This popped into our mailbox this morning for BandBond, a new mobile app that launched today. We’ve given it a spin and we’re pretty impressed – both with the bands who’ve signed up and with the whole idea behind it. Essentially the aim is to ensure that you get all the social media posts from the bands you’re interested in without those bands having to throw a fortune at facebook, et al. Believe me, we know their pain. We have 13,000 followers on our facebook page and most posts (unless we get lucky and you people share them) get seen by a couple of hundred people at most without us spending money we don’t have.
Loads of details are in the press release and promo video below, but briefly – worth a . I expected the default feed to only be the bands I selected as favourites, and I seem to be getting posts from every band, but this could be me doing something wrong or a small bug. I’m going to feed back and check. The interface is pretty swish, there aren’t too many notifications, I’m not spotting a stupid number of adverts and the range of bands already signed up is very impressive.
Anyway – here’s the word from the horse’s mouth…
Social media reach for artists [and music websites… – Mosh] can be as low as low as 5% on current platforms, meaning fans currently don’t receive all their updates, and bands don’t reach all their fans, unless they pay. From today music fans can make a free on BandBond and never miss a post from their favourite artists again. With BandBond, you will see 100% of all content that the artists you follow post. As well as native posts, BandBond consolidates posts from Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, so you can see everything a artist posts in one place.
Masterminded by Martin Brändström of Dark Tranquility, BandBond has been created by the music community, for the music community, to take communication back into its hands. Over 300 bands, including Alien Weaponry, Behemoth, Employed To Serve, Lacuna Coil, Conjurer and Meshuggah, have already signed up to BandBond pre-launch with many more being added every day.
The idea of BandBond was born out of frustration when co-founder Martin Brändström, was in charge of the band’s online social media. It quickly became clear to him that the communication with the fans – that the band had earned over the years by touring the world and recording albums – now had a gatekeeper in the shape of drastically increased price tags set by the social media giants. Martin explains:
The relationship between a band and its fans is unique and not something you can market like toothpaste or soft drinks. Without sponsoring a post you will only reach a fraction of your followers. It’s really kind of strange that someone can charge you to reach the fans that actually wants to be reached, and to make you pay for the display of content that you yourself, as a band, has created which generates traffic to their platform…
Together with music studio colleague and long time metalhead Joacim Starander, Martin started to outline the idea of a new home for all things metal where the bands and the fans who share the love for metal can have their relationship uninterrupted and free.
BandBond 1.0 is just a starting point. Future features and directions will be dictated by the needs of the bands and the metal community.
Within the metal scene we’re used to doing things ourselves. Back in the days when we didn’t get coverage in mainstream media we started our own fanzines, traded tapes all over the world, did local radio shows etc. In these days, when you’re forced to use social media, it’s strangely harder for bands to reach out than it ever was. Within the ionate metal community we’ve taken control by ourselves before. Why not do it again…?
The 300+ bands who have signed up all share the frustrations with social media, with Loathe, Dark Funeral, Belzebubs, Kamelot and TesseracT speaking out to BandBond.
Loathe state:
With social media seemingly restricting reach to ers of bands and artists alike, we have teamed up with BandBond to promote their new application in which multiple feeds from your favourite artists merge into one to create a generalised hub for you to connect with. It’s an exciting venture and something that is extremely valuable given recent worldwide circumstance.”
Dan Tompkins, TesseracT:
It’s extremely frustrating that social media posts are so severely restricted unless you pay. As an artist that simply wants to reach fans it makes life very difficult. A solution to this problem is long overdue.
