Maybe Facebook Doesn’t Hate Your Band After All – Adds Event Subscription Feature

Facebook just launched a new feature that could help your band and/or possible other event coordinators that use the social media behemoth for event creation. With the elimination of organic reach, bands and others that create events have experienced a deafening silence when they post on their once active Facebook fanpages. Musicians certainly have struggled to reach their fans via the fanpage and Facebook also tightened up the way event invites were sent out furthering the chokehold. Maybe this new feature will help change that. At this point, even a 1-2% increase in viewership would be a big deal for bands and almost cause for celebration.

Facebook has added an events subscription feature by way of a subscribe button that notifies fans when their favorite bands are playing nearby. Sounds like it could be helpful but we are gonna call it right now. They will add a extortion feature at a later date that will give a band the option of paying Zuckerberg if the band wants to actually reach the people that subscribed. Remember you heard it here first but let’s dwell on the good stuff for now.

Bands that have a fanpage on Facebook usually have an “events” tab and that will now allow fans to subscribe to any upcoming events. Just click on the Events Tab under the cover photo.  If you aren’t subscribed to that band yet a button will appear under the cover photo on the right side. Keep in mind this isn’t an RSVP to any particular event by  the band but it is rather a way to be notified of upcoming shows.  One thing we aren’t certain of yet is whether or not fans will be shown more content posted on any particular event page or if it just notifies you of an upcoming show when an event has been created. Stay tuned.

Note: Some bands may not have events viewable by default, in which case the events tab can be located under the “more” tab on the page’s toolbar. And if you are in a band you might want to change that.

After you subscribe, Facebook will also give you the option subscribe to other bands, musicians or events that are happening near you.  We are going to do a little bit of testing with this new feature and see if it makes a difference in what we are seeing our newsfeed. Also, we’d love to hear from you about this as well.  In the mean time “Subscribe” to Northwest Music Scene by follow the steps above. Don’t worry we don’t throw a lot of events so you won’t get a lot of notifications.

Of course a lot of bands have already ditched FB now for event creation and use BandInTown, no doubt because of the way Facebook treated them. And who could blame them?  We’ll be perfectly honest, with FB’s track record over the last few years, we are hard-pressed to promote using the social media dynasty but that said, it still doesn’t make sense to give up on it completely, plus who knows maybe they’ll have a change of heart and allow 5% of our fans to start seeing our content with out paying.  We recently put together some ideas that you might find helpful in this ever-changing online climate.

Facebookalypse of 2015 – How Bands Can Survive in an Ever-Changing Social Media Climate

Let the mad race to pickup Subscribers begin!