Last week I had a chance to test drive music community and indie artist empowerment tool ReverbNation and was impressed by what I saw. Still in beta and launching October 31st,
ReverbNation borrows heavily from MySpace, PureVolume, and others, but with two fundamental difference.
First, the hub of activity for fans of any artist should be on the act’s own web site. ReverbNation acknowledges this with free and useful widgets.
Virtually everything that a band stores or creates on ReverbNation (tour dates, blogs, etc) can be dropped with ease onto their own or other web sites and blogs. Not only is the approach great for the artist and fun for the fans; it drives traffic back to ReverbNation.
Second, ReverbNation acknowledges that a bands fans are their own and unlike MySpace doesn’t lock
their "friends" list behind the corporate wall. They have created a free yet powerful fan mail tool called FanReach and ReverbNation not only says "you own that fan list and can export it"; they reward the artist for any monetization of their fans.
ReverbNation would at first glance appear to be a little late to the music community party. But with their fair and artist-centric approach and an attractive and intuitive interface, this newcomer should go far. Beta test it here.
