Is ReverbNation A Good Social Networking Site for Musicians

ReverbNation claims to be a social networking site that helps artists, especially upcoming ones, to grow their music careers by building innovative tools that can promote their success, showcasing them to Reverbnation fans, and introducing them to helpful partners in the music industry. But the question is whether this claim is true.

The truth of the matter is ReverbNation doesn’t seem like a good social networking site for musicians but rather a waste of time and resources. This conclusion is drawn from many users’ experiences and responses. In short, ReverbNation, though has cool and neat tools, has spammy and confusing backend interface, and does not offer any true engagement.

Effective Tools

Reverbnation comes with real, cool, effective, and interesting tools. These tools are best to upload your music and also create flash-based player widgets to insert into your website. This means that visitors to your website can listen to your music using effective players. They can also share your music or join your mailing list.

That seems to be the best about ReverbNation as their backend interface is nothing less than confusion. The interface has lots of unnecessary tools and users are exposed to lots of spams in the name of opportunities. These are sure ways Reverbnation adopts to make money on their site. Lots of people have complained that they lost a lot of money in the name of tapping into these so-called opportunities. Sorry!

Rating System

And another disheartening fact about ReverbNation is that you cannot use it to build your popularity. ReverbNation uses a kind of chart system that rate artistes in different rankings based on music categories. You probably would have seen an artist claim he is the #3 artiste in his zip code for a particular sub-genre or #1 artiste in his zip code for a category. Sometimes these artists go as far as to Facebook to solicit people to help them rise in ratings. They believe getting to the top rank would help them to sell their songs and gather new Reverbnation fans.

However, it is discouraging that these people despite being in #1 did not experience any improvement in their CD sales neither do they get anyone out to performances. This is simply because ReverbNation has NO new fans on its platform.

Some users become your fans without any comment. Some others become your Reverbnation fans and review tour song so you could become theirs too. Something like: “Like my page as I’ve liked your page.” The truth is these fans don’t even listen to the song before they review, so the review system is wrong and ReverbNation targets reviews wrongly.

The summary of the matter is that ReverbNation is no longer a good social networking site for musicians especially with the advent of more useful tools and social media platform. For instance, a mailing list can be handled with Aweber, MailChimp, etc.

If your website is built on WordPress, you can easily use WordPress plugins to add music and videos to your website. Secondly, people move with trends. Hence, you can upload and share your music on more popular sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Also, ReverbNation’s ranking and stats would not provide your song with any real value. ReverbNation doesn’t actually worth your investment.