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EbandLive Update

Submitted by Craig Agranoff on Friday, 5 December 2008 View Comments

Dan Behrens, a representative of ebandLive, contacted us regarding our recent review of the site. He corrected several issues in our review, so we thought it appropriate to update our review of the site, given this new information.  Here is the comment that was left on the previous article:

“Hello, this is Dan from ebandLive. Thank you so much for the review but I think there is a little confusion as to the services we are offering over here. Currently the “we design” and “you design” packages are 100% custom designed websites, either we design or the band would have their designer work within our provided functionality wireframe, which are then coded and integrated into the ebandLive content management system.
We are feverishly working on the “ready made” package which will directly compete with bandzoogle.com
Whats the big difference between us and them?
The major one…design. Our competitor’s design is pretty rough around the edges (and not in a good way). All of the ebandLive designers are award winning published interactive and graphic designers and we wouldn’t have it any other way.  Major one number 2…ease of use. We have exhaustingly studied the usability of ebandLive’s CMS and pretty much have it buckled down to no brainer, do it in your sleep style of easy. BUT…we are constantly improving and upgrading things…literally on a daily basis.
Feel free to email me (dan@ebandlive.com) or the team (info@ebandlive.com) with any questions.
Rock!
Dan
P.S. We definitely offer a streaming audio player, it’s on our features page (http://ebandlive.com/features-ebandlive-custom-…) close to the bottom…check it out. and Rock-n-Roll-Design.com’s “sign up and go” type of service.”

EbandLive is a service that provides hosting for bands, band managers, or anyone else who wants to get a band online and in public. Currently, the “we design” and “you design” packages are designer-only, meaning you either hire their web professional (“we design”) or you hire your own to work with their hosting staff (“you design”). They are working towards a more plug-and-play DIY design interface right now and hope to roll that out soon.

Of course, for marketing purposes, their website is unclear on any of this, which is why my original review assumed that the site offered the choice of professional design versus “point and click” cookie-cutter design (as most similar sites offer).

Even with professional design, they say the site is easy to use and can be done almost in your sleep. Hope so, since most musicians I know are either drunk or sleeping anyway. I’d hate to see what some of them would do given the chance to ruin something. I’ve seen hotel room aftermaths…

It seems that ebandLive has some great points and good offering for higher-end bands or those with a budget, but the smaller guys will probably still be better (and more cheaply) served at bandzoogle.com or Rock-n-Roll-Design.com.

EbandLive is in its infancy and will likely improve with time and perhaps broaden their appeal to lower-budget groups. In the interim, maybe their marketing team needs to give their site a once-over and make sure it doesn’t say something it doesn’t mean. Otherwise, reviewers and users like me will continue to be confused.


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  • I agree that he wasn't comparing like to like and I tried to point that out in my writeup. The big difference here, I think, is cost (or market sector). A band whose budget is lucky to cover their gas and beer to get to the gig is more likely to want to get their site up and online on the cheap, since their side job isn't likely to pay for much. I like to think of these as "Myspace Bands."

    A band who's hired a touring agent and is pulling in a couple of grand a month might consider spending real money to get a decent site up and is more likely to use your service or a similar setup.

    A band signed on with an indie label and selling records and making enough to pay their rent and work their music full time is definitely going to want to go to the higher-end and will likely hire a professional designer or team to put a site together for them and maintain it.

    There are definitely different targets for this market and where Bandzoogle aims versus where Ebandlive is currently aiming are two different sectors. I have seen plenty of "cookie-cutter" sites that look good enough to be easily confused with the professional one-off designs of others. It's usually a matter of the skill of the person using the DIY in matching elements (color, flow, and photography). Anyone can do that without needing to know HTML or the rest.
  • Thought I might chime in here. I'm the founder of Bandzoogle. There are dozens of site builders out there, and many take shots at us. I think that this one is particularly unfair.

    Dan really isn't comparing "apples to apples". He is comparing our DIY designs with his custom made sites. Clearly, a DIY website can't match having a designer custom build something. When they have a DIY system, then lets compare their sites to ours. I suggest people check out our "sample sites" page to see some examples of what bands have been able to build without any input from a designer.

    In terms of "ease of use", my Mom can build a Bandzoogle site in 10 minutes. Customers switch from our competitors because we are easy to use. Again, when they have their system done we should do a head to head comparison.

    In the next 60 days, we'll be opening up our system so that anyone can make a design (something they are charging $395 for!), but you will still have access to our built in features like our music player and MP3 download store (both of which are missing on ebandLive).

    I suggest bands who are interested in getting the facts try out other DIY site builders and see how they stack up themselves.
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