I was disappointed to read your criticism of ReverbNation’s Fair Share program. It appears you misunderstand the nature of the fair share program in terms of what it is, how it works, and what you should expect from it. While you are certainly entitled to your opinion, I would hope that you could be better informed before you editorialize in public. We have always worked on behalf of the artist, and it shows in almost every aspect of the site and decision we make.

Under the program artists share advertising dollars where their content is instrumental in generating the revenue. It was initially designed as a response to Artists’ concerns about how they were being treated by sites like MySpace (driving fan traffic and generating ad $$$ for MySpace, but not receiving a cut of the money). It was never intended as a primary revenue source as the total pool of advertising dollars is too small to accomplish this.

Viewing ourselves as more of a business partner to the Artists, in 2007 we launched the Fair Share program with a commitment to split 50% of the net ad revenue with those who enrolled in the program. We have been sharing that ad revenue ever since, and we can’t think of any other site that has been bold enough to follow our lead.

Admittedly, the amounts per Artist ‘will not make you rich’ (as stated when you sign up). But those payments are essentially ‘free money’ for Artists who are going to be promoting themselves with our tools anyway. If you are going to use our email tool, music/video players, Facebook app, gig finder, digital press kits, digital distribution, etc, why not signup to get something back? It’s not all that different than a Discover Card or a Costco Membership that pays you back some cash at the end of the month or year.

In your case, you actually earned the equivalent of $2.47CPM (per thousand impressions that you drove to your ReverbNation page, where we show ads) for the month of April. This is significantly higher than the average CPM. It should be noted that ReverbNation does not place ads on widgets, emails or application pages. We refrain from this in an effort to preserve the integrity of the artists’ content (we don’t think shoving an ad into your music player on your blog will enhance your efforts to become a successful musician). Additionally, we must be sensitive to where widgets are placed. If we were to place advertising into a widget on MySpace, we would be violating their terms of service.

But, it’s important to note that Fair Share is not designed to replace making great music, gigging, selling merch and tickets, getting sponsored, etc as an income stream for a musicians. This isn’t a ‘get rich quick’ plan of any kind.

Let’s take a look at the math to understand how Fair Share is calculated and distributed to the Artists:

At the end of every month, we take 50% of the net ad revenue and create an ‘Artist Pie’ full of money. We use a proprietary formula (so people can’t cheat with automated bots, fake emails, etc) to determine how big a slice each Artist receives. So, each Artist will receive a monthly ‘slice’ based on:

1. The overall size of the ‘Artist Pie’.
2. The Artist’s portion, based on the formula.

It’s very important to understand that the size of the pie varies greatly from month to month due to overall ReverbNation site impressions (growing over time), and the dollar value of each advertisement shown on the site (which is down significantly, due to the economy).

It’s also important to understand that the portion any individual Artist receives depends on how many other Artists are enrolled in the program. If you have to divide a pie among many more people, each slice will be smaller. As you would expect, we sign up lots and lots of new Artists every day to the program.

My final point it that the program is 100% voluntary. It is not a requirement in order to use our site or anything we offer. By the sounds of it, you might be happier opting out of it.

Johnny, while I am happy (but somewhat confused) that you are still using our widgets on your MySpace page, I really wish that you would have contacted us prior to flaming a good program like Fair Share on blogs and to our user base. I have reached out repeatedly in an attempt to speak with you directly, but so far you have chosen not to have that conversation by telephone. That is your choice, but it is difficult to reconcile your actions when you write so strongly, but refuse to confront the problem directly.

To anyone else that has questions about Fair Share, I’m happy to answer.

-Jed Carlson
Co-Founder, Chief Operating Officer
ReverbNation.com

Artist – Wes Davey

YOU ARE CORRECT ABOUT THE SCAM JOHNNY!!!!
Keep Yer Songs on here though, cuz Yer Music is GREAT!!!!
Share them with the ‘PEOPLE’ Man!!!! :-)
WES

Artist – themightysmall

Hello Johnny Rei,

Thank you for posting up your honest opinion! I have to admit when I began using the reverbnation facility I kind of ignored the profit share part of it mainly because with the amount of people sharing a piece of the profits it was unlikely that much would materialise. I was more interested in the facilities they had set up for artists. I have realised in the last five years the huge increase of record industry minions and middlemen who are setting up business on their own has increased dramatically. The irony of this is that the huge corperations with all their wealth and power have realised the hugh sums of money they were wasting on insignificant middle men, and now these middlemen have begun to set up there own companies the only thing that has changed for them is who’s paying their wages and guess what it’s the artist again only this time its more direct, the promises are bigger and reality is that it is their hope, hard work and (in some cases) talent that props up this crumbling limb of an already dying system.
Where does the answer lie?
Well maybe it’s about time musicians began to get a little more business aware.
Even though the thought of something as wonderful as music being described as a business can be a turn off for any musician.

