SkatterBand Blog

I first came across Pownce at Future of Web Apps in Miami a few months back. While, honestly I do not indulge in it everyday I have seen superb value for the music community. Pownce is defined as:

a way to keep in touch with and share stuff with your friends. Send people files, links, events, and messages and then have real conversations with the recipients.

The key here is sharing files with your friends. Everyone who follows you on Pownce gets your alerts. They can be text based messages, much like Twitter or you can get more complex with videos, pictures (show flyers), event invites and even, yes, MP3’s.

The great thing is you can choose “who” to send “what.” Have a street team on Pownce, send your new flyer to them. Have a large following on Pownce, send everyone your new single and let them download it for free.

I see Pownce as a music distribution platform as well as an information distributor is which you, the band/musician/artist controls the flow.

I recently had the chance to talk to Leah Culver, one of the co-founders (another co-founder is Kevin Rose of Digg and Revision3 fame). Leah had this to say about using Pownce as a music distribution platform:

Pownce is a great way to distribute free or sample tracks to fans. We just added the ability to send files publicly on Pownce which could be used to distribute original content. I think musicians are definitely benefiting from getting their tracks out there on Pownce.

Pownce does currently have an open API, which allows developers to use the data within Pownce and create mash-ups and uses for the service that Pownce may not have available at the moment. I asked Leah about some music applications for Pownce and if any were on the way:

We haven’t seen any specific applications made for musicians or podcasters yet but I know there’s stuff in the works to integrate Pownce into various music players. That’s about all I can say

Now that is something to get excited about.

As musicians look to the future of finding and connecting with fans, engaging into conversations and fans do the same, Pownce is a great tool that more musicians need to look into. Leah mentioned Dinner Party Records and Brad Sucks as 2 music related users that are tkaing advantage of the services Pownce has to offer.

We are reaching out to both of them to see the effectiveness of their Pownce campaigns.

Look for a complete tutorial into using Pownce for Music Distribution and Promotion in my new eBook, Sex, Drugs and Myspace Pages. The book is slated for a September release and pre-orders will begin shortly.

-Greg Rollett