Rhapsody, BandPage Partner For More Personalized Streaming, Direct To Fan Commerce
From its humble start as a Facebook enhancement app, BandPage has promoted itself as an artist marketing and monetization tool. Over the last year, thanks to a much evolved offering and key partnerships, that vision is paying off both for BandPage and for the 500,000 musicians who use it to connect with fans.
Today, BandPage announced a major partnership with streamer Rhapsody to create a new kind of personalized streaming music experience.
Rhapsody users will now be alerted when their favorite band is coming to town and get more information about new bands they discover. Uber fans – those who listen and engage the most – can be treated as VIPs and directly notified of special opportunities like private shows, and custom recordings.
This new partnership is all part of BandPage's master plan to connect artist info (photos, bio, concert dates) and commerce (merch sales, VIP experiences) directly with fans wherever they are discovering and consuming music. BandPage has a variety of similar partnerships with Spotify, Google, Shazam, Stubhub, SoundCloud, Live Nation and others.
Using Data To Connect Artists With True Fans
But the Rhapsody partnership goes a bit further. What fans want to see and hear is now being derived by applying complex analytics to the “big data” sets created by Rhapsody users. "Rhapsody users listen to tracks, favorite songs, follow musicians and share tracks with friends. Taken together, these millions of data points paint a clear picture of fans’ favorite musicians, " according to the two companies. Rhapsody then delivers fans compelling things from their favorite musicians like upcoming shows and special opportunities about the band.
"We’ve known that we were sitting on a goldmine of information about music fans and have been looking for ways to help drive revenue for musicians while improving the user experience,” said Greg Spils, Director, Traffic & Demand at Rhapsody International. “By partnering with BandPage, we’ve lit upon a solution to create the full music service experience: one place where fans can listen to music, get updates and special offers from their favorite bands, and learn about new bands.”
“For the first time ever, we can help musicians reach their fans where they are spending the most time in a highly targeted way which also creates a great user experience for the fan," said J Sider, CEO and Founder of BandPage. "The fan never gets anything that feels like spam, they will only see offers for their favorite bands. It’s truly a ‘win-win’ where the fan gets what they want, which, in turn, drives more revenue for musicians.”