Warm Regards

Artist – Under Pressure Music

Hey Johnny
I read your blog…I gotta say that we tend to agree with you.
There have been several situations with RN management that have arisen lately with us as well.
With us, it was the cap on favorites was limited to 500, so every time we favorited 500 artists we would get a message saying we have hit the limit…-YET- When we went on other artists sites we would sometimes see as much as 750 artists that they had schmoozed…yet we were limited to 500??? I told them this and they said I must have been mistaken…then I replied to their email showing the actual examples and said they don’t know how these guys got that amount(one guy has 1200+)..Now normally I wouldn’t get too upset, but when these guys start overtaking you in the charts, then it becomes an issue of fairness.
Since giving them the sites, they replied with ‘we will set your limit at 750′…so this tells me that certain acts are given favours over others. Not exactly a fair way to play ball.
As it is with the ‘fair share’, we had some months back when we started that we earned $52/35/28, and that was when we didn’t have a whole lot of traffic …now that we have a good fan base, its just the opposite. The last report we had about fairshare was something like $1.83..embarrasing considering the promo we do for them and the fact that we were #1 act in Canada for a considerable time (#5 today and #93 Global).

Artist – Washington’s Crossing

I think you are right. I have been promoting my band for a few months here and I find very few active fans that use the site. I find more street team fans that are fake, and many other problems with top “artists” that have no right to be on top other that they paid to.

peace, john

Artist – cee knowledge and cosmic funk allstars

yo thanks for sharing that info…you are da man…im with you homie…good luck with promoting your music and dont let these scammers deter you from your dreams…peace cee knowledge

Artist – Katerina Stamatelos

I know, my friend! I have noticed the “trap” myself!
But: I am not expecting any “big checks” from reverbnation-just the fact that i meet new fans here is for me enough.
Don’t get discouraged: that’s how all “business” people are!!!

Take care and keep fighting!!!
regards,
Katerina

Label – Toxic Highway Recordings

Yeah, that is certainly a gyp. I’d love to see how much the bands signed to major labels that are on here make…would you be willing to bet it’s a lot more than $5?

That being said, I guess I’m just glad I’m earning anything at all for doing something I enjoy doing. But then again, ten hours a day is quite a bit of time to waste to only get $5 in return, and I’d be pretty pissed, too.

And no response from Reverbnation on that issue?

Hmm…that does seem to be a little shadier than I thought, however. The least they could do would be to explain why, but attempting to shut you up on the subject certainly isn’t right.

Especially since that one guy in the forums supposedly made $10 in two months, roughly $5 a month, and he didn’t make it sound like he was in the top 10 of anything…you may have a greater point than I originally expected.

Artist – Modad

I almost did it too. Thanks for lettin me know it’s just like everywhere else.Again,,,,, thanks.
Bill

Artist – Ben Green

Yeah Im not a Huge artist on here but April I did the most traffic i ever had in the past year put together, yet my fairshare was the lowest…0.05……needless to say i was pissed, It’s good to see I’m not the only one who notice somethings not right…

Artist – JoeytheSaxMan

Hey Mr. J

Considering I got .23 cents and I’m first in Eastern Canada, you’re not that bad, but I know what you’re saying Dude. RN gets half of all revenues, then the rest is distributed among all the thousands of people promoting RN. Have a great day!
Keep the Groove Alive!
Ciao … Joey

Well, let me tell you how this works:

You (artist) set up a profile on Reverbnation. Every time you visit a profile,you are creating impressions for adverts, which are placed on most sites on Reverbnation. Companies, who placed the adverts are paying for impressions you create. Now imagine 300 000+ ReverbNation users running around every day. That must create a lot of daily or monthly impressions. This is the main income for reverbnation owners. Plus – some artists are also purchuasing products such as Mega Storage, Fan Reach Pro etc., for which you are paying monthly fees. So what is the advantage of being on reverbnation? Apart from interacting with other users, there is none. Even if you are in top 10 charts – global – all generes – your traffic stays basically the same, there is no potential managers on labels interested in any of the artists. You can create same widgets and players as Reverbnation offers and advertise on myspace by yourself everything would be the same. But in this case, you are earning money for ReverbNation company which proimises to share 50% their advertising revenue – which is a great motivation for artists to ’’run around’’ or promote ReverbNation by placing widgets and players. This eventually doesn’t happen – users are not discussing their earnings – when they recieve small amount of money, they think they’ve done little work comparing to others. Let me tell you the truth: No one earns more than 5-10 dollars a month. So when ReverbNation is saying: ’’Some of the artists will recieve very nice paycheck each month’’ maybe they are talking about themselves or artists like 50 cent – who are there just because ReverbNation paid them to be there.

Two months ago I thought ReverbNation is great honest website and if I work hard -I will do really well. Turns out the owners are just another bunch of ’’Flippers’’ who earn quick buck from Unsigned Artist’s naivity.

I’m not just another naive artist, who’s gonna walk away and that’s it. I’m demanding a refund for my 2 months of hard work. If Reverbnation is not going to respond in anyway, I’m going to work hard for next 2 months…

On the other hand, they already have a big base of bands, and they’re free, so it might be a logical and easier extension of what the bands are already doing on there than setting up a new street team system on another site.

Reverbnation also lets fans take things from the bands (pix, songs, etc) and put them in forums elsewhere, so in theory fan community building could happen somewhere other than Reverbnation yet still rely on the resources they provide.

But I do wonder also about the consequences of not having a way for fans to interact in groups.

I’ve found that usually things like chats and forums are generally what keep a fan interested in wanting to promote an act – that need to feel like they know the other fans, as well as the band or act. That each one of them is an important part of the community.

We’ll all be watching, I suppose!