ReverbNation is the music industry’s version of a “Web 2.0 Fairy Godfather”…

If you’re an artist looking to market your music online, but don’t know where to start, ReverbNation is a platform that provides Artists, Labels, Managers and other Industry Professionals with their own set of digital marketing promotional tools.

Now artists have the ability to manage their fan base, create widgets and banners, distribute music on iTunes, create geo-targeted campaigns and send e-newsletters -all from one platform (and did we mention it’s free?)

The most refreshing part about digital distribution on ReverbNation is how they’ve created a business model that puts artists first. For $35.00 per release/per year artists can distribute one song or an album of up to 99 songs – best of all, ReverbNation does not take any percentage of the sales.

ReverbNation offers both a free and premium service. Features include:

• FanReach: fan managements system with customizable and targeted email system

• Widgets & Banners: Music Players, Fan Collectors, Street Team Collectors, Press, Shows, Shows w/ Map, Exclusive Song.  Widgets and Banners are also trackable

• Digital Distribution: distributes music on iTunes, Amazon, Napster, Rhapsody and emusic

• RPK (Reverb Press Kit): electronic press kit (EPK) that allows the   recipient to access music, videos, bio and photos. Artists also have the ability to geo-target fans and track number of click-thrus

• Fan360: reveals the contact information for emails e.g. name, age, sex, gender, zip code and how many Friends, Fans or Followers on Myspace, Facebook and Twitter

• Street Team Functionality – every artist gets their own Street Team Program to help activate their fans and make every promotion “viral”. These promoters will help artists gain exposure by talking about the artist on blogs, message boards and by posting music, banners, tour dates, etc.  The platform even tracks everything these Street Team members do and creates a Leaderboard that measures impressions, number of plays, clicks and/or conversions

• Facebook and Bebo Applications – the MyBand Application is currently the #1 Artist Application on Facebook.  It puts almost everything from the ReverbNation profile right into the artist’s Facebook Public Profile page.  Artists can also include “Buy links” e.g. music, tickets, merch on their Public Profiles

Currently there are over 400,000 artists using ReverbNation including 50 Cent, Kenny Chesney, Madonna, Pantera, Judas Priest, O.A.R., Natasha Bedingfield, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Sara Bareilles, Lamb of God and Jason Mraz. 

Involver is a new application for Facebook that turns your Fan Page from generic to dynamic.

The site touts itself as being ”The first complete marketing suite on Facebook”. There is a premium for the service, but some of the individual applications like the RSS Feed, Photo Gallery, You Tube Channel, Twitter, Poll, Coupon, File Sharing, Slides and PDFs are available for free.

Even though the ability to seamlessly enable a Twitter, RSS, You Tube feed into your Fan Page is nothing new, the ability to brand all your individual Tabs with your own logo on your Facebook Fan Page in a neat and professional looking way is.

The Coupon application is nice if you are a band offering a promotion exclusively on Facebook. You can create e-coupons either exclusively for existing Fans of the page, and/or create a different coupon for new fans (to encourage them to become a Fan of the Page).

However, the product description claims to offer a “set it and forget it” feature, which generally goes against the whole point of “social networking”.

As per the site’s instructions, it’s simple to use and promotes engagement and viral sharing, which enables marketers to take one step closer to being able to find a way to successfully monetize the Facebook platform.