ReverbNation To Facilitate Song Sponsorship for Small Bands
Posted by Dan Rodriguez on Fri, May 22, 2009 at 10:43 am
Online marketing service ReverbNation has announced a new program called “Sponsored Songs”, where they’ll pimp out artists’ songs to brand sponsors and directly give artists a cut for each download.
ReverbNation will pay participating musicians $.50 per free download with each track incorporating a small section of branded messaging within the digital cover art displayed every time the song is played.When a fan initiates a download, patent pending technology merges the brand’s message into the digital cover art and songs are tracked as they are passed from fan to fan.
Some may feel the music experience is cheapened when artwork is mixed with advertising, but is playing MP3s through iTunes really a robust artistic experience to begin with? The company views this as a win-win-win: bands get paid for what would otherwise be free downloads, advertisers get their exposure and even when the music winds up in P2P/pirate hands, it’ll come with ads intact.
How do you feel about this? As a consumer, would you rather pay 99 cents for a download or take a free one with ad-artwork? As an artist, do you think the new revenue isn’t worth the intrusion on your art?
Tags: ReverbNation, Sponsorships, Viral Marketing
May 22nd, 2009 at 8:47 PM
In an ideal world, this would be an incredible deal, but the reality is that advertisers aren’t going to see any results from that minuscule advertisement in the iTunes window. And .50 per download seems like a high price for advertisers to pay. I wish this would work out, but it seems doomed from the start.
May 23rd, 2009 at 9:38 AM
As an artist that’s starting a new project after 6 years in the industry, I feel that at some point you’ve just got to realize that music is a job just like anything else. When you’re just starting out you take whatever exposure you can get, it doesn’t matter if it’s a car commercial or a baby food radio spot. As long as it doesn’t compromise your sound and your integrity, props to anyone lucky enough to make anything off of their music! Good for them. I really hope this works out.