ILLUMINATE ME vocalist Christopher Murray has launched a petition asking Facebook not to charge for individual posts. In just three days almost 40.000 people have signed the petition
February 23, 2015
Year 2015 has brought companies, bands and communities all over the world an undesired surprise: the heavy burden of the new Facebook policy, obliging all of them to pay unimaginable sums of money to reach their audience with every single post, let alone purely advertising ones. Not only does every band, community or business have to give Facebook hundreds and thousands of dollars for traditional FB ads, now they are “offered” (if they want their posts to appear among the subscribers’ news, which of course they do) to pay for “boosting” each new post, regardless of its content. If you put this offer aside, reluctant to pay, it simply means you are writing almost into the giant void, since nobody will even see your news anymore until they intentionally go to check out your page. The sum of post boosting depends on how many of your subscribers you would like to read it on their news page. But what if the number of your fans or readers accounts for thousands or even hundreds of thousands?
To fight this, Illuminate Me frontman Christopher Murray has launched a petition asking Facebook to stop making bands and companies pay money to reach their readers, saying: “Facebook, it is not your place to put a price on our fan’s eyes and ears”. In just 3 days the number of those who joined has climed up to 36.000, making it a truly loud statement of dissatisfaction all over the world.
Read the part of the singer’s petition below and follow this link to Change.org to join it.
We Want Facebook To Remove Having To Pay To Reach Fans And Followers
Facebook has raised its rates on bands and small business’s promoting themselves through their website several times over the last few years, asking to pay even more money to simply reach the audience the band or small business has already acquired. It’s getting to a point where it’s blatant greed and is unjustifiable. Bands like us for example, (especially the unsigned ones) pay Facebook a hefty amount of money for an ad, just to get potential new fans to visit our page. On top of that now, we must pay a LARGE fee to talk to the fans already subscribed to our page. So we’re paying double on a service that we heavily rely on. It’s an exploitation of what bands need the most: communication with their fan base.
On my bands Facebook page for example (nearly 25k likes), I have paid up to 3k in Facebook advertising to get the amount of people connected to it that it has now. (On top of the heavy touring that we do) I need to pay Facebook now 150 dollars if I want one of my posts to reach all of the people that I already paid to get in the first place. I have talked to even bigger acts that rely on communication with their fan base to sell their product, and the price can get up to $2,000 or more.
You need $2,000 dollars from a band that’s barely making ends meet just so they can talk to a fan base they already paid and worked their ass off to get in the first place? Facebook does not seem to care about bands, or even small business’s that also rely on communication with their audience for that matter.
We want Facebook to remove having to pay to reach fans and followers. We are not money making machines, we are people.
Facebook it is not your place to put a price on our fans eyes and ears.
Go to Change.org to join the petition and share this post with your friends if you think FB has no right to charge bands to reach their fans.
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