Reading through the changes to the Sellaband concept has left me with very mixed feelings. In many respects I'm actually extremely pleased they've finally taken the action they have, but by the same token I now see only a make-or-break option with no obvious alternative routes for the progress of the site.
The change to only 1CD per believer may seem like a relatively small thing once you get past the legitimate reasons such as artists investing in themselves and people wanting more than one copy for friends/relatives, but I think for the average believer it should now make you stop and ask the following 2 questions - Why did I join Sellaband? and What do I expect now the new terms have been revealed?
When I originally joined Sellaband, with the exception of Nemesea I was quite a small believer. Like several other believers, I actually became a "big believer" (or at least a bigger believer than originally intended) most particularly after Sellaband raised the idea of believer shops. Many may see me as a "big believer" but I'm really a music lover who turned into one, because of the way I viewed Sellaband at the time. Was it really so naive to think that so few CDs would sell via Sellaband? After all, we're talking a company here with contacts in the music industry already. Like many others I thought those contacts would be able to have some impact, because I do genuinely believe there are 5000 homes for the CDs of any artist out there and they can be found eventually. After all, how many people are there in the world with an Internet connection who listen to music? 5000 is the merest fraction of a percent! And when it comes to contacts, you also get the ideas of marketing and promotion in mind - the contacts ought to exist not only to make the CD but also to give some guidance to help it to sell too!
But I think that Sellaband has stated its position very clearly with the new terms and has basically stated that it does not want to be the revolution in the music industry, but rather wants to be a small cog which may or may not turn out to form part of that revolution in the future.
Sometimes I despair, because when it comes to "music 2.0" nobody seems to have figured out that being just part of the equation isn't enough if you truly want to start a revolution in music. The first company to figure out how to help an artist get fans, book gigs, record their music, manage their money, deal with promotion and generally stop them going insane in the process is going to be onto a winner. It's fine to say that in the "new music world" artists are now in control of their own destiny, but when you consider all that's involved in terms of finding and keeping an audience on top of them actually having the creativity to make music in the first place, "non omnia possumus omnes" surely has never applied more strongly than to the artists themselves. And sure, a company can take that "we can't do everything" approach as well, but having the options all in one place is surely going to be a winner over having to go everywhere for all the tools you might need. Some artists may be good at self-promotion. Some may know one of the guys who works at the local recording studio. The reality is, most don't know what they're doing - they just have a dream to make music. So the person who can come along and fill in the gaps so making music is all they have to think about is always going to be in demand.
From my point of view, therefore, Sellaband has stated that they are merely a tool where you can turn up, raise 50K and record an album. Don't expect anything outside of that, because I haven't seen it anywhere in the "new era" concept changes. Don't expect them to find your fans and don't expect them to promote your music (despite this maybe being quite a weird concept to get your head around as they're taking publishing revenue). Maybe if their top-secret partnership to be revealed on 1st December is someone like Topspin I may change my mind, but I see the future as a combination of 1 part believers, "fanatics" who really get hooked on an act and a few of the super-rich who are just spending their pocket money (yes we have a few believers on Sellaband who own companies, their own aeroplanes etc. etc.).
Look at it this way - if 50K artists aren't selling a large number of normal copies of CDs or digital mp3s now through Sellaband and its third party links, what makes you think 50K artists will be able to sell copies in future? With Sellaband saying it wants no real part of promotion (but hey you're free to use the 5K from your budget for that if you want it) and there being no additional copies of CDs for buying more than one part, I see no obvious reason to buy more than one part in an artist in future, unless one of the as-yet-unknown incentives is deemed to have sufficient value to you as a believer to make you want to spend the extra. (hence the "fanatic"). Artists are going to have to prove they can already effectively promote themselves through channels other than Sellaband in future and bring people in via that or I can't see how they will stand a chance of raising 50K until Sellaband has an awful lot more real believers on board.
