YouTube announced on Friday that it is acquiring BandPage, a platform that acts as a homepage of sorts for musicians. BandPage originally designed landing tabs on Facebook for musicians but lost most of its traffic after the social site redesigned its timelines in 2012. It’s since become an independent platform that bands use to showcase themselves as well as sell concert tickets and merchandise. It’s free to use though the company does take a 15 percent cut of all transactions.
YouTube is likely acquiring the smaller company as a means of attracting both bands and new viewers to its newly-launched Red subscription service. Bands would get a larger stage to showcase their talents, thereby increasing their ticket and merchandise sales; Red subscribers will get access to more bands and YouTube gets more people to pay $10 a month for the ad-free subscription as well as potentially early or exclusive access to content. It’s a win-win-win.
Via: TechCrunch
Source: BandPage
