Topspin Development for The “Little Guys” Soon to Be A Reality

Posted by Eric Hebert on Mar 14, 2011 in Marketing | Comments

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Topspin takes on ReverbNation and Bandcamp in Direct-to-Fan Management Tool Supremacy.

UPDATE 2: Topspin is now available to the public; I will follow up this post with my thoughts shortly.

UPDATE: Topspin goes public TOMORROW (Wed March 16). Here’s the teaser video:

So for years now we all know I’ve been a super supporter of ReverbNation and all the wonderful tools they’ve brought to the table for musicians on a budget. Since I discovered them back in ’06 I was super impressed with their music widgets, and called for the death of MySpace as soon as I heard the sound quality that those widgets delivered.

Recently, better tools for doing certain things have crawled their way into my toolset for clients and artists, the most important being Bandcamp. The ability to sell different kinds of file formats, and in album form, simply beats the Reverb/Audiolife way of selling/distributing digital downloads. In addition, I just like their cleaner looking widgets and overall distribution platform.

The bitch of it all is now I have to use 2 different systems, import the emails from Bandcamp into Reverb, etc. One of my goals is to always make the time spent online as streamlined and efficient as possible, and having to use both of these tools at once does not make me happy. Why Bandcamp only does digital downloads and not a bitchin email platform or Facebook app (the 2 coolest things about using Reverb) I’ll never know.

Well it looks like Topspin’s up coming public release just might be the real solution I’m looking for. Now, I’ve been keeping an eye on Topspin for years now, and have a kind of love/hate relationship with the service. I LOVE the widgets and overall look of the tools they have, they are very well designed, fast loading, look very customizable, have no branding whatsoever, etc.

The HATE part comes from simply not being allowed to use the service, as I’ve never had a client with an established fan base to meet the Topspin requirement. For years Topspin seemed to only cater their service to somewhat established acts. In a way I guess I was always just jealous that I wasn’t established enough to be in the cool kids club.

Now that they are opening it up to the public, it looks like I’m finally going to get that chance, and if Reverb/Bandcamp are reading this, they better be getting a little scared, because if the backend is as clean and easy to use as the front end tools, and they continue to roll out competing services, it looks to be a no-brainer to have Topspin as # 1 tool in direct-to-fan marketing and business platform.

Let’s take a look at some reasons why. I’m killing two birds with one stone here by using my new favorite band, Fitz and the Tantrums, as an example, as they use Topspin tools to power their site.

The site, like all the sites I build, starts with WordPress and the designer has created a very clean and cool looking theme to match the band’s branding and album artwork. You’ll notice some of the elements are powered by Topspin, namely the download and email boxes, which are very cool looking, easy to use and blend seamlessly into the site.

Now, ReverbNation does offer similar widgets and you can pay extra to have their branding removed and can for the most part blend them in as well; the big difference here is the time it takes for these things to load up. This is crucial, especially the more of these widgets you have on a page. Also, not only did the Topspin widgets load quickly, they also didn’t hold the actual site load time up. Put too many Reverb widgets on a page and it will surely slow down site load times. Same goes for Bandcamp.

Now let’s shoot over to the Fitz’s store page, because this is really where Topspin separates itself from Reverb and competes a little more with Bandcamp (confusing I know). Here you’ll notice all the tiered pricing options you can put together, bundle merch in different ways with the digital album, etc. Here you’ll notice the really cool Topspin music player again streaming the album.

Now, you CAN do this with Bandcamp but they seem to have limitations on the number of bundles you can create (the last time I tried anyway) AND you can’t present them on a store page like you can here with the Topspin tools. Its really these little tiny details that can make or break an opportunity to get a visitor to purchase something.

And you KIND OF can do this with Reverb, using the tools with their partnership with Audiolife, but it’s just ugly. The widget just doesn’t do it, you can’t bundle with high quality tracks in an album format, and I just hate it. And the whole on-demand merchandise stuff is a whole other discussion and I do not consider it an upside.

So let’s step back for a minute and look at what each of these tools offers us to justify the comparison.

ReverbNation

Pros: full set of tools, email platform, music widgets, store, and more. Like a lot more, they have a ton of tools to use, even more so then what Topspin offers (RPK, Street Team, etc)

Cons: only distributes single MP3, load times/design of widgets, crappy store design, a ton of tools to use (perhaps TOO MANY, things artists really don’t need or are difficult to actually use (RPK, Street Team)

Bandcamp

Pros: sell/distribute high quality file formats (FLAC), interface is awesome, nice widgets, bundle with merch

Cons: limited set of tools, limited merch options, has to be used with other tools.

Topspin

Pros: sell/distribute high quality file formats, user interface is awesome, nice widgets, bundle with merch, fully customizeable, email program and possibly more

Cons: Not sure yet. So far everything they DO offer does the job just as well as ReverbNation or Bandcamp and possibly DOES IT BETTER, which is kind of the whole point of discussing this in the first place.

Do they offer all the tools that ReverbNation does? Doesn’t quite seem so, but they offer the IMPORTANT ones. A lot of the other stuff is “fluff” – sitebuilder/Bandzoogle stuff (a whole other discussion on why I don’t suggest using), Street Team application (sounds cool but ultimately does not deliver), RPK (an oxymoron if you ask me – I believe your website should suffice as a digital press kit anyways), etc.

The real kicker here is ultimately going to be Topspin’s back end interface – ease of use and how robust the analytics program is. From what I’ve heard it’s pretty good, but we’ll just have to wait and see. If it’s easier to use then ReverbNation and offers similar if not better stats, then it might be a no-brainer.

Another question I have is the Facebook page integration – I’d say the strongest aspect outside of the FanReach program is ReverbNations WONDERFUL Band Profile integration with your Facebook page. The Fitz’s page does have some Topspin integration but from what I saw is not up to par with Reverb’s app. So that’s another factor to also consider.

Finally, I suppose the million dollar question will be how Topspin will charge for its tools. Will it have a tiered pricing structure that does not take any % like ReverbNation? Or will the tools be free like Bandcamp and it’s current model with a percentage of the profits? Stay tuned as Topspin will be launching this platform in the coming weeks – this discussion has only just started and I will be following up this post once I’ve gotten my hands dirty with it.