SXSWORLD

BandPage Rises From Street-Level O Stubb's, Club 606 and Empire Automotive (a vacant former auto repair shop which was transformed into a laser-fi lled live music venue). BandPage HQ hosted performances for nine consecutive nights during the conference. Porter Robinson, Das Racist and Chairlift were among the acts who performed. Th at's a long, long way from BandPage's humble origins, when ne hot spot at SXSW 2012 was BandPage HQ, sponsored by the San Francisco-based music-tech company. Th is pop-up venue comprised two adjoining stages on E. 7th Street near startup, pushing a product out there," says Sider. "Me and a co- worker had just enough money to fl y to Austin, but not enough for hotels and they were all booked anyway. So we decided to just go and fi gure it out when we got there. We had some posters made at Kinko's with a picture of what a BandPage looked like and that said, 'Your music on Facebook.' We put that on a stick, started carrying it down the street and people stopped to talk. Th at's how it all started." By the next day, they had con- its presence at SXSW was decid- edly more low-key and grassroots. Known then as RootMusic (the company rebranded as BandPage this year), it launched at SXSW Music 2010. Th at "launch" con- sisted of CEO/founder J Sider carrying a sign outside the Austin Convention Center. "It was all in the spirit of a music Marketing to Music Tech Prominence by David Menconi One of the artists who uses BandPage is singer/songwriter Josiah Leming, who released an album on Warner Bros. Records in 2010 (after a splashy audition in season seven of American Idol). He is working the independent ranks now, having seen a wide range of the industry, and he describes BandPage as a lifesaver. "I don't know what I'd do without it," says Leming. "To have one place for shows and music and everything else on Facebook is great. You want to get your music in front of people, so integrating everything you need for that on the platform everybody uses is huge. Before BandPage, Myspace was the thing. I also had my own Facebook page, and a fan page. So everything was there, but in diff erent places. BandPage brings it all together." For listeners as well as musi- cians, BandPage is simple to use and easy to customize with artwork, logos and other bells and whistles. Th e basic version is free, and a deluxe version off ers some upgraded features for $2 a month. Sider declines to say how many acts use the pay-for version of BandPage, or how many people the company employs. But he says that BandPage has raised more than $19 million in funding so far. "We're just two years old, so structed a portable demonstration booth using mobile hotspots, card- board boxes and laptops. It worked well enough to entice a few hundred bands to sign up during the confer- ence. Word spread, and that fi gure was up to several thousand within a few weeks. Today, more than 500,000 acts from Rihanna down to garage bands you have never heard of use BandPage, a music applica- tion that lets artists embed a player on their Facebook pages to share music, videos, photos, tour dates and other content. ReverbNation and Tracks.by are among BandPage's competitors in we're still a young company," Sider says. "We're excited about the future. We're trying for Das Racist (top) and Porter Robinson (bottom) were two of the artists who performed at Empire Automotive, one of the two stages that comprised BandPage HQ during SXSW 2012. this area of the music technology business. But BandPage has already established an impressive level of branding. "BandPage is almost like Kleenex now, an established brand that's taining the scale of the company while trying to manage growth. But others lurk down the road, including staying abreast of Twitter, Pinterest and other social networks. For the foreseeable future, how- ever, Facebook is the biggest medium for BandPage. And that might have serious implications as time goes by. "When it comes to Facebook's real estate, you're never completely quickly become synonymous with a solution that artists absolutely need," says Eric Garland, founder/CEO of BigChampagne Media Measurement. "It's a toolkit for direct-to-fan presence on the biggest social-media network on earth." 46 SXSW ORLD / M AY 2012 the day-to-day needs of musi- cians, venues and fans." At this point, BandPage's biggest challenge is main- mixed with powerful tech- nology. BandPage started from that a clean premise, user experience understanding sure what they're going to want to own," says Garland. "Th ere have been hints that Facebook itself might be getting more interested in music and experiences around that and other content. BandPage is the preeminent brand in their business, a great product with a great reputation. Th ey're sitting in a very interesting place." ■ THEODORE ESPOSITO JARET HARRISON

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