I think it should therefore be obvious from the above what my own strategy will be in future. I will be buying one part in artists I like (probably fairly early to reserve that low-numbered CD) and only decide much closer to the 50K whether I want to go for an incentive, based on how much I like the act, or whether they've actually done anything to convince me they're worth spending extra cash on. I figure questions such as "Have you got a manager?", "Who is your promotion company?" and other similar nuggets may be on others minds before they part with a lot of cash under the new rules. On the upside, if a lot of people start looking at incentives then we could actually get some faster runs to 50K than we've seen of late as people snap them up. The bar has really been raised for new artists - if you can't bring a heap of people with you I'd now be inclined to say forget it until Sellaband actually has that 100,000 new believers on board (assuming it can get them)
For my existing multiple-part acts the future is unclear, but I am in no immediate rush since the 1 year extension plan on CDs announced. I figure that I've got until an artist gets close to 50K or the 1 year deadline is up before I decide anything. If I'm still on a heap of parts and an artist hasn't moved significantly forward in that year the incentives (including any I've received to date) will decide what I do, and I think that's fair given the amount of time. Likewise, if an artist looks like hitting 50K and I'm not sure I'll be able to sell all the CDs myself then I'll be having a chat with the artist in question and seeing what we can work out, but I think there will be very few of those.
New believers therefore become the crunch point. Without some "big names" arriving and bringing believers with them, Sellaband is pretty much going to have to provide these believers themselves. I can only hope for their sakes that they are sitting on something really big, because the early part of 2009 and the number of new believers it brings is going to mean the difference between artists stagnating and new artists being able to make progress as well as artists already on Sellaband trying to make the rush before the Dec 1st deadline. Will Sellaband still exist in 2010? I guess we'll have to wait and find out.
P.S. As you can probably realise my change in strategy means there will be a few changes concerning my "hatchet day" blog but you'll have to wait until the 1st December to find out what the future of "hatchet day" looks like.
Saturday 22 November 2008
Saturday 1 November 2008
November 1st 2008 Hatchet Day
If you want to know more about what "hatchet day" is, visit my Sellaband profile and read my info section.
Results from last month
I did better than I was expecting this month. Only one artist actually forgot to thank me, and I will be watching them with interest as, incredibly, they have actually shown a few signs of life otherwise. More about this artist later in this blog!
Well after a couple of weeks I finally had a message back on Myspace from Jo of Luna Assassins which confirms they're leaving the site. I'm therefore going to run my "12 days of Christmas" again this year (this is where I choose an artist to highlight every day for 12 days by buying a part - you can probably dig up last year's forum thread if you go deep enough) and also treat the Luna Assassins parts as a pot of money to draw from unless the "change" that's coming on 1st December is one where Sellaband actually do their housekeeping. So unless Sellaband do actually pull their fingers out and delete the profile, expect my parts to slowly reduce.
Walter B hasn't heard any more about Kristianna than I have so I've removed one part already and will continue to withdraw slowly over the next couple of months unless I see some kind of reaction. Likewise there's still no sign of life from Sasha Vella so the same basic rules are now also in effect.
Finally, it seems the artist out there that I mentioned last month who has some rather eager believers just hasn't got the message. Within a few hours of Jess King announcing she was leaving the site I was receiving PMs inviting me to move my parts from Jess to this artist instead. Talk about walking on others graves! When will people get the message that I'm not going to invest where I'm told, but rather where I decide? So I predict an artist is going to get a rather nasty shock in their inbox after I've finished my hatchet day and uploaded the photos from last night, because if I get one more such "invite" before my next hatchet day blog (and after I've dropped off the warning so I can be absolutely sure the artist is aware and the believers aren't doing this off their own initiative), then I WILL name and shame. And that would be a pity because I'm convinced Greebo would be interested in the music, even though I'm not particularly sure, but there's no way in hell I'm going to point him in the direction of listening to an artist whose believers are basically trying to bully parts out of other people. To the artist in question, I'm going to say this publicly: You don't need these tactics. Irrespective of whether I personally like the music enough to buy a part, I actually know you've got what it takes to succeed on here, but at the moment you're doing yourself no favours with me, and for all I know, possibly other believers too.
This month's gainers and losers
Not a single artist I mentioned last month as being under threat showed any sign of life so it's goodbye to Skin Diary, The Reverend Coyote, The glo, Tico Verde and Jon Curtis
I landed up splitting the parts reclaimed between just two artists this month. As I said last month, MOPI are proving to be one of my favourites on here, so the choice to increase was an obvious one. MR-10 is the other recipient, mainly as a result of the Selloween gig last night. Get less covers and more originals in the set list and fulfil that potential, because that was one cracking gig!
