FanBridge Adds Key Musician, Direct To Fan Services To Facebook Fan Pages
Last week FanBridge announced the Partner Ecosystem for their Facebook Fan Page app, an integration of service modules from 12 different companies offering everything from ticket and merch sales via CrowdSurge to crowdfunding via PledgeMusic to live streaming via Stickam.They're basically building a platform on top of Facebook's platform so, after acquiring Damn The Radio for the foundation, they're now enriching that foundation by connecting with other popular service providers.
FanBridge, a Hypebot sponsor, announced that they could have created all these modules themselves but chose to focus on specialized companies. They've also updated their Facebook Fan Page app with a new design and dashboard.
The lineup for the new Partner Ecosystem is pretty impressive and includes:
- IndieGoGo – crowdfunding platform
- Songkick – concert schedules & alerts
- Topspin – direct-to-fan marketing & sales
- Stickam – youth-centric live video chat
- SoundCloud – you've heard it
- Dympol – Charitable Checkout
- Bandsintown – concert listings & promotions
- PledgeMusic – crowdfunding music releases
- Nimbit Spotlight – music sales & social media
- Moontoast – ecommerce on FB & elsewhere
- CrowdSurge – ticketing & merch sales
- Owjo – FB & web stores
Obviously there's some overlap in services, particularly in the ecommerce area, indicating that FanBridge is going for an open platform that's focused on quality providers yet isn't locking in exclusive relationships. That approach should make the Ecosystem a real winner for FanBridge and for musicians that choose to use their Facebook Fan Page app.
If you think your company should be part of the Partner Ecosystem, FanBridge invites you to contact them for more information.
Hypebot contributor Clyde Smith maintains his freelance writing hub at Flux Research and blogs at All World Dance and This Business of Blogging. To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.
Interesting idea ::cough, idea stolen from “another company,” cough:: but not the greatest choice in partners in my opinion.
Why are there so many choices for Facebook commerce? The ones chosen are the lowest on the totem pole when it comes to features and functionality through FB integration. I want to sell ON Facebook, not link out elsewhere. TopSpin is THE most overrated platform on that list. Extremely clunky and confusing.
Only ones worth giving a damn about are SoundCloud, Pledge Music, and BandsInTown.
I wish all of these technology companies would get it right and stop cluttering the marketplace for artists. Thanks, but no thanks!
Given that some of these services do offer ecommerce on FB pages and in the feed, I guess you’re only partially familiar with which would be “worth giving a damn about.”
I’d tell you who but since ~cough~ you’re going to play coy ~cough~, it doesn’t really seem worth my time to bother.
In any case, building platforms and partnering with a bunch of companies is a pretty well established concept on the web. I doubt a music tech company was the first to demonstrate that business strategy. If so, technology and business writers have done music startups a huge disservice.
But I doubt it.
Everyone here at Nimbit is really pleased to be part of this launch, and I’d like to congratulate Fanbridge on it. If you’re interested in seeing how well Nimbit integrates, take a look at one of our first artists to set up a Fanbridge Fan Page with a Nimbit store: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Barbara-Kessler/254256041216?sk=app_108468622525037
Apparently I have struck a nerve with you, yet I’m not necessarily trying to. I’m not particularly interested in an ecommerce or crowdfunding solution, but I seriously find it annoying that every day there is this *new* company and *that* new company, which only saturates the market even more and confuses the end-user.
What’s even worse is that I’ve only seen overviews of services on this site, never a comparison of similar products, so how are artists suppose to REALLY know which services stack up better without all the trial and error of signing up for accounts and doing research? Isn’t that what you guys are supposed to do?
The truth is, none of them are that much different from the next and most will claim to be one way, but actually aren’t. I’m assuming this is why there is more than one company listed for touring, ecommerce, and crowdfunding that FanBridge has teamed up with.
I’ve never been one for the “cookie cutter” applications and can only imagine that jumbling all of these technologies into one mega app on Facebook is going to be more trouble than good for most of these partners.
Just my 2 cents. And, I won’t comment on the last paragraph, as it has nothing to do with what I’m referring to.
Damn, I just wrote a long thoughtful response and stupid Typepad ate it. Normally I copy anything long before hitting post and didn’t do that this time. So, here’s the short version.
Sorry if I overreacted. Your valid concerns now make sense to me.
The last paragraph refers to your first comment since I thought you were saying one company had previously come up with the idea of working with multiple companies on one platform, in this case, a Facebook app. Obviously that’s an old idea but apparently that’s not what you mean so I guess you were focusing on clustering companies on one Facebook app. And I can only think of one prior to that in this space but the name escapes me at the moment.
But that’s really not a very original idea so being the first wasn’t that big a thing in my mind.
The reality of tech blogging is that most bloggers don’t really have time to use products at the depth needed to truly evaluate them and certainly nobody can honestly compare more than a couple of services at best.
In my case, that’s partly because I write about the kind of services that can only truly be tested over time. And nobody writes about that except for the services that are so popular that everybody’s using them or that the blogger uses personally.
So I used to complain about the considerable problems of Typepad and Yahoo Business News in comments, etc., which got a total pass from tech bloggers cause they were always using WordPress and Gmail.
Twitter goes down for a half hour and it’s headline news. Typepad goes through months of problems and it’s hard to find anything outside of random comments in forums.
The problem is the blogging and review business model doesn’t support what you need.
Maybe somebody could start something like Yelp for such products. It’s a huge gaping hole in the market yet I’ve also found that truly thoughtful reviews don’t necessarily get enough traffic to justify in a business sense.
I think it can be more easily done with apps but you look at something like Evolver.fm, which does a great job, and you rarely see follow up reviews saying this app was great but every few days it was down and it periodically developed this other weird problem that made it useless.
To truly test this stuff requires more time than anybody has who’s a professional and nobody else has the incentive to do anything but write about the stuff they use.
So, I expect you’ll remain frustrated. And this is a problem across the board with services and products that I don’t see anybody solving that well in the tech space.
Hi Stephen,
Goal here is to work with best in class partners to make shared clients lives easier, and ultimately to let the data speak for itself. 100% agreed that the marketplace is cluttered for artists, which is exactly why we want to keep digging into the actual data (not just talk about it) and really uncover the real value in these relationships across fans, partners, etc.
That said, would love to hear who you think we should be partnering with as we expand the Partner Ecosystem. Would also be interested in hearing your thoughts on how we can best surface the information here so that we are making things easier vs. more cluttered. Feel free to give us a ring at (212) 464-8969 or email us (http://www.fanbridge.com/contact.php) and we can setup a time to touch base.
We always encourage healthy skepticism at FanBridge, but just ask that it is shared with the intent of adding/creating value vs. broadly pontificating which doesn’t really do anything for anyone.