Facebook is pretty much broken when it comes to free promotion. And as of November 5, it’s going to be even more so for aspiring musicians, labels and DJs because last week the social media company updated its Platform Policies, which outlined new rules page admins will have to follow.
From November 5, it will now be against Facebook’s platform policies to offer downloads for likes.
Facebook said via its app developer site, “You must not incentivize people to use social plugins or to like a Page. This includes offering rewards, or gating apps or app content based on whether or not a person has liked a Page. It remains acceptable to incentivize people to login to your app, checkin at a place or enter a promotion on your app’s Page. To ensure quality connections and help businesses reach the people who matter to them, we want people to like Pages because they want to connect and hear from the business, not because of artificial incentives. We believe this update will benefit people and advertisers alike.”
This isn’t the first time Facebook has laid down the law with regards how page admins can gain more likes. But this time it seems that Facebook might actually start policing the rules as of November 5, which presumably means if you continue to use those apps your page could be in jeopardy.
Now almost every aspiring artist we work with on a daily basis uses these apps to offer downloads for a like on their Facebook page. Artists get a like for the download, whilst music fans get a free download in exchange for a like. And Since Facebook choked organic reach to 1%, Facebook users now don’t mind giving away a like for a download; especially as they know that the artist’s subsequent posts probably won’t show up in their timeline all that often.
Rather than pages getting deleted though Facebook may actually go after the app developers and remove any apps that allow page admins to exchange likes for content. But at the moment we just don’t know. But if your free downloads tabs suddenly stops working on November 5, or worse still your page suddenly disappears, you’ll probably know why.
