and get over it. Add your Web Links:-[ http://cleblabs.yolasite.com ] even if you are prior to the Beta phase. Experiment with the best and worst of the Net.

Why should Anyone have to be forced to use an "APP" to listen to independently (funded by Artists) MUSIC ??? There were numerous articles about many of these "apps" being Huge security holes and privacy intrusive for Bad purposes. Myspace is still around, even tho it was mishandled previously... You can have More "friends", there's fewer gadgets and games to slow pages down & you can listen to a song or songs without "signing up" for Apps.  Facebook  has become a  dominating Monopoly at best...      There are others music sites out there for artists that are far less demanding to use Their sponsor 3rd party apps.     We   Agree that if you can afford your Own music webpage....go for it. You don't need fancy flash or pages that take ages to load. Photos & song clips, blogs, gig events, or status updates can be simply and nicely put. Re: REVERBNATION - Why are you so dependent on Facebook now?? Every time We've tried to submit to an "Opportunity" on Reverbnaton Nation, it did NOT accept submission, saying we had to  log in with a Facebook band page!!! We don't have one, and don't want one for several Security reasons. It seems artists get Herded like Sheep, away from other feasible/friendly music sites to FB for the wrong reasons.... Monopolising & addictive  lures   make even More money thru advertisers &   marketers.    FB is ok for friendly banter, some comments, photos, jokes, world news, wierd news, etc... but to launch actual sales for an indie band... Not. CD baby, Soundclick , mixposure, broadjam, etc have been around awhile and most have fair Terms in their contract of use for Artist/Writers/Filmmakers/Musicians... and even Myspace is now more user friendly and there's still some Great music & videos on there worldwide. Fair Competition is Healthy. Monopolising is not. GREEED kills. You are not saying here that EVERYONE on FB is forced into Timeline in 2 weeks are you??? It looks like just Band Pages, right??? .

@Rebel Rebel,

You don't need to have a facebook page or facebook login to submit to opportunities on our site - only a ReverbNation account. 

If you are seeing somethig that says you have to have a facebook login, please send a screenshot of it (or just a description) to support [at] reverbnation.com so that they can take a look.  I suspect that it must be a bug in the software of some kind.  We'd like to take care of it right away.

Thanks,

Jed

Change is inevitable... sometimes for the good, sometimes not...Either way its gonna happen.

Makes you wonder what did we do before social media..can u remember what you were doing?

Hey there, 

I gave a talk at SXSW last week about Best Practices for Musicians on Facebook, and the first 1/3 of it was focused specifically on optimizing your timeline page. 

I thought you might apporeciate seeing it, here's the link: 

How to Win & Engage Fans on Facebook: 

http://www.nimbit.com/how-to-win-engage-fans-on-facebook-sxsw-presentation/

Please let me know what you think. 

Thanks, 

Carl 

Nice presentation, thanks for sharing!