5 ms·

Facebook Has Been Sucking The Life Out Of Artist / Fan Communication

37 points by tangue 14y ago

dromidas 14y ago
This is most likely just a desperate grab by FB. Such a bad financial year with the stock debacle. They know they have let artists freely gain fan bases on facebook for years now so they are able to control it with an iron fist. A good temporary budget increase for them is to take that iron fist and grab all the artists by the balls and squeeze them for all they're worth. Which when I put it that way it sounds an awful lot like blackmail... ahem anyway... Will it get them a burst of money? Sure. Will it hurt facebook in the long run? Probably. Does it really matter? Only time will tell.
Apocryphon 14y ago
How does/did Myspace compare?
- k-mcgrady 14y ago
  I don't think it really compares. For the majority of artists Myspace was their website so they never thought about being locked in like they do with Facebook. Back then setting up your own website, hosting it somewhere, selling content and merchandise through it, and blogging on it wasn't such an easy thing for someone with little/no technical skills to do. Now you can setup a Wordpress site, use Bandcamp for sales (which you can easily integrate with your site), stream audio using Soundcloud (which you can embed) and it's pretty easy for anyone to set it all up.
qq66 14y ago
There's already a mechanism to push out every piece of content that you create to your fans: it's called email. (Also, RSS feeds on your website, blogs, etc.) For better or for worse, Facebook is a place that a billion people go to, and they've decided to charge for access to that pipeline. The fact that they would do this has been widely known for years, since Facebook Beacon. People are on Facebook to see content from companies, friends, family, coworkers, classmates, etc... in that jumble, your band isn't going to get first-class placement for free. If you don't want to get "monetized" by Facebook, don't tell your fans to "Like" you on Facebook, tell them to sign up for your mailing list. If you want the convenience and access that Facebook gives you, get ready to pay for it.
- eropple 14y ago
  There's already a mechanism to push out every piece of content that you create to your fans: it's called email. (Also, RSS feeds on your website, blogs, etc.) I'm 24. I don't communicate by email with anyone in my age group or, indeed, anyone under 30, unless it's to pass around attachments (and that's rarer these days with Dropbox). I know of one person my age or younger who actually maintains an RSS reader; I tried, but I couldn't really be bothered. I know no non-technical people in that age bracket who make a point of regularly reading blogs (but many who read one or two posts that reach them through--you guessed it--Facebook). Facebook is rapidly leaving convenience territory, and that's what makes a lot of their recent behavior concerning.
  - jamesrcole 14y ago
    > I don't communicate by email with anyone in my age group or, indeed, anyone under 30, unless it's to pass around attachments If you don't mind me asking, do you just use Facebook, or other means too (e.g. Twitter, IRC, ...)? I'm just curious about what people are using these days (I'm 34).
    - eropple 14y ago
      I, personally, use email (with people who use email), Twitter (with a pretty diverse group of people), Facebook (as little as possible), IRC (with technical collaborators and some friends), AIM (a lot of people), and Google Talk (a few people). I also use Campfire to talk to coworkers. Also, a lot of text messaging. But I'm not very representative. I don't say "everyone uses Facebook" because I use Facebook, I say "everyone uses Facebook" because nobody uses the other mechanisms that I mention (Twitter excepted, and in my experience that's a very different type of crowd). ;)
tptacek 14y ago
Note that one artist complaint, vocalized by David Lowery, is that Facebook has also made it extremely difficult for artists to maintain fan relationships outside of Facebook. The gravitational pull of Facebook and Youtube is so strong that independent artist websites are outcompeted by default by any fan activity on those sites. Facebook fan pages also tend to rank extremely well on Google SERPs. So the artists are doubly screwed, first by not being able to maintain a direct fan relationship (which is what they need in order to exist outside of the label system) and secondly by being forced to play by Facebook Edgerank rules just to keep on their fan radar inside of Facebook.
- 46Bit 14y ago
  This is really the key to Facebook's entire strategy. By forcing you to make your main effort inside the walled garden (with failure as the alternative), they gain. Whether it's a beneficial one for the artist really depends on their ability to live with the relatively spartan features Facebook provides.
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  It will be ironic if Facebook causes MySpace to be reborn.
- jclos 14y ago
  I wish we could just go back to plain old e-mail. So elegant, so efficient. Many providers to choose from. I can automatically put them into nice labelled boxes. Everything comes out from one big firehose of information and is automatically sorted, indexed, archived.
wavesounds 14y ago
I think people keep confusing "like" with "follow". Just because I "like" Sierra Nevada beer doesn't mean I want updates from them, maybe I just wanted to like it because AirTime will then use those likes to link me up with someone else who likes Sierra Nevada beer. On the other hand if I follow Sierra Nevada on Twitter its because I want to see their every 140 character thought that they feel like sharing. That being said I think he makes a good point about differentiating between brands, artists, non-profits and individuals. Perhaps they should just expand on "Subscribe", their version of "follow", so users have the choice.
- tangue 14y ago
  The "like" vs "follow" might be true today, but for many artists people clicked on "become fan" not "like". That's a huge semantic difference.
  - taylorlb 14y ago
    When they originally made the change from 'fan' to 'like' in 2010 I thought it was enough of an issue to write something about it. It wasn't a very popular complaint at the time though. http://shufferingandshnacking.com/?p=255 http://shufferingandshnacking.com/?p=255
- coliveira 14y ago
  This might be a good explanation for "like" today, but there is no guarantee that it will continue to be like that in the future and it certainly wasn't like that in the past. What "like" means depends entirely on what FB wants it to mean. If they decide tomorrow to charge you by the number of likes you have, for example, who can say otherwise?
TopTrix 14y ago
I think the Google Plus is much better way and good combination of both world. Everyone should think of switching to Google.
- weisser 14y ago
  Maybe artists should post messages on FB that reaches all of their fans and tell them to come to G+ Oh wait...
- simondlr 14y ago
  Great point. As G+ allows people to choose the filter settings for each circle. Just add all musicians/artists into such a circle.
danvoell 14y ago
Bands have a product "music" which they need to market. Much like any business. Some bands I have liked on Facebook, because they are friends, I don't necessarily want to hear every piece of information from them. You are asking Twitter to change its model to accomodate bands. Twitter seems to be doing OK. Bands should change their model and not rely on MySpace then Facebook then Twitter then ...
egypturnash 14y ago
I find that Twitter does pretty well for communicating with my fans, and the people I'm a fan of, without any of the modifications this guy would like to see. YMMV. On the other hand I've really never used Facebook much. Mostly because I really hate its symmetrical following model. Which supposedly doesn't actually apply any more… IF you can persuade people to hit the "subscribe" button instead of the "friend" button, and good luck doing THAT. But people are in that habit of friending EVERYONE back to broadcast their content, so they set things up to spam themselves. I really need to start pushing my content to Tumblr. IMHO that seems to be where a lot of the action is nowadays. At least in the circles I'm interested in selling stuff to. (Disclaimer: yes, I know that anecdotes are not data. This is my experience with getting the word out about my artwork.)

