Key Of Grey

March 8th, 2010 – These days if you aren’t promoting yourself on sites like Facebook or Twitter, you’re losing out on a huge amount of potential fans that could stumble on you and promote your music to their friends. Facebook in particular seems quite powerful at connecting your music with new listeners. The problem is that the fan pages on Facebook leave much to be desired.

Root Music is a site that connects to your Facebook fan page, and it allows you to create a much more effective landing page. Not only does it look better than the default fan page, it allows you to upload music (through Root Music’s site) which fans can stream straight from Facebook. On top of that, you can easily update information about your band and add gig dates.

I heard about the Root Music beta and wanted to see what the fuss was about, so today I set about creating a fan page to check it out. Creating an account is very easy. You go to Root Music site (linked below), log in using your Facebook account, allow Root Music to install its app on your Facebook page, and you’re good to go.

You don’t make any changes to your band page on through Facebook, you make them from the Root Music site. Changes you make are automatically reflected on your Facebook page; there’s no need to export new information to Facebook. You’ll need to enter information about your band into Root Music, it doesn’t automatically pull the bio information. However, it will pull the photo albums already associated with your fan page.

Right now the information you can enter is pretty focused, and that’s a good thing. Too much clutter is what has caused many a Myspace site to become unwieldy. You can list band members, a location, influences and a bio. There’s another tab which allows your fans to contact you via Facebook email, phone (don’t be an idiot and put your number on there unless you like stalkers), email, and your website.

Root Music is in beta so there were a few issues I came across, none of which really bothered me that much. For one, when I first set up my account using Firefox, it didn’t get to the stage where I let Root Music access my Facebook page. However, when I used Safari, I had no problem. This may be due to some of the aggressive plugins I have installed on Firefox, and I’d be interested in seeing if any of you have the same issue.

As well, when I wanted to enter two websites into the bio page, it connected both into one address. This meant that the destination address was garbled. I tried separating the websites with a coma, and it still didn’t work. In the end, I entered only one website and it was fine.

I also had an issue uploading a DJ set on Root Music’s site. Regular-sized mp3′s uploaded fine, but the 40 minute set, despite appearing to upload to completion, did not appear in my playlist. I’m not sure if this was a limitation of the Soundcloud account Root Music has (I have the same set uploaded on my Soundcloud page), or a limit set by Root Music. If there is a limit to the song length, it would be nice to have that warning (or perhaps I missed it?).

When you edit your page, there’s a tab with a question mark allowing you to tell the developers what you’d like to see there. Brainstorming off the top of my head, it would be useful to have a place to embed videos, or even a tab for blog entries (I don’t like Facebook notes). Maybe integration with a merch store would be cool in the future too.

I could see other ways that Roots Music might make their app even more useful by adding metrics. Could you imagine being able to see the who, what, and wheres of people accessing your fan page? Your personal Soundcloud page allows you to do this, but using Root Music’s account means you don’t get access to this valuable data. Since Root Music has app access, could it not mine this data in a future iteration? I’m sure serious bands would gladly pay for this information. Root Music could even become an affordable alternative to TopSpin.

After trying out Root Music, I have to say that it’s a very useful tool. I’m not sure how they’ll monetize it in the future, but for now I suggest giving it a go and start leveraging the Facebook community. I like the simple aesthetics, and I love that I can upload music using the Soundcloud player but not have to hit on the limits of my personal Soundcloud account; I get to use theirs. It has a lot of room to grow and could become huge if it added metrics. I gots great ideas I tell you whot!

Root Music