Next month's "under threat" list is as follows: Air Raid Anthem, Devil's Food Cake, Lo Mass Republic and Percy Mejhagen.
It seems that as well as "believer fatigue" we're also getting quite a few cases of "artist fatigue". As well as Jess King announcing her intention to quit, Cris Tanzi, Chapter 9 and Marc Supsic have asked for people to buy (or reduce to) just the one part and Telepathy and Tarek Sidani announcing they're scaling back on their activity on the site, at least for the present. I've not shifted any of my parts in these artists, nor do I intend to at present, but I can only hope that there is a genuine "change" on the way because the signs don't look that healthy at present. In fact you could say it goes even further than this given that I posted a thread in the forum back in August announcing my intention to come visit a gig or two in the euro-zone of Europe in November if anyone had one planned. Given the response from artists (or rather the lack of it as I only had a response from one artist in the euro-zone) to that thread, I've abandoned the idea. Obviously I was mistaken in thinking artists would jump at the chance to get a face at one of their gigs they wouldn't normally see, and possibly even a chance to convert me into a believer if I wasn't one already. Is this the ultimate symptom of "artist fatigue"?
New investments
I put the "curse of the knifelady" on Lucia Barreto earlier in the month. For those unfamiliar with this phenomenon it means I bought the first part, which seems to be akin to a death sentence as far as getting believers is concerned - just ask any of the other artists I have "first part" in as I'm still waiting for one of them to hit 10K, never mind 50K! Lucia herself is friends with So What and I suspect it's they who persuaded her to sign up. I just hope she stays active as she seemed quite keen for her first few days on the site.
Next on the list is Cubworld. The conversion actually happened earlier in the month when he posted "Wounded" and I could actually feel the hairs starting to stand up on the back of my neck. I think this is the first time I've actually felt that "something" that others see in him. It's a hard thing to describe and the nearest I can get is by drawing a parallel to a young Finnish guitarist I've met called Markus Nylund - he wrote a song called "Millionaire" and when he plays it you can actually hear the room go quiet and people start to listen. Listening to "Wounded" feels exactly like that.
As the first has fallen on a weekend, we obviously haven't received any payout from Sellaband yet, so I've only bought one more part today and that was in I Am Not Lefthanded who only signed up a few days ago. Hopefully this means I'll be spending more next month, but to be honest I haven't actually found many artists really grabbing my attention recently.
Watching
I wasn't watching Sunsoma that closely before but I will be now, as they didn't turn up at the Selloween gig last night. I've left a message on their page, so I hope things are alright.
The inclusion of the Sundial Project in this week's Sixpack reminded me that I haven't been near their profile in ages, so I've resolved to go visit some of the other people I haven't been near in a while, such as Seventh Sin, Soulslide and Grant Stevens. Incidentally, you can download the latest album from the Sundial Project for free if you go visit their profile - I've got as far as the downloading and just need the time to listen. They're inviting feedback in a thread on the forum for anyone who does download - you might have to dig down a bit in the "road to 50K" section before you find it though! The album I downloaded from John C Fraser is now next in line to be listened to, and he'll tell you how long ago I got a copy of that!
Biggest worry of the month is probably Spellbox though. After a bulletin announcing that their cam streams would be live again from October 13th, I haven't actually spotted any confirmation of days/times anywhere and this date wouldn't have fitted their usual Friday sessions anyway. Their budget has also shrunk to just over 2K now and their profile hasn't been updated in over 2 months which is completely out of character. Fingers crossed it's just the ongoing promotion of Mysti's album getting in the way, but I'm starting to feel the need to rattle a few cages and find out what's happening.
In terms of people dropping by my profile, story of the month is basically an artist who hasn't. I had a friend request from an artist on Myspace with the attached message "Hi I see you're on Sellaband". Having seen hundreds (well thousands) of bands on Sellaband, I automatically assumed they were a recent signup as the name didn't ring any bells, however when I reached their Sellaband profile I discovered the last message on their profile was actually from me and dated well over a year ago! The artist in question is Quarter2. Needless to say, I still like the music but what I wrote back then is unfortunately still true today, and I haven't had them leave a message on my Sellaband profile either.
Rooga dropped by to say they're now back on Sellaband, as they'd been away on tour.
