Sonicbids, RootMusic challenge MySpace for music space

04 February 2011

by Eamonn Ford

The one major drawback for musicians on Facebook currently is that the site is purely about social networking and not music-focused like Myspace. Given the fact that News Corp has just slashed Myspace’s global workforce by 47% (to possibly prepare it for a sale) while Facebook cruises past 500 million users, that could be for the best.

Where Facebook played its smartest hand was that it opened up its API (application programming interface) to just about anyone (except, tellingly, Apple with its Ping service last September). That meant they could build all the social games and music services they liked within Facebook’s walls that Facebook itself couldn’t be bothered with or felt detracted from its core focus.

For musicians, the go-to destination until recently for a music-centric presence on Facebook was RootMusic. It is unquestionably a hot name in digital music and recently secured a new round of funding to the tune of $2.3 million [A$2.32m] to help it expand its tools and global reach.

It has built sites for acts including Kanye West, Drake, 50 Cent, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, Rihanna and Nicki Minaj and offered a viable alternative to Myspace – but all in a smoother and less cluttered environment that acts had much greater control over.

Now it has competition in the form of Sonicbids. Previously associated with helping acts find and book gigs, Sonicbids is now offering profile page builds for musicians and its move into this area is made all the more symbolic given the concurrent slip in Myspace’s fortunes.

Sonicbids founder Panos Panay told Digital Music News recently, "We realised that we were helping people get gigs but not cultivating their audiences. We needed to do more."
 What that ‘more’ involves is linking an act’s Sonicbids profile (including music, biographies, video and gig calendar) to their Facebook page with multiple customisation options. Perhaps the most interesting part is, drawing inspiration from the likes of Foursquare and GetGlue, offering locked content that can be unlocked the more a fan engages with an act and their broader social media activity. The marketing and viral opportunities here are obvious.

Both of these sites are symbolic of a shift in social media dynamics, allowing acts to pull the best specialist tools into a single location by simply joining the dots between their APIs. 
 Whereas six years ago, Myspace ruled the roost by offered a one-stop destination for acts to handle all their social media activity, the market has splintered and acts want the ability to pick and choose the tools they assemble rather than work within a restrictive framework or preordained tools.

Myspace has made recent moves to link into other sites’ APIs but both the rise of RootMusic and the ambitions of Sonicbids suggest it was simply too little, too late in the “evolve or die” hyper-speed world of social media.