ReverbNation Widget – A Review

ReverbNation is a social networking service built around music.  Musicians can use the service to promote themselves, and music fans can use the service to discover new music and interact with likeminded fans.

The site is currently offering a widget that allows site visitors to embed a band’s tour schedule into their blog or personal profile.  The clear target market for this widget is the musicians themselves – ReverbNation’s widget is designed to be a handy tool to allow bands to easily provide up to date show information across all of their online presences.

ReverbNation has not yet launched publicly, and according to the site, a number of additional widgets are planned.

Applications & Opportunity

ReverbNation has positioned itself to compete directly with MySpace.  Site testimonials trumpet that ReverbNation is “Miles beyond MySpace” and the site itself crows “In OURSPACE, music comes first.”

Is there a need for better tools for musicians to promote themselves online than what currently exists?  I don’t see why not.  The leading site for musicians to promote themselves, MySpace, has chosen not to provide promotion tools that extend beyond MySpace itself.

ReverbNation’s pitch to musicians is that by using their more sophisticated promotion tools, musicians can manage their online promotion efforts across all of the major social networking services.  By positioning itself as an aggregator and an edge feeder, there may be room for ReverbNation.

Configuration & Testing

To access a band’s upcoming show widget, you need to click through to the band’s profile page on ReverbNation, then click on the “Shows” tab, and then click on the widget icon.  There are also promotions and help sections for the widget functionality displayed throughout the site.

There are no configuration options offered besides going into the code itself, and the width of the widget is optimized for 424 pixels wide.  I tried to jam the widget into the TypePad sidebar, but as you can see it doesn’t really work in that narrow a space.

But that shouldn’t be a surprise.  This widget is optimized for MySpace (where it looks great), and ReverbNation is clearly trying to make the upcoming shows widget a standard accessory for a band’s MySpace page.

Editorial

Even though they haven’t officially launched yet, ReverbNation is already a very slick, polished offering.  It’s easy to envision them providing an embeddable player, like Streampad, but with each participating band’s permission.  Perhaps what’s most appealing about them is that they have been built from the ground up with an emphasis on sharing content and functionality on an Internet wide basis.

However.  It looks to me that ReverbNation is walking a tightrope here.  On the one hand, they want to be a MySpace killer.  They are trying to replace MySpace as the leading musician promotion service by providing musicians with better promotion tools with Internet wide reach. 

On the other hand, they clearly understand the importance that MySpace will play in driving distribution for their content and musician promotion tools.

So while the site’s language is mildly condescending to MySpace, everything about its widget is geared towards working well with MySpace.

So can they have it both ways?  I’m not sure.  Fox Interactive has already done some saber rattling about their perception that others are freeloading off of their user base.  I’m not convinced that they will stand by while a direct competitor simultaneously disses them, and uses them for distribution.

Of all the widgets that I’ve looked at so far, this would seem to be the one that is most dependent on MySpace for distribution.  It’s not just the formatting – that’s fixable.  It’s the fact that ReverbNation’s target market of musicians, the market that will provide all of the content that will attract a user base, lives on MySpace.  Feeding this market a cool new widget to promote their tour dates is a good first step towards introducing these musicians to ReverbNation’s promotion tools.  But the thing that worries me a little is that ReverbNation is putting their fate in the hands of the site that they are trying to dethrone.  I wouldn’t put it past MySpace to try and shut these guys down before they even get started.

   

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