General Music Chat

Well this weekend was a mix of surprises.
I've been rocketing for months now, and was until yesterday, just 500 places off my third #1 position on reverbnation. Dang I've worked so hard to get this far, and yes numbers DO count.

This morning I noticed a change of -1 globally, I thought that odd since I rarely get less than 25 plays a day now, doing pretty well, with some astoundingly good musicians around too.

I looked at the trending stats, I was no longer there, I'm always there, always busy, always hounding, not anymore. I have some kid there with 47 fans probably about to overtake me lol

Notice the adds above here? (Reverb). I found a lot of people complaining on reverb that they move up and down like yoyos, some have even been deleted. Some, like me are starting to think that paying for services, gets the upper hand in chart positions. While reverb are staying pretty quiet on this, thousands, perhaps more are now affected.

This all started taking place last week apparently, so my guess is that the charts are fake, do not count, even though thousands have wasted many hours on pushing their own material, I feel sorry for all of them, not only myself.

I'm certainly not going to pay for places, even if stats are what people look for, when customer confidence goes, so do pundits looking for talent.

I'm fairly decided that I'll keep reverb for now, turn stats off like many are doing and leave it there for a while. But concentrate fully on getting my site back up and running, with a new album in the works. Trouble is that I got a lot of interest locally but in all honesty the charts helped some.

Smacks aof facebook antics too. I doubt I'll ever join anything else again, just stay solo, it lessons the 'Surprises'.

Cheers folks, just in case some of you haven't seen the changes, or been affected by them YET.

Yours Chipfryer

Problem with reverbnation is that only musicians and people in the business go to the site. They have zero visibility to the actual fans that matter.

I set up an account there only because unsigned (another muso-only site) can't even get simple html tags to work in their bio section, so instead of 5 easily readable separate paragraphs, everything is just one huge lump of words..

reverbnation also emails me like 5 times a day .. it's beyond annoying, and that's with all the email options turned off. I will remove the profile once I find a suitable alternative (probably bandmix is better when it comes to profiles anyways).

In my short time at Reverbnation I quickly came to realize it is mostly just a popularity thing. Artists fan Artists more than anything else. And it seems insincere. but there are some really good artists to be found. More talent then I've seen on any other site. Just blew me away when i started to search other cities. I try to fan only those I really enjoy anymore and ignore the rest.
I've seen ads for reverbnation Artists all over the internet. Even occasionally here at BM. One comes to mind is Dylan Taylor out of Nashville. I've seen her ad on Yahoo sports sites news sites etc...
So Revebnation does serve a purpose for the artist but it does cost to get there.
If you have the goods use every option out there to try and get yourself heard. And keep working at it and hope a little luck comes your way.
Best to know what you're dealing with and find ways to use it to your advantage.
Just like Ourstage... at least they lowered their prices.
Good Luck CF!

Like has already been said, reverbnation seems to be 99.99% musicians and music-business people. I've had a couple of friends sign up to get my updates, but they can see them on Facebook too.
Annoying thing about RN is the gig listings - seems that if years are not entered (it may have not been required when setting up events in the past), they now pop up each year on that date!

Is Bandcamp any better - do non-musicians actually go there?

Hi, I hadn't heard of Bandcamp at all, I guess sites are all over the place.
I agree the adds are a GOOD thing, I just don't want that tied to my presence there frankly, that defeats the object, makes things unclear, and belies trust. Trust is everything in my BOOK.

I think most of you would be surprised really. There are some really fab people on RN, I mean REAL people with no axes to grind, all are there for the same reason, and I do not care a hoot if most are musicians, bring it on, no worries. I doubt I'll ever get an account here, there seems little point, it isn't global here, most speak English in any case on RN and there are some wonderful bands/people and music to be listened to. I count out about 25 songs a day listened to by me, they are all new, I do it because I love music.

