ReverbNation Introduces “Fan Exclusives”

This week ReverbNation, who by the way is probably providing the best free music marketing services for musicians out there on the web, introduced it’s “Fan Exclusives” program. They provide some really great services.

Introducing “Fan Exclusives”: The Easy Way to Turn Casual Listeners Into Registered Fans

Wouldn’t it be great if you could use access to your music as an incentive for fans to provide demographics (age, gender, location) and contact info (email) to you? Now you can. It’s a new feature called Fan Exclusives, and it’s only available at ReverbNation.com. Fan Exclusives are also a great way to reward your loyal fans with special content just for them.

What It Is
Fan Exclusives provide casual listeners with an incentive to
- Become an official fan of the Artist
- Join the Artist’s mailing list
- Provide information about themselves — like age, gender, and location

Whom It’s For
Artists, Labels, and Managers should use Fan Exclusives to
- Get added value from posting full streams or songs for download.
- Reward those that are already Fans.

How It Works
Visitors will have access to a 30-second preview of your song and will be prompted to become a registered Fan of the Artist in order to access the full stream or download (you choose the setting). The Artist is in control of which songs are exclusives (limited to 30 second preview for 'non-fans') or not (full
song available to all). Once they are registered as a Fan and their email address is confirmed, they will be given access to the full song stream and/or download.

Fans DO have to 'register' with ReverbNation. Whether they join ReverbNation or not makes no difference. Once they have provided their email address to the Artist, that email is like a 'key' that will unlock exclusive content from the Artist, whether the fan has encountered it at ReverbNation.com, or on a ReverbNation 'Tunewidget' at MySpace or anywhere else. When encountered in a Tunewidget on MySpace, for example, the tunewidget will prompt for an email address if the listener claims to already be a fan. If the email checks out against the Artist's database, the exclusive content is unlocked immediately. No redirects, no hassle. We have never been in the business of using Artists' content to force people to join our site and we never will be.

How to Make a Song a Fan Exclusive
To make a song a Fan Exclusive, simply choose that option when you upload. If you want to change an existing song to a Fan Exclusive, click on the ‘edit song’ button next to the song and change the setting to one of the Fan Exclusive options. You must have our free fan-management system Fan Reach enabled to access the Fan Exclusive features. Without this, there is no way for us to track who are fans and who are not.

Where They Work
Fan Exclusive songs are currently only available for display on your ReverbNation Artist profile and inside of our TuneWidget (works on MySpace, blogs, home pages, and other social networks). Efforts are continuing to make Fan Exclusives available on other widgets as well as our Facebook Application, MyBand. Stay Tuned.

Get your but over to reverbnation now and take advantage of their awesome widgets & newsletter management tools!