37 points by tangue 14y ago

This is most likely just a desperate grab by FB. Such a bad financial year with the stock debacle. They know they have let artists freely gain fan bases on facebook for years now so they are able to control it with an iron fist. A good temporary budget increase for them is to take that iron fist and grab all the artists by the balls and squeeze them for all they're worth. Which when I put it that way it sounds an awful lot like blackmail... ahem anyway... Will it get them a burst of money? Sure. Will it hurt facebook in the long run? Probably. Does it really matter? Only time will tell.

Apocryphon 14y ago

How does/did Myspace compare?

k-mcgrady 14y ago
I don't think it really compares. For the majority of artists Myspace was their website so they never thought about being locked in like they do with Facebook. Back then setting up your own website, hosting it somewhere, selling content and merchandise through it, and blogging on it wasn't such an easy thing for someone with little/no technical skills to do. Now you can setup a Wordpress site, use Bandcamp for sales (which you can easily integrate with your site), stream audio using Soundcloud (which you can embed) and it's pretty easy for anyone to set it all up.

qq66 14y ago

There's already a mechanism to push out every piece of content that you create to your fans: it's called email. (Also, RSS feeds on your website, blogs, etc.) For better or for worse, Facebook is a place that a billion people go to, and they've decided to charge for access to that pipeline. The fact that they would do this has been widely known for years, since Facebook Beacon. People are on Facebook to see content from companies, friends, family, coworkers, classmates, etc... in that jumble, your band isn't going to get first-class placement for free. If you don't want to get "monetized" by Facebook, don't tell your fans to "Like" you on Facebook, tell them to sign up for your mailing list. If you want the convenience and access that Facebook gives you, get ready to pay for it.

