Part 2 : On Rewards, Reviewers, and the Music

Why do you think the reviewers rewards program for website visitors has been so successful?
We look at our "Review Music, Get Music!" reviewer rewards program like this: we're lucky to have a lot of die-hard music lovers who hang out at our site. These people regularly come to garageband.com, review music, help our site work, and offer their feedback to the bands. We want to say "thanks" to these people, so we reward them with US$25 vouchers from HMV.com.

The point is that we're rewarding people who'd come and review music anyway. And the volume of reviews we've processed has increased as the site has grown. It's getting better all the time.

Can you give us some specifics on how the reviewers program works?
Every band gets the same number of reviews. Positive reviews push a song up garageband.com's charts. The band that's in the #1 spot at the end of each review cycle (currently every two months) earns a US$250,000 recording contract. It's as straightforward as that.

How are your search engines designed for use on the site and what does "My Garage" provide to the users?
My Garage is a place where a member keeps their personal info, play lists, "Review Music, Get Music!" rewards card, etc.

We're actually working on a more flexible and powerful search solution as I write this. We're working on a new way of picking out songs we know our members will like. We have tens of thousands of songs in our database, and each of these songs have been reviewed over and over - so we know a lot about them. This means we can match particular songs with each reviewer's particular tastes.

We'll also let our members search for bands and songs by musical style, and find sound-a-like bands.

Do you believe garageband.com's success lies in its ability to generate continued interest from both the bands hoping to be discovered and from the reviewers - the website visitors? And do you think that is a key to keeping members?
Yes, very much so. Our future success depends on us continuing to deliver a great service and opportunity to bands, and an empowering role to music fans. Plus being a place to hear the best new music.

Do you have a favorite "band" success story from the site that you feel represents the best about what garageband.com wants to accomplish?
boondogs - our very first winner, from Little Rock Arkansas. They were on the brink of either disbanding or moving to LA or New York because there's no way they'd have broken out in Little Rock. garageband.com broke down all the geographic barriers and let their musical talent shine through.

Similarly, a band of kids from Estonia won a spot in the Adam Sandler movie "Little Nicky" - and there's no way the world would know about these guys without garageband.com.

Tell us why your site provides so many contests and bonuses for its users?
Bruce Springsteen said he "gets paid a king's ransom for doing what comes naturally". We like to offer our members the same deal.

Continued...