TheIndie.biz Announces ‘Frindie’ Launch

Today theIndie.biz announced the launch of its Frindie application (Friends + Indie = Frindie, get it?), a social media tool that allows users to see what music their friends on large social media applications – Facebook, Myspace, etc.- are listening to.

The service is being promoted as an alternative to platforms that make recommendations based on what the users themselves or strangers are listening to.

Because its focus is independent artists, rather than a specific genre, TheIndie.biz contains a wide variety of music.  That being the case, finding ways for users to sift through and find things that will actually interest them is a great idea.  Frindie, however, relies on users and their friends from social networks embracing the app.  This presents a huge challenge to early adopters who can’t get much out of the site going in alone.  Frindie’s data and updates are also limited to the music on TheIndie.biz.  While a site like Pandora does not connect users with people they actually know, it does possess a song library of over 700,000 songs, where Frindie connects users to a library of about 10,000.

As a member of up-and-coming (I hope) rock band, Oh You Devil, I am constantly evaluating new ways to get our music out there.  Using Frindie as a means for bands to find new fans (as detailed in the press release) is what interested me the most.

It is unclear, however, exactly how well this will work if the application connects bands with people that are already part of their on-line social network.  For Oh You Devil, and most other new independent bands, these people make up the majority of the existing audience.  How will Frindie connect us to new fans any better than our existing networks on Facebook or Myspace?

As a band, something we struggle with is how wide a net to cast with our on-line promotion; is it better to dedicate a lot of energy to one or two platforms, or simply sign up for everything out there?  In a sense, Frindie seems to be offering the worst of both worlds.  While asking artists to keep up with yet another social media app, it is offering them a limited pool of people they are already connected to.

The only information available about Frindie at this point is a press release and descriptions of the service on TheIndie.biz.   Reading both of these things left me with a lot of questions, rather than making me feel I should rush to sign up.

Tagged as: digital music, Frindie, marketing, pandora, social media, social networking, TheIndie.biz