Image Credit: MusicThinkTank

With its recent acquisition of Onesheet, Bandzoogle aims to offer the definitive website for musicians, actors, comedians and models. Brendon Mulligan developed Onesheet in 2011 to provide musicians the equivalent of an “About.me” page that aggregated and automatically updated their profiles and music content from sites like Facebook, Bandcamp, SoundCloud and iTunes with automatic updates for easy maintenance. Bandzoogle CEO, David Dufresne, says the new acquisition represents the “missing piece” in the company’s aim to offer a comprehensive platform for artists and entertainers to share, sell and promote their work and merchandise.

Onesheet addressed a void in the market as a dynamic platform for musicians when it reached over 10,000 users in just over a month after its beta launch. According to Rip Emerson of TechCrunch: “Bands don’t have a lot of options when it comes to maintaining a simple but unified web identity; sure, there are some great sites for direct-to-fan sales, digital band management, career coaching (and BandCamp, for one, offers some nifty band-webpage-hosting), but many of these sites try to do too much and end up with fragmented user experiences.” Onesheet enables artists to login through Facebook or Twitter and easily connect with third-party clients like SoundCloud, BandCamp, ReverbNation, Posterous, Tumblr and Youtube. The artists’ Onesheet site updates itself when their third-party services update for ease of use.

Although Bandzoogle is still enhancing its U.S. presence, the company has been a monetized website building platform for 10 years. Dufresne describes Bandzoogle (before its Onesheet acquisition) as: a “WordPress, or more accurately a Wix or Squarespace made specifically for a band’s website” for tens of thousands of users. The company’s target audience is not high profile artists and entertainers, but those working independently. Now the company plans to leverage Onesheet’s user base to create new verticals, providing the comprehensive platform to not only musicians, but actors comedians and models.

The music world is still finding its identity in a new and constantly evolving digital age. Emerson notes that “the industry still wears its new digital outfit like an ill-fitting coat made of cassettes.” Although the indepdent artists have several avenues to promote themselves online, many find the religious maintenance of all their social media outlets and online marketing time-consuming and tedious. It’s possible to build a full band website on WordPress, but not simple for those new to the platform and how to use the best plug-ins and features. Dufresne states in a MusicThinkTank interview, “when you factor in the cost of web hosting, media hosting, domain name registration and adding a commission-based store the total cost of ownership of a good WordPress or Tumblr site is actually much higher than a Bandzoogle site.” Innovative startups and key acquisitions like Bandzoogle’s are important, and potentially precedent setting steps, in the modernization of music and entertainment business for independent artists.

Registration for Bandzoogle and Onesheet is currently closed, but early invitees are available. The revamped site is set to debut by the end of summer.