SONG CONTEST BLOG

Just joined BandCentral, a fan and task management service specifically developed for musicians and industry professionals.  It’s strikingly similar to Bandize, and playing in the same ball park as RockDex and ArtistForce.  The Band Status Updates, a one-click message syndication feature which posts to the band’s Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter profiles simultaneously, appears to be a lite variation of what ArtistData currently offers, along with a number of other dotcoms that aim to ease the pain of managing data across a number of social networks at once (I use Ping.fm to syndicate this blog).  The idea is simple: an affordable client relationship management solution for the music industry or, more simply put, a service for bands who manage their own fans.  How’s that for a strapline?  There’s also a number of key admin features for internal band use.  Watch the video:

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ReverbNation, the leading provider of dedicated music commerce and communication tools, have added a simple yet crucial feature to their roster.  The new optional ‘Auto-Tweet’ feature automatically updates ReverbNation members’ Twitter accounts whenever they post a new song (with a link to play the song), post a blog entry (with a link to the blog), recommend another artist (with a link to the artist’s profile page), and/or add a show to their schedule (with a link to their schedule and tickets).  Given ReverbNation’s strong emphasis on fan relationship management, I think ‘Auto-Tweet’ will be very well received by their userbase of more than 375,000 members.  It may also pose a threat to ArtistData who developed an entire suite of tools around the auto-syndication theme.  Given the popularity of services such as Ping.fm, I expect ReverbNation to extend this offering by allowing its users to synchronize and distribute updates to several social networks and bookmarking portals automatically, not just Twitter.

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ReverbNation, the prominent music marketing and promotion resource for over 375,000 artists, labels, managers, and venues, has launched FanReach Pro, a premium version of its successful FanReach email service used by more than 80,000 of its members to manage and communicate with their fanbase.  FanReach Pro boasts a number of distinct upgrades, including ‘One-Click Content’ which pulls the artist’s profile content (i.e. music, videos, gigs, press, links etc.) into any outbound message in a single click, saving much time and effort in the swift deployment of newsletters and promotional emails.  In addition, FanReach Pro includes ‘Fan360’, a semantic search feature that feeds back public data from the web about the individual mailing list subscribers.  This is especially useful when it comes to composing a compelling and targeted message, and provides a means to segment the mailing list based on subscriber characteristics (e.g. location, gender, age, and online presence).  To my knowledge, ‘Fan360′ will be the first real-time subscriber metrics feature incorprated into a web-based email client, perhaps making FanReach Pro the most powerful email/newsletter marketing tool on the market.
 
FanReach Pro is available for a 30-day free trial, and starting from $9.95 per month, which is significantly cheaper than its rivals and, in terms of its feature set, presents some serious competition for FanBridge.

ArtistForce, an online CRM solution and marketplace for the entertainment industry, made a controversial appearance at SXSW with a racy promotional campaign involving a hot blonde in a liquid latex sheath passing out flyers with “Thousands of artists get screwed every day.  Protect yourself with ArtistForce.com” printed on them and attached with complimentary condoms.

Founded in 2006, ArtistForce provides an online environment for entertainment industry professionals and talent to conduct negotiations directly, manage their business administration, track activities, and more, through proprietary technology applications and consultation services.