We study first order fluctuations of a relativistic membrane in the cu
rved background of a black hole. The zeroth-order solution corresponds
to a spherical membrane tightly covering the event horizon. We obtain
a massive Klein-Gordon equation for the fluctuations of the membrane'
s radial coordinate on the 2+1 dimensional world-volume We finally sug
gest that quantization of the fluctuations can be related to black hol
e's mass quantization and the corresponding entropy is computed. This
entropy is proportional to the membrane area and is related to the one
-loop correction to the thermodynamical entropy A(H)/4. With regards t
o the membrane model for describing effectively a quantum black hole,
we connect these results with previous work on critical phenomena in b
lack hole thermodynamics.