Last week Facebook revealed a whole sack full of changes and updates for the social network.

CNET‘s Caroline McCarthy has a great article on how the changes will affect the general public, but as musicians these changes could affect us differently.

Starting with Groups. Groups are different than fan sites. Fan sites are for them masses. Facebook Groups are meant for family members, sports teams, school classes, and the like. But it struck me that if you have a rabid enough fanbase you could charge a Fan Club/Subscription fee to join your Group. This way fans that are devoted enough could get even closer to you and your music. More below:

• You can’t just arbitrarily join a group–another member has to invite you.  – Exclusivity For Super Fans –
• Membership is limited to 250 people at this point.
• New features include collaborative documents, photo and video sharing, and the ability to invite all members of a group to an event. – Fan to Artist interactivity –
• Live group chat – Face to face Fan to Artist time –
• Groups can have e-mail addresses assigned to them too, which Facebook says can only be e-mailed by e-mail addresses that match up to Facebook accounts that are in the group. (CNET)

Facebook also added a feature for you to download “My Information” This is a ZIP file containing a complete archive of everything you’ve put up on Facebook including profile data, photos and videos, wall posts, notes, comments, friend lists, etc. This could be very useful if you lose any photos, MP3’s, fan contacts, etc.

My Information serves as a kind of back up, yet at the same time the file doesn’t contain friends’ contact information. Meaning there’s no way of getting an email list spreadsheet from My Information.

Finally fbook added a “dashboard” which manages which apps you’re using and how much of your bands/personal info has been granted to that app. This could be useful with the bevy of new music apps vying for our attention.

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