YouTube adquire BandPage Para Atrair Músicos Que Querem Promover Seu Merchandise e Atrair Dinheiro

YouTube Acquires BandPage To Attract Musicians With Money-Making Tools

YouTube wants to win the love of musicians by solving their biggest problem: how to turn popularity into cash. So today it announced it’s acquired BandPage, a startup that helps artists show off and sell concert tickets, merchandise, and exclusive fan experiences.

Founded in 2009 and having raised $27.6 million, BandPage began as an app that let musicians create a special Music tab on their Facebook Page. But after Facebook shut down these Page apps in 2012, it lost 90% of its traffic in three months. It went from 32 million monthly users and being the second most popular Facebook developer behind Zynga, to just a few million.

It was a grim moment, as BandPage had just raised a big $16 million Series B from GGV Capital a few months prior. It eventually had a to raise a smaller $9.3 million Series C in 2014 to stay afloat.

Luckily, BandPage quickly realized it couldn’t stay on Facebook and unshackled itself. Now its swift pivot seems to have paid off. BandPage created a platform that artists could update with their tour dates and t-shirts, and have them appear in tons of places through integrations with Spotify, SoundCloud, Facebook, Twitter, Shazam, Rhapsody, StubHub, and more, as well as Google and YouTube.

This BandPage Everywhere platform was initially free with a $2 a month subscription fee for extra features. But least year BandPage ditched its Plus tier, made everything free, and instead began relaying on a 15% transaction fee for anything sold through its commerce integrations.

BandPage writes that “BandPage is dedicated to helping musicians build their careers by growing their fan bases and increasing their revenue on the largest digital music services in the world. By joining forces with the team at YouTube, we can help artists reach their fans in more powerful ways than ever before.”

BandPage CEO J Sider declined to comment, referring me to this blog post.

YouTube recently launched its ad-free Red subscription service and dedicated Music app. If it can use BandPage’s money making tools to curry favor with artists, they might be more likely to promote their YouTube presence and give it early or exclusive content. That could push consumers to subscribe to YouTube Red for $9.99 and get all of YouTube ad-free.

Other steaming services, especially Apple Music, have leaned on promotional opportunities for artists to recruit them, and exclusive content to lure subscribers. But at the end of the day, artists want revenue, and streaming listeners don’t earn them much. The trick is pairing attention pulled in through cheap or free streaming music with things fans can buy like clothing, posters, box sets, concert tickets, or even signed memorabilia and chances to meet their heroes.