Anyway, I've probably helped more than hindered RN, but my intentions are clear, clarity, knowing what is right to do, and what is wrong. Simple stuff.

However this trusting soul lives in the wrong era, but does what he can, and will always speak out against injustice. It seems as though I have been re-instated again. I know about algorithms, but will shortly start building my 'brain' site again in the near future

Cheers all.

Chipfryer

If it suits you, you speak out you mean..

If not, you remain as silent as the rest of the world.

RN is a mediocre vehicle to get your material "heard" by the "masses." It is a convenient way to get material on a website quickly, and you certainly can market yourself on it. But IMO there are other much better websites to market yourself on. Some of them you'll have to spend a few bucks to be on, but you get what you pay for. I like the idea of test marketing your material on Jango. If you're a metal band you can market yourself alongside famous metal acts. You'll know pretty quick how you can stack up to any artist.
If I ever put out a CD, and that's looking dubious at this point, I would market it on Jango immediately.

A lot of people use CDBaby. For $40, you get your music available on iTunes (I don't know details) - but you still need to market it yourself.
I also heard that if you want CDBaby to sell physical copies of your albums, you have to send them copies - and if they don't sell, they'll ask you if you want them returned (at your expense) or shredded!

I don't understand, Reverb is a place to post music for musicians and they make money by making you think you have opportunities THROUGH them to get gigs and into contests. They have you, all of your info and they then get paid to sell your info and try to get you to buy into their deals and all they have to do is satisfy you with a little chart.

I am on Reverb, if you use it wisely, to find other musicians and connect and post your music and vids, while ignoring their constant e-mails of offers, then you are doing okay.

If you want people "fans" to hear your music, then you go to "Radio Airplay" and "Hardcore Mix" or "Pandora" and put your stuff onto the internet radio and rake in real fans who listen to your music from all over the world....they do the same to you, sell your info and e-mail you, but you have contact with fans rather than musicians.

That's just my experience.

Hi Tams,
Boy thems words is wise ones indeed. Yes, you are completely right of course, but I think the whole ball is too in some ways.
What they have done is narrow down the zip code base. Which means of course more #1's, which in turn means more people entering into services thinking they have a chance. Very clever policy.
However the backend Chart, the REAL BIG one is a good indicator. I do have some really good numbers in there, they seem to progress each week too. It will stall out sometime I expect, but charts is charts frankly.

Very best, great reply, and lot of truth in it too, I will be going that way this year. Thank you.

Chipfryer

I don't understand, Reverb is a place to post music for musicians and they make money by making you think you have opportunities THROUGH them to get gigs and into contests. They have you, all of your info and they then get paid to sell your info and try to get you to buy into their deals and all they have to do is satisfy you with a little chart.

I am on Reverb, if you use it wisely, to find other musicians and connect and post your music and vids, while ignoring their constant e-mails of offers, then you are doing okay.

If you want people "fans" to hear your music, then you go to "Radio Airplay" and "Hardcore Mix" or "Pandora" and put your stuff onto the internet radio and rake in real fans who listen to your music from all over the world....they do the same to you, sell your info and e-mail you, but you have contact with fans rather than musicians.

That's just my experience.

I had a few minutes last night, so started exploring RN a little differently than normal. I went into the 'charts' (which are local) as I noticed I had "moved up" to #24 (had been around 35 for a long time), but realized that was because my primary genre was 'rock'.
I started looking at the singer-songwriter chart (there is no 'acoustic' primary genre), and in the top 10 (the area was fairly wide, north of Boston through mid-New Hampshire) had some people who I have to say could not sing/write worth a damn! I'm no singer, but a couple of these people were pretty bad - and many had virtually no 'fans' on RN, either.
So I changed my primary genre, let's see if I rocket up the charts now!

I think this thread is important, there are a plethora of sites out there offering this and that, I think Tams has the best suggestion for anyone trying to break through frankly - Radio, and local performances too of course.