eropple 14y ago
There's already a mechanism to push out every piece of content that you create to your fans: it's called email. (Also, RSS feeds on your website, blogs, etc.) I'm 24. I don't communicate by email with anyone in my age group or, indeed, anyone under 30, unless it's to pass around attachments (and that's rarer these days with Dropbox). I know of one person my age or younger who actually maintains an RSS reader; I tried, but I couldn't really be bothered. I know no non-technical people in that age bracket who make a point of regularly reading blogs (but many who read one or two posts that reach them through--you guessed it--Facebook). Facebook is rapidly leaving convenience territory, and that's what makes a lot of their recent behavior concerning.
- jamesrcole 14y ago
  > I don't communicate by email with anyone in my age group or, indeed, anyone under 30, unless it's to pass around attachments If you don't mind me asking, do you just use Facebook, or other means too (e.g. Twitter, IRC, ...)? I'm just curious about what people are using these days (I'm 34).
  - eropple 14y ago
    I, personally, use email (with people who use email), Twitter (with a pretty diverse group of people), Facebook (as little as possible), IRC (with technical collaborators and some friends), AIM (a lot of people), and Google Talk (a few people). I also use Campfire to talk to coworkers. Also, a lot of text messaging. But I'm not very representative. I don't say "everyone uses Facebook" because I use Facebook, I say "everyone uses Facebook" because nobody uses the other mechanisms that I mention (Twitter excepted, and in my experience that's a very different type of crowd). ;)

tptacek 14y ago

Note that one artist complaint, vocalized by David Lowery, is that Facebook has also made it extremely difficult for artists to maintain fan relationships outside of Facebook. The gravitational pull of Facebook and Youtube is so strong that independent artist websites are outcompeted by default by any fan activity on those sites. Facebook fan pages also tend to rank extremely well on Google SERPs. So the artists are doubly screwed, first by not being able to maintain a direct fan relationship (which is what they need in order to exist outside of the label system) and secondly by being forced to play by Facebook Edgerank rules just to keep on their fan radar inside of Facebook.

46Bit 14y ago
This is really the key to Facebook's entire strategy. By forcing you to make your main effort inside the walled garden (with failure as the alternative), they gain. Whether it's a beneficial one for the artist really depends on their ability to live with the relatively spartan features Facebook provides.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
It will be ironic if Facebook causes MySpace to be reborn.
jclos 14y ago
I wish we could just go back to plain old e-mail. So elegant, so efficient. Many providers to choose from. I can automatically put them into nice labelled boxes. Everything comes out from one big firehose of information and is automatically sorted, indexed, archived.

wavesounds 14y ago

I think people keep confusing "like" with "follow". Just because I "like" Sierra Nevada beer doesn't mean I want updates from them, maybe I just wanted to like it because AirTime will then use those likes to link me up with someone else who likes Sierra Nevada beer. On the other hand if I follow Sierra Nevada on Twitter its because I want to see their every 140 character thought that they feel like sharing. That being said I think he makes a good point about differentiating between brands, artists, non-profits and individuals. Perhaps they should just expand on "Subscribe", their version of "follow", so users have the choice.

tangue 14y ago
The "like" vs "follow" might be true today, but for many artists people clicked on "become fan" not "like". That's a huge semantic difference.
- taylorlb 14y ago
  When they originally made the change from 'fan' to 'like' in 2010 I thought it was enough of an issue to write something about it. It wasn't a very popular complaint at the time though. http://shufferingandshnacking.com/?p=255 http://shufferingandshnacking.com/?p=255
coliveira 14y ago
This might be a good explanation for "like" today, but there is no guarantee that it will continue to be like that in the future and it certainly wasn't like that in the past. What "like" means depends entirely on what FB wants it to mean. If they decide tomorrow to charge you by the number of likes you have, for example, who can say otherwise?

TopTrix 14y ago

I think the Google Plus is much better way and good combination of both world. Everyone should think of switching to Google.

weisser 14y ago
Maybe artists should post messages on FB that reaches all of their fans and tell them to come to G+ Oh wait...
simondlr 14y ago
Great point. As G+ allows people to choose the filter settings for each circle. Just add all musicians/artists into such a circle.

danvoell 14y ago

Bands have a product "music" which they need to market. Much like any business. Some bands I have liked on Facebook, because they are friends, I don't necessarily want to hear every piece of information from them. You are asking Twitter to change its model to accomodate bands. Twitter seems to be doing OK. Bands should change their model and not rely on MySpace then Facebook then Twitter then ...

egypturnash 14y ago

I find that Twitter does pretty well for communicating with my fans, and the people I'm a fan of, without any of the modifications this guy would like to see. YMMV. On the other hand I've really never used Facebook much. Mostly because I really hate its symmetrical following model. Which supposedly doesn't actually apply any more… IF you can persuade people to hit the "subscribe" button instead of the "friend" button, and good luck doing THAT. But people are in that habit of friending EVERYONE back to broadcast their content, so they set things up to spam themselves. I really need to start pushing my content to Tumblr. IMHO that seems to be where a lot of the action is nowadays. At least in the circles I'm interested in selling stuff to. (Disclaimer: yes, I know that anecdotes are not data. This is my experience with getting the word out about my artwork.)