Filip: Even though I wasn’t agreeing with your Facebook skepticism in the beginning, I realized that I was overestimating Facebook in its promotion role. I’ve been creating extremely successful, targeted (extremely low budget though – just 5 or 10 euros at a time) campaigns for my band on Facebook.

Results?

Even though I managed to inflate the number of fans (with 12 fans/1 euro average), the interaction stayed the same. These campaigns aren’t entirely useless, though – having this number of fans or more looks nice in a smaller Croatian market and can help in booking bigger shows (thus getting to more fans)..but still dissappointing. I won’t campaign until we release a website/album/have something to sell.

Rene: I like your observation. The first was that gaining these paid likes does not really increase interactions and increase your reach. As I am saying to the In Legend guys all the time: “Money invested in facebook or even effort in facebook reach is not the best way to increase one’s reach” I am very glad that you came to the same conclusion and shared your insights!
Secondly I partially agree with the effect of large fan numbers while booking gigs. It certainly looks good to business partners like bookers, labels, distributers,… if your social media numbers burst. But again I would say the price is too high. With 1 Euro / 12 fans you would need to invest 1000 Euro for 12’000 fans an 12’000 isn’t even skyhigh (well I don’t know about croation standards). But as we know only a very small fraction of these 12’000 fans would actually become real fans and start interacting with you. All this for getting a gig! I guess this money could much better be invested in a high quality video which especially for a young band is a very good investment. With the video in combination with smart music downloads you will be able to increase your reach. Maybe not to 12’000 fans but still to a solid number of real fans that actually come to your concert because they really care! In this way your social media fancount (especially facebook) will also grow.

Filip: Question1 – sharing music!
About the thesis of providing music only on the band site – I think it’s hard for someone to become our fan if there is no music on Facebook. Choosing one song for preview and directing a fan to .com might work, but they are attracting entirely different audiences – think poppy indie rock vs. oriental, modern metal ballad. Is it okay to let this promo run free and spread like wildfire until the album release? Or should I provide 2/3 of songs for free, and ask for a mail adress for the 3rd one? This might be a good model.

Rene: I agree with what you say. At the time of writing the blog post you are referring too I wasn’t aware of the existing facebook music apps. The important thing is getting a sustainable contact to the person interested in your music. This is achieved ultimately by his email adress. But your question is very important. Of course you have to give people a bait. This could be

1. snippets
2. entire song(s) on streeming
3. a music video (In legend offers downloads under every music video)
4. a free download (without registration)

and I really don’t know where to set the boarder.
In the beginning times of In Legend we had 3 songs for streaming on myspace and 4 songs on the ep for download in exchange of an email adress. That turned out to be a good solution. People who liked the first songs where curious to download them together with one additional song. So I guess a 2/3 split would work as well. I will just warn you. Asking people for their mail address scares 4 of 5 people away. But hey at least you get the adresses of your fans that are really willing to give something for the music!
Now about the place where to make the connection. If you achive getting the fans mail adress via a smart Facebook music player or via download on your homepage I don’t care. Once people like your music (and chances are higher once you can talk to them frequently) they will also turn into facebook fans. So I recommend switching from rootmusic which you are using right now on your facebook profile to bandRX or Songpier since both services allow you to give access to your music in return of mail adresses. Songpier is a very new service but they also offer a cool mobile app (right now also without collecting mail adresses)
Here is a video about bandRX

Filip: Question2 – What do you think of Bandcamp?
I personally think it’s a great platform for selling music and there is an option of collecting mail adresses. The downside is that there is no valuable content that can be published, like blogs. It would be perfect if it was just a music-streaming, checkout widget on my site.

Rene: One of my Favourite (but retired) bands Jester’s Funeral have just published all their songs to bandcamp and have linked to their homepage and from the homepage to bandcamp. It is not quite the widged you are asking for but I guess this stays an option especially if you don’t bring the technical know how of programming a homepage that enables you to offer your music as a download in exchange of mail adresses.
There is only one thing that bothers me about bandcamp. They only let 200 fans per month download your music for free (email exchange) and offer a pay as much as you want option. From the money raised they keep 15% as a service charge. If you want more free downloads you have to buy them or have people pay for your music.
To some extend they offer a fair deal. It is a good service for a reasonable price. I as a programmer would just do it on my own have the full controll of my data and keep the 15% but I am pretty convinced that bandcamp should be a pretty good option for many musicians
I hope I could answer your questions to your satisfaction! Sorry that there isn’t always the clear black our white, right or wrong. Things are complex on the web but by reading your mail I am very convinced that you are asking the right questions which means that at least in online marketing you are far ahead of 95% of all musicians!