I'm certain they are marking down bands that aren't paying for services, or using their FANREACH. Incidentally there are a number of concerns regarding that. Your Physical address is shown at the foot of every NewsLetter that is sent. No matter what you try, it still appears. Some have managed to change it, most do not know, or do not care, I certainly do care.

Dates have been removed from comments.

These people are certainly not happy and with good reason it seems
http://support.reverbnation.com/reverbn ... rt_shuffle

Some like myself have noticed that the more active you are, the worse it gets lol

I really do think Reverb shot themselves in the foot this time.
Cheers ~ Chipfryer

Chip the whole thing is flawed from the word go. I could spend all day playing my songs on my player and at the end of the day have hundreds of hits, but is that any real indication of songs played? Artists fan Artists just to add to their totals... Bollocks. I would guess these things are happening to raise rankings.
Not saying all people do this just that it's a flawed system. I don't get how someone could have tens of thousands upon thousands of their songs played and not get any attention from the industry. Who is listening to these songs and why isn't the band getting offers? Maybe some do... I don't know.
It would be interesting to hear from those that have garnered some real attention from reverbnation.

They did make some errors and probably needs some time to correct things. (Some active accounts were deleted from the comments.)

Not quite sure what anyone expects from these sites... they're a free place to post your music, direct people to it by the link, network with others. To me the real advantage is when you spend some money to get promo ads of your site.

Also not everyone is angry or upset about the changes.

The Gonzo Symphonic Presents: 6 days ago
I'll reiterate again: We have not bought any promotion or advertising from RN or anyone else, and we moved up in the chart significantly. It's clearly not just a ranking of what promotional services you've bought. If you've dropped, it's from something other than simply not spending money with RN.

This happened to me as well I went from around 120 to 60 overnight. They seem inconsistent in appearance without any explanation.I guess I don't really see all the fuss... what is really lost in all of this?

By changing from 'rock' to 'singer-songwriter' as my primary genre, I went from #24 to #14 (and a bigger area, I think), but haven't checked today to see what's been jumbled.
Like Jahva says, its a (free) place to point people to so that they can hear your tunes.

Wotcha Jahva. Yes I agree, what to expect from anything on the Internet is true. I'm not knocking Reverb, I quite liked it. It was fun being matched up against a lot of talent. There are some nice folks I would never have met otherwise too.
What they do not do, is tell you exactly what causes your rank to reach a higher level, or in fact lower it.

Anyway, life is short enough. I just thought it was news worthy. I'm writing new stuff, and will be a better judge on what to do with it now.
Cheers folks.
Bestest, keep well Jahva

Chipfryer

==============

Chip the whole thing is flawed from the word go. I could spend all day playing my songs on my player and at the end of the day have hundreds of hits, but is that any real indication of songs played? Artists fan Artists just to add to their totals... Bollocks. I would guess these things are happening to raise rankings.
Not saying all people do this just that it's a flawed system. I don't get how someone could have tens of thousands upon thousands of their songs played and not get any attention from the industry. Who is listening to these songs and why isn't the band getting offers? Maybe some do... I don't know.
It would be interesting to hear from those that have garnered some real attention from reverbnation.

They did make some errors and probably needs some time to correct things. (Some active accounts were deleted from the comments.)

Not quite sure what anyone expects from these sites... they're a free place to post your music, direct people to it by the link, network with others. To me the real advantage is when you spend some money to get promo ads of your site.

Also not everyone is angry or upset about the changes.

The Gonzo Symphonic Presents: 6 days ago
I'll reiterate again: We have not bought any promotion or advertising from RN or anyone else, and we moved up in the chart significantly. It's clearly not just a ranking of what promotional services you've bought. If you've dropped, it's from something other than simply not spending money with RN.

This happened to me as well I went from around 120 to 60 overnight. They seem inconsistent in appearance without any explanation.I guess I don't really see all the fuss... what is really lost in all of this?