Facebook Is Trying to Extort Money From Musicians
An interesting No Clean Singing report has recently surfaced, claiming that Facebook is “in the process” of cutting down the organic page reach down to mere 1 or 2 percent, basically extorting money from page managers in order for them to reach wider crowds.
As Metal Sucks points out, the source has done a “fine job” of tracking changes in the social network’s changes in user policy and architecture. Focusing on the latest Facebook changes, the data presented in the report indeed comes as a bit alarming.
What the organic reach slash basically means is that the updates posted by pages you liked will be cut down, forcing the page owners to invest into post boosting in order to reach a wider audience.
Granted, following every single update from your friends and liked pages is an impossible task. Therefore, Facebook introduced their EdgeRank system that determines how often a user will see content from a certain page based on his engagement.
As the same source indicates, the number of displayed posts from liked pages has gone from 25% to about 6%, and will likely continue to go down to as little as 1%. Criticizing Facebook for its “bait and switch” strategy, the article accused the company of luring bands and brands by “implicitly promising” them the ability to reach fans for free. Facebook’s earning stats only go to support the claim, as the company’s earning figures have gone up 76% in the fourth quarter of 2013, summing up to $2.3 billion.
So although major names will likely be able to cope in amidst of the new situation, smaller brands will struggle even more due to a lack of budget to invest in Facebook promotion. No Clean Singing report concludes with the following word of advice:
“If you run a Facebook Page, encourage your readers to like, share, and comment on your posts.
“If you are a Facebook user and want to increase the chances of seeing the FB Pages you care about, like, share, and comment on the status updates posted by those Pages.”