Emerging musicians and bands who are just starting their careers are often bootstrapped and don’t have the resources to pay for someone to create a website, book gigs online, and do web-based marketing to build a fan base. DigABand, which just launched in private beta, is hoping to help independent artists manage their online presence easily and through and single platform.
DigABand, which targets artists with less than 1000 fans, serves as SaaS service that will empower bands and musicians to market themselves. Off of DigABand’s platform, you can create a customized site with a vanity URL, and can connect to social networks like Facebook and Twitter. And the pages where bans can set up their digital presence also include the ability to set up blogs and email accounts.
The platform also leverages the greater community of artists by letting musicians connect with each other on the site to potentially collaborate for gigs and share a fan base. It’s kind of like Match.com for independent artists to make connections because the site can match them based on location, genre, number of fans, number of plays and so on.
There are social networks out there that focus on connecting and helping collaboration for independent artists and bands such as Indaba but DigABand has a different take by allowing bands to actually create their online presence. Of course sites like MySpace and Facebook serve this purpose and have a built in database of fans, so the site will face stiff competition from these established social network.