MyBand – A Music Community For Indian Bands

Mediaplus recently unveiled My Band, which according to them is an advanced music community exclusively for the Indian bands.

So how is this different from say a Myspace page which has always been a favourite of the bands as a platform to share and popularise their music?

Debashis Dey, founder of MyBand says “Most Indian Bands inadvertently get lost in a crowd of million bands and billion artists as the business of eye-balls can never do any justice to real talents! And for the millions of Indian Music lovers worldwide – there is no fixed place or a destination where they can find these talents. MyBand comes to fill this space.”

They also allow bands to have their own TV channels on the website and say that one of the most important features of their site is that it allows the artist to interact with people directly and collect ratings and reviews for their music.

As of now it seems that they are just trying to capitalise on the short comings of Myspace and Facebook.

At present, MyBand has a strategic tie-up with Silk Road – An Universal Company which invests in South Asian artists. Silkroad will sell their music through MyBand while also selecting new Indian Bands from the site based on their popularity.

Their revenue model?

Apart from subscription fee they also charge a 10% commission for the songs sold via the website.

They are giving away about 100 free premium accounts using which bands can upload 10 songs after which they have to pay a subscription fee. I was going through their website and saw that about 65 bands have already signed up.

Overall, I’d say it’s probably too early to comment upon the venture. Give it some time and do give it a shot. Music communities heavily depend on the musicians they attract. Though, they will face stiff competition from the established players like Myspace and Facebook which have a much larger user base and hence will make it tough for My Band to break into the space.