RootMusic Makes Facebook More Music-Friendly With BandPages

[Above: Tom Petty’s BandPage on Facebook, created by RootMusic. Visit www.facebook.com/tompetty,then click BandPage for more.]

RootMusic founder J Sider’s mission is to help thousands of bands at a time, rather than just a couple. It’s a recurring theme when he discusses the Bandpages that his company he created to integrate with Facebook fan pages. Their app has recently been one of the top growing apps on Facebook. RootMusic racked up 20,000 artists in their first four months, with big names like Tom Petty, Snoop Dog, Wu-Tang Clan and Of Montreal.

After major stints in the world of artist booking and management, Sider realized there were just too many bands to try to help one at time. He also saw some holes in the system that he thought he could remedy with better online tools. While RootMusic has plans to launch an array of services for musicians and artists, the first thing they tackled was making Facebook more music-friendly. We spoke with J about BandPages and the future of RootMusic.

Check out Rootmusic.com/intro for a video overview of BandPages.

How did you arrive at the Root Music product for Facebook?

I’m a musician. My background has been as a singer-songwriter. I was trying to make it and people were coming to me, managers and friends, telling me to hit my goals. Everybody had different ideas, and I didn’t know what to do. I got into the business of music, working at a coffee shop and booking bands, learning how much they made. I got to move up to a small venue after that, then started working my way up, eventually to a very large venue [The Great Saltair in Salt Lake City] where I had 30 people [working] under me. That was a period of six years, and it was all over the country. Through that experience, because I booked bands, I started managing bands at the same time. I saw bands that were just starting out [and bands who were] all the way up to booking main stage at the Sundance Film Festival. I saw a lot of inefficiencies that weren’t helping with the day-to-day activities of a practicing musician. Through that experience, I came up with a lot of different ways to use technology in a way that it wasn’t being used in the music business. I wanted to help out thousands of bands at a time, rather than just a couple. Some amazing bands are around, but they’re not being heard because they don’t know what the next step is so they keep their 9-5. That’s when I started RootMusic. A Fan page is the first thing that RootMusic put out, and we launched that in March.

What’s the connection you see between live shows and an artist’s online presence?

To manage bands, even booking live shows, you have to be online. That’s the most efficient way to do it right now. This was one of the major gaps I saw. On Facebook, one of the biggest social networks, there wasn’t a great way to represent yourself, to get your messaging across. There was no way for fans to find what they were looking for – your music bio, your music, or your upcoming shows. Fans haven’t been checking out bands on Facebook because they’re not sure music will be there. We wanted to provide those basic necessities to earn the fans’ trust, to know that even if they wanted just to glance at a band, they would have a space to do that. We went with Facebook also because of the sharing opportunities and the networks. It’s an amazing marketing opportunity for musicians because the fans are doing everything for you as long as you’re giving them a good product, giving them great songs. The best thing about it is that it will always be coming from a trusted source. You’ll always open something from your friends. They’ll tell their friends. It’s the most efficient street team there has been to this point.

Why did you decide to work with SoundCloud’s music player for your Bandpages app?

SoundCloud is the best music-streaming platform online, as far as quality goes. As we were looking to build our product, we thought about doing our own [player], but then decided, why not partner up with SoundCloud? They’ve been doing this for four years and have a million users. They’re clearly reliable. We automate the account. You don’t have to have an account with SoundCloud to sign up with RootMusic. You go to “I Make Music” on the RootMusic webpage, and it brings up all of your information on Facebook, and it brings up all the pages that you’re an admin of, and it pulls you into RootMusic. We have a Connect to SoundCloud button, and it pulls in all your songs. Then you can click on which songs you want on your page. If you don’t have songs or a SoundCloud account set up, you can create one right there. Click Go, then the box disappears and you can upload songs to the RootMusic player. You never actually have to go through SoundCloud; it’s just a one time pop up. But you will have an account made there for you automatically.

Why can’t a band customize the tab name of their BandPage app?

Facebook only allows an application to have one tab name. If you want to have a different one, you have to build a completely different application from the ground up. Again, you want to give the fans something that they can trust, so when they jump from Snoop’s page to Tom Petty’s to the Prodigy’s, they want to know where to find information. They don’t want to have a different layout and they don’t want to have to guess which tab in that layout. We had meetings with Facebook quite a bit. As everybody knows, Facebook is constantly making changes. As those changes are made, you need to change your product immediately to be able to work on that platform. That’s the decision you make when you decide to work with something like Facebook. Because you make that decision, you have amazing opportunities there. It’s an amazing platform to be able to build on. It’s going well so far. They like what we’ve come up with. Facebook has had talks with labels and has done that a few times, but to date, they haven’t gone in that direction for a number of reasons. Recently, they publicly said they were not going to be going after music.

