

Facebook Has Been Sucking The Life Out Of Artist / Fan Communication - tangue
http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2012/11/facebook-has-been-sucking-the-life-out-of-artist-fan-communication.html

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tptacek
Note that one artist complaint, vocalized by David Lowery, is that Facebook
has also made it extremely difficult for artists to maintain fan relationships
outside of Facebook. The gravitational pull of Facebook and Youtube is so
strong that independent artist websites are outcompeted by default by any fan
activity on those sites. Facebook fan pages also tend to rank extremely well
on Google SERPs.

So the artists are doubly screwed, first by not being able to maintain a
direct fan relationship (which is what they need in order to exist outside of
the label system) and secondly by being forced to play by Facebook Edgerank
rules just to keep on their fan radar inside of Facebook.

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ChuckMcM
It will be ironic if Facebook causes MySpace to be reborn.

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qq66
There's already a mechanism to push out every piece of content that you create
to your fans: it's called email. (Also, RSS feeds on your website, blogs,
etc.)

For better or for worse, Facebook is a place that a billion people go to, and
they've decided to charge for access to that pipeline. The fact that they
would do this has been widely known for years, since Facebook Beacon. People
are on Facebook to see content from companies, friends, family, coworkers,
classmates, etc... in that jumble, your band isn't going to get first-class
placement for free.

If you don't want to get "monetized" by Facebook, don't tell your fans to
"Like" you on Facebook, tell them to sign up for your mailing list. If you
want the convenience and access that Facebook gives you, get ready to pay for
it.

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eropple
_There's already a mechanism to push out every piece of content that you
create to your fans: it's called email. (Also, RSS feeds on your website,
blogs, etc.)_

I'm 24. I don't communicate by email with anyone in my age group or, indeed,
anyone under 30, unless it's to pass around attachments (and that's rarer
these days with Dropbox). I know of one person my age or younger who actually
maintains an RSS reader; I tried, but I couldn't really be bothered. I know
_no_ non-technical people in that age bracket who make a point of regularly
reading blogs (but many who read one or two posts that reach them through--you
guessed it--Facebook).

Facebook is rapidly leaving _convenience_ territory, and that's what makes a
lot of their recent behavior concerning.

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jamesrcole
> _I don't communicate by email with anyone in my age group or, indeed, anyone
> under 30, unless it's to pass around attachments_

If you don't mind me asking, do you just use Facebook, or other means too
(e.g. Twitter, IRC, ...)? I'm just curious about what people are using these
days (I'm 34).

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eropple
I, personally, use email (with people who use email), Twitter (with a pretty
diverse group of people), Facebook (as little as possible), IRC (with
technical collaborators and some friends), AIM (a lot of people), and Google
Talk (a few people). I also use Campfire to talk to coworkers. Also, a lot of
text messaging.

But I'm not very representative. I don't say "everyone uses Facebook" because
I use Facebook, I say "everyone uses Facebook" because nobody uses the other
mechanisms that I mention (Twitter excepted, and in my experience that's a
very different type of crowd). ;)

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dromidas
This is most likely just a desperate grab by FB. Such a bad financial year
with the stock debacle.

They know they have let artists freely gain fan bases on facebook for years
now so they are able to control it with an iron fist. A good temporary budget
increase for them is to take that iron fist and grab all the artists by the
balls and squeeze them for all they're worth. Which when I put it that way it
sounds an awful lot like blackmail... _ahem_ anyway...

Will it get them a burst of money? Sure. Will it hurt facebook in the long
run? Probably. Does it really matter? Only time will tell.

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egypturnash
I find that Twitter does pretty well for communicating with my fans, and the
people I'm a fan of, without any of the modifications this guy would like to
see. YMMV.

On the other hand I've really never used Facebook much. Mostly because I
really hate its symmetrical following model. Which supposedly doesn't actually
apply any more… IF you can persuade people to hit the "subscribe" button
instead of the "friend" button, and good luck doing THAT. But people are in
that habit of friending EVERYONE back to broadcast their content, so they set
things up to spam themselves.

I really need to start pushing my content to Tumblr. IMHO that seems to be
where a lot of the action is nowadays. At least in the circles I'm interested
in selling stuff to.

(Disclaimer: yes, I know that anecdotes are not data. This is my experience
with getting the word out about my artwork.)

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danvoell
Bands have a product "music" which they need to market. Much like any
business. Some bands I have liked on Facebook, because they are friends, I
don't necessarily want to hear every piece of information from them. You are
asking Twitter to change its model to accomodate bands. Twitter seems to be
doing OK. Bands should change their model and not rely on MySpace then
Facebook then Twitter then ...

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TopTrix
I think the Google Plus is much better way and good combination of both world.
Everyone should think of switching to Google.

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simondlr
Great point. As G+ allows people to choose the filter settings for each
circle. Just add all musicians/artists into such a circle.

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Apocryphon
How does/did Myspace compare?

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k-mcgrady
I don't think it really compares. For the majority of artists Myspace was
their website so they never thought about being locked in like they do with
Facebook. Back then setting up your own website, hosting it somewhere, selling
content and merchandise through it, and blogging on it wasn't such an easy
thing for someone with little/no technical skills to do. Now you can setup a
Wordpress site, use Bandcamp for sales (which you can easily integrate with
your site), stream audio using Soundcloud (which you can embed) and it's
pretty easy for anyone to set it all up.

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wavesounds
I think people keep confusing "like" with "follow".

Just because I "like" Sierra Nevada beer doesn't mean I want updates from
them, maybe I just wanted to like it because AirTime will then use those likes
to link me up with someone else who likes Sierra Nevada beer. On the other
hand if I follow Sierra Nevada on Twitter its because I want to see their
every 140 character thought that they feel like sharing.

That being said I think he makes a good point about differentiating between
brands, artists, non-profits and individuals. Perhaps they should just expand
on "Subscribe", their version of "follow", so users have the choice.

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tangue
The "like" vs "follow" might be true today, but for many artists people
clicked on "become fan" not "like". That's a huge semantic difference.

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taylorlb
When they originally made the change from 'fan' to 'like' in 2010 I thought it
was enough of an issue to write something about it. It wasn't a very popular
complaint at the time though.

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