ReverbNation provides a whole lot of tools for the artists, record labels, management and venues.
Rather than acting as a platform in its own right (although you can use it as such), ReverbNation supplies you with widget tools, fan signup tools, mailing lists, street team management facilities and lots of different reporting tools so you can see who is doing what with your music and where. It’ll also help you get your music into Facebook.
Positioning itself as a kind of Swiss Army knife of online music business, ReverbNation certainly has a lot of features and uses. But is it any good?
Using ReverbNation? Has it helped? Is all that reporting useful or just information overload? What’s the best thing about ReverbNation? The worst? Let’s hear what you think…
I’ve put Viridian on ReverbNation a while back and I think it’s great. The amount of tools you get out of it is pretty staggering and most of them are free. Of course, the tools are only as good as your use of them. Still, if you want to, you can make your RN profile the hub of your entire music promotion and distribution strategy on the Internet. Plus, you can manage your newsletter/fanclub from there, plus, you get a comprehensive set of statistics to tell you what effect your activities are having, plus, there is a growing community of artists (and fans) there (some pretty big names, too), so I wouldn’t underestimate the possibilities of additional exposure or networking.
My only gripe so far is that I haven’t discovered how (or if) I can put Polish letters in the e-mails. As for the rest, ReverbNation is one of the best free services for streamlining your web presence. I even like the interface and their scripts seem pretty stable. Highly recommended.
Hi!
I waited to see ReverbNation on New Music Ideas :) I tried a lot of music platforms but at the moment, ReverbNation is my favourite one by far. Why?
1. I feel it’s easy to use
2. I like the way it works, how you can edit your information, add content
3. There’s a lot of stats, really useful/informative
4. I think their mp3 players are great! You can customize them a bit, and it’s also a way to collect fans
5. ReverbNation offer other widgets like the fan collector so people can subscribe to your mailing list in an easy way
6. You can manage a street team, I don’t know any other plateform which offers this! Send “missions” to your street team, and they can use the tools (widgets) to not fail in their mission ;) like finding new fans for example
7. The mailing list. It’s well done and it looks good in Gmail for example (not the case of all the newsletter, with font size problems…). You can easily write and edit your newsletter to look good. You can export your subscribers list for Excel
One negative point would be that their widgets code is not valid on a html point of view but it’s a geek stuff ;)
The best out there, miss it at your peril. I’ve put many suggestions to ReverbNation and they always listen and have implemented pretty much all of them.
Now they’ve added the ability to get your stuff straight onto iTunes and other stores, and also included ‘Fan360’ which turns the email addresses of fans that were otherwise lacking info into something useful by filling in the gaps
Superduper
Hi,
since I ‘m a pretty chaotic person, a tool that let ‘s me manage a mailinglist in an easy way is a really cool thing and I don ‘t have to care about selecting the right adresses anymore.
So far that ‘s the main thing I ‘m using Reverbnation… a nice side effect is that Raketkanon is findable on Facebook too.
J.
I use reverbnation for just about everything, including building my website. The widgets are fast, clean, and customizable, and integrate well with just about anything, to the point where I’m considering hiding my myspace music player to put a RN widget up instead.
The only gripe I have about the service is the mailing system, Fanreach. Considering the fact that it’s free, it’s quite useful – but not nearly as customizable as the widgets. The confirmation email is a load of unnecessary information, and at first glance could almost be mistaken for spam. If the ability to customize it was added, so you could add a default personal message, free swag (outside of mp3s. I’m talking sheet music, ebooks, and the like), and make it a little cleaner, I would have very few wants from the system. Fanreach is solid for what it is – a free email list organizer – but with a little development could be much, much better.
Even so – I still use it daily, so don’t shy away. Without a doubt, it’s the most powerful free musicians’ resource I’ve come across.
I love ReverbNation. It’s very easy to use. Has more features than I typically need, but the ones I use, I feel like it does them very well.
Mostly useful for the Mailing list manager. It gives you breakdowns for geography and demographics in case you’re interested in that sort of thing.
My band, Super Adventure Club also uses it to put our tour dates and song player into our wordpress site.
Very powerful, easy to use and free!
I am not using RN; however, I did meet with the founder last week while on a trip I organized for Berklee’s music business club.
One person touched on the fact that they do digital distribution, which you did not mention. This is huge. They are practically offering the same service as TuneCore, on top of everything else.
They are also rolling out their own version of an EPK to compete with SonicBids.
They are also going to have sponsorship opportunities that will match products/services with the right band’s fanbase. When one of these opportunities comes about, each band/artist will have the option to opt in or not. RN shares all their profits 50/50 with the artist (that goes for regular advertising money they make from their website, too)
I was kinda late to the ReverbNation bandwagon but I’m glad I hopped on board. Its a very impressive site. Many, many features available for bands. I agree with some of the prior comments – the mailing list feature is a strong point. I’ve begun using it as my station’s ON AIR Alerts. I recommend all bands to have a presence on ReverbNation – if nothing else to get away from the hated myspace !
-Swede
fatcatradio.com
it is certainly a worthwhile place, and because it has been designed with music-makers in mind, it runs very smoothly. They seem to have taken notice of punters, too, as I notice there is a way to cutomise the confirmation email that people get when they sign up for your newsletter