Are RootMusic pages designed more for artist’s to create on their own, or for labels to create and manage for artists?

It definitely is more for an artist. We’ve been talking to a lot of labels, mainly because they’re the ones who are going to help us get the word out. It’s definitely a tool that’s extremely powerful for local and regional bands but we thought the best way to get the word out was to go to ASCAP and BMI and Warner Music, etc. They send the word out to thousands of artists that they have.

How do you stay up to speed with what young artists need?

I’m not officially managing any bands, but I am talking with a number of bands. Going to shows, working on their marketing, trying to get their names out, trying to stay current with what’s going on. That’s helpful to getting feedback, to see how a crowd reacts. I’m listening to them too. Our main goal is to help you with the database process. First of all, if you just start a band you need a way to represent yourself. Then you need a way to get it out there so people can actually hear it. We’ve given you a way to share that. We’re here to stay for a while, to help you as a band meet your goals. We listen to the needs of the day-to-day musician, rather than trying to come up with some new technology. We want to get down to the facts of the matter. What does a new band need? If they have a great song or a great band, they should be successful, right? We want to help them get in front of people. We work on the logistics of being a band. I think the biggest part I want to get across to musicians today is that the days of making a break are over; they’re done. You’re going to have to work. You’re going to have to hustle. You have to be smart. If you want to be a band that plays around town, then cool. Find a gig every once in a while. But if you want to make it to the next step, if you want managers and agents to find out about you and you want to start turning revenue, then you really have to take it seriously and work really, really, really hard. We’re trying to get that message out but at the same time give you some efficient and effective tools to make those steps happen.

What’s RootMusic’s business model?

In our future there is the possibility of working directly with specific bands, if the business model takes us that way. But, you know, as of right now, we have over 14,000 bands using this, and it’s exponentially growing. It’s built to scale. But we work with Topspin [Media] and we appreciate the work they do, and they appreciate the work we do. So, at this point, we’re letting each other focus in different areas, but we always have our eyes open for opportunities, and seeing what’s working and what’s not. At the end of the day, you have to run as a business to be able to help people.

Is it a paid or free service?

The 14,000 is a mix of paid and free accounts. There’s a decent amount that’s paid. It’s $1.99 a month, or 20 bucks a year. To be able to customize something at this level on Facebook, the next step up is a couple thousand dollars. Even some major management companies we work with wouldn’t be willing to spend a couple thousand dollars on stuff, much less a regional band, or local band. That money would go to a company to customize the band’s art and Facebook page. There’s a market for that, but we wanted to be able to help everybody at once and give them all pretty much the same product. We’re very much more of a ground-up company, not a top-down. Yes, a lot of the labels are calling us, and we’re working with them, only because it’s a product that works to the business side of music. They see that it can help the artists in a very good way. When we build these products it’s not about what technology you use, it’s about what the people, the musicians, the management companies can use, and we build that exact product. Nothing short of it. So I’m not a technology guy, per se, but I understand what technology can do now; there are endless possibilities. I’ve found the right team that if they bring something to the table that’s not been done before, we say, Okay let’s figure it out. That’s the mentality. Any feedback or ideas, dream big and let us know. We’re open to hear it.

What’s the future of RootMusic?

We have some great things we’re working on. What we just came out with now is “Share To Fans.” Say Tom Petty or Snoop has a couple million fans and they want to promote a song or a video, what they can do is click on a specific song on their page and then click “Share To Fans” and that’ll come up with a message box and they’ll type what they want to say and click Send. It goes out to all their million fans’ news feeds. Not only does it go with a message, but also with that song. The fan that has decided to click the Like button, they get a track right in their news feed that they can play the song off of. We just implemented that. You can do that with a video, a song, a photo, or an upcoming show. So if you just dropped a new song, you can shoot that to their fans and give them content that they’re interested in getting. In that track, there’s a link back to the artist’s page so they can check out the content there. Any fan who comes to a band’s site can click on the share button and you can share directly to a friend’s wall. Or I can post it on my news feed and it’ll go out to all my friends. Or I can post it to Twitter or Tumblr, as well. These new sharing options are really making things work well. The great thing about it is it’s not a spammy thing. It’s something people decide to become a part of; they click the like button.

This is our first product of many. We see a lot of opportunity. We’re watching the market closely to see what people are using and what they’re liking. The biggest part of RootMusic’s future is to look at what people actually want and to build on that.