We all know Facebook’s policies against Pages are straight-up ridiculous, and they’re only getting worse. Pages with 10,000 “Likes” are only receiving a small fraction of those visitors on a daily basis, and what’s worse, those numbers are decreasing. I can even tell you that from personal experience.
However, there’s hope. Christopher Murray of Illuminate Me and Cody Stewart of The Browning are fighting back against those policies, by sparking meaningful discussion of how these policies have affected them. Check out the article after the jump, and be sure to sign the petition right here on Change.org. It’s already up to 200 in a matter of minutes. Edit: It’s up past 1,000 signatures in less than 2 hours. Incredible.
Official Statement:
Facebook has raised it’s rates on bands and small business’s promoting themselves through their website several times over the last few years, asking to pay even more money to simply reach the audience the band or small business has already acquired. It’s getting to a point where it’s blatant greed and is unjustifiable. Bands like us for example, (especially the unsigned ones) pay Facebook a hefty amount of money for an ad, just to get potential new fans to visit our page. On top of that now, we must pay a LARGE fee to talk to the fans already subscribed to our page. So we’re paying double on a service that we heavily rely on. It’s an exploitation of what bands need the most: communication with their fan base.
On my bands Facebook page for example (nearly 25k likes), I have paid up to 3k in Facebook advertising to get the amount of people connected to it that it has now. (On top of the heavy touring that we do) I need to pay Facebook now 150 dollars if I want one of my posts to reach all of the people that I already paid to get in the first place. I have talked to even bigger acts that rely on communication with their fan base to sell their product, and the price can get up to $2,000 or more.
You need $2,000 dollars from a band that’s barely making ends meet just so they can talk to a fan base they already paid and worked their ass off to get in the first place? Facebook does not seem to care about bands, or even small business’s that also rely on communication with their audience for that matter.
This is what I personally love about Twitter or Instagram, and have since been using more heavily to communicate with our fans. Neither sites charge you to reach all of your followers. (which hopefully won’t change, since Facebook owns Instagram) I understand the platforms are built differently, but why can’t Facebook do the same as Twitter/Instagram?
I urge every single musician or small business owner to share this petition around and sign it. If you have a photo of the ridiculous fee that Facebook is making you pay to “boost a post” then please post it as well. I have used social media to promote my bands in the past before, I’ve never had to pay anything let alone this much money just to talk to the people that love our music. Enough is enough, let’s fight back.
We want Facebook to remove having to pay to reach fans and followers. We are not money making machines, we are people.
Facebook it is not your place to put a price on our fans eyes and ears.
It is exactly their place. It's their business to make money. Just because your business isn't profitable doesn't mean facebook owes you shit.
Exactly.
This type of disrespect for digital goods and services did irreparable damage to the music industry. You'd think people in the music business would understand that, these guys don't.
If you are paying a for a service, you should get what is expect or promised. These men work their asses off…and spend extended time away from family. If you are paying to be able to send messages to 25k fans, you should be able too.
You need internet street teams. Let the fans do the advertising for you. Drop downloads and merch on fans who garner the most new likes for your page.
Alright so I take it you don't understand the gripe then let's say you personally had to shove out 25k for 25k followers that 1000 dollars for 1000 people that a dollar a person now take in to account you have said fan base and you want them all to see a post you then have to pay again to reace them that is not social media that is here take.it in the ass while I take all your money I rather a band put more time And money out for Recording and Tours then have.to pay so I can see there post.on my facebook .
Kendall Brashaw I understand the gripe completely. They want access to the best available tool for social networking and they don't want to pay for it. That's fucked up. Facebook is not a social service; it is a social network. If you can't afford it, then you don't get access to it. If you can't afford a BMW, then you're driving a Civic or no car at all. Like I said, if you think their price structure is unfair/unaffordable, then don't use the tool. Use twitter/vine/instagram/whogivesashit. You don't get to demand that they give you access to their product just because you feel entitled to it.
Facebook has every right to make money with their product. If there are companies out there willing to spend 25 grand on Facebook advertising, then it must be worth 25 grand.
You killed the industry
You should not get charge just to promote a page
600 dollars for photos 2k for our music video 1500 for copy righting and trad marking 500 an hour for our attorney we built our own 9k studio and our music equipment and we can even promote ourselves on a free site …please people sign this
I think paying facebook is a waste of time and money. When you "boost" a page you may get more likes….how do you spend Likes?? I think its better to create a page and let it grow naturally with people drawn to your page out of interest and there are many free networking methods to get your page out there to the masses.
I think paying facebook is a waste of time and money. When you "boost" a page you may get more likes….how do you spend Likes?? I think its better to create a page and let it grow naturally with people drawn to your page out of interest and there are many free networking methods to get your page out there to the masses.
I don't necessarily mind the approach, I just think it's currently implemented poorly. The best option would be to have a staggering system of percentages. I think you start to get hit with serious reach reduction when you break 1000 fans (correct me if I'm wrong). What would make sense would be something like a 1-5% reduction in reach per every 1000, let's say, capping at around 60-70%. That way smaller pages can still reach a good number of people, get more fans, and then decide on advertising solutions as their reach builds. It would lead to fair averages of natural exposure as well as giving incentive to occasionally boost. Keep in mind it wasn't like that before, there was no such thing as post boosting and some of these pages have a gripe for a reason. Fans can also select to show pages in their feed, so pages would do well to convince them of that, and there are some ways to get around the reach effect as well. Posting roughly 10 things a day, for example, will give you a decent result, but even then it becomes something of a job. FB can do what they want, but the percentages could be applied more reasonably depending on fan count, in my opinion.
Kendall Brashaw I suspect Facebook is going down the Myspace way fast, at least for everyone of us in the creative side. For me it did cost 6 euros to get a new follower a year ago already, and they tightened the algorithm again this January. I used to do a lot of advertising on Facebook two years back, but since it doesn't get anywhere even when paid, I haven't been using Facebook for anything else but surfing random feeds and auto-reposting instagram images. Twitter is also hard to get to work in any meaningful way.
Instagram is great at the moment, you will have people who see what you post out on IG every time. The only downside is you can't get them to check out anything else but what you put on there — an image or a 15s square video clip, but it's the best out there for now.
Greez, in music business since -96.
Facebook didnt have this policy in the first place. you shouldnt give the privilage to bands and provide a free networking tool and then slap them whith having to pay once they get big. thats the kind of shit that loses you clients and makes you look bad. facebook will burn with myspace.