Most noticeable of the "people i don't believe in (yet?)" set of profile posters have been Anne Marie Sunshine and Meo and the Alternative Preachers, mostly because I bumped into both of them during the Tiffany Gow countdown chat. In the first case I've been interested enough to wishlist straight away, but in the second nothing has caught my interest yet.
Sixpack Stories
I actually decided to start this new section before the current Sixpack was posted, and, in fact because of what happened the very first Sixpack week because I thought you'd find it interesting. The aim is to tell you any interesting stories I've encountered as a result of the Sixpack and I will also be revealing who I have been voting for in previous weeks and why.
In the first week all six of the artists chosen were basically "new and untested" therefore logic dictated that my choice for the week was going to be between the two artists I had already bought parts in. In the end, I went for The Hoodoos because I preferred the music but by the end of the week I was wishing I had gone for Promethic instead. Remember I said at the start of this blog that there was only one artist who hadn't thanked me. Well that artist was The Hoodoos. In fact, they still haven't.
So although they finished the first week in second place, I didn't actually vote for them the following week. Amazingly The Hoodoos did seem to actually come alive in the second week of the Sixpack, presumably through hearing they'd actually done quite well the first week and they even posted a new track. I'll be looking to see how "alive" they remain though. The second Sixpack week actually proved quite a hard choice between Alex Joe Marczak and Conflict in the Sky, but a combination of the fact I am a rocker at heart and I also often have a soft spot for the underdog, meant that Conflict in the Sky got my vote that week.
I was originally thinking of voting for them again in the 3rd week but unfortunately for them Sellaband threw one of my real favourites into the mix in the form of Morris, so no prizes for guessing where the vote went.
Which brings me neatly onto the current week's voting. Well, I don't know who chooses the Sixpack but they sure have picked some interesting (dare I say controversial) choices this week. I'm voting for Morris again, as you may have guessed but there is actually more than one artist with an "interesting" story in the rest of the lineup.
Most obvious is I Kissed Charles as people have already dragged the threads up from when they were asking how to delete their profile because they were already signed. Indeed the question we can expect to be answered on Monday about signed artists is actually from me as a result of their selection in the Sixpack. I'm hoping for a definition of what Sellaband consider a "signed artist" as part of this answer as there are circumstances I can see where there's no real conflict of interest e.g. when an artist has their current album signed but wants to start fundraising for another which isn't. I think this is one area not clear at all to believers (let's face it, how much does your average person know about the workings of the music industry) and hence one area where a proper clarification could make things a lot easier for all concerned. In actual fact, I wouldn't be averse to seeing Sellaband working with some of the smaller "indie labels" - in terms of partnership there's probably benefit to be gained from both sides.
But a less obvious potential source of controversy that nobody seems to have pointed out or got wound up about is the current 3rd place The Last Grand. Hands up how many people noticed they were on Slice The Pie? I'm not over there so I don't know how much of the 15,000 funding they were looking for has been raised. What I do know is that they're advertising on their Sellaband profile that they're looking for people to go and fund them on Slice The Pie and only one of the two sites (Sellaband and Slice The Pie) is mentioned on their own website. And I'll give you three guesses as to which one that is (and the first two don't count!)
Add to that the fact that The Words will be performing in the hopes of getting a deal from either EMI or Sony next week and I think we can agree it's definitely been an interesting selection on the Sixpack this week!
Sellaband
As if the current Sixpack wasn't enough potential source of controversy,
Ferry is back as furr:www.unrocked.net. For those who missed what happened - last year he was 13 and was kicked off the site along with the various artist profiles he'd set up after he pretended to be a well known Dutch artist. Interestingly, this new profile says he is 16. Reformed character or an accident waiting to happen? I know he's been spotted by other long time believers but I see that Sellaband haven't deleted this new profile, so I'll leave you to make up your own minds what the real truth is here.
Change may be coming on December 1st, but will it be too little, too late? One thing is for sure - if it isn't seen to resolve some of the long-time issues, I can't see the site surviving 2009 given the reactions I'm seeing from both artists and believers at present.
That's all for this month. Hopefully I'll get that post about expectations done before next hatchet day, but the need to earn a living keeps getting in the way!
Results from last month
I did better than I was expecting this month. Only one artist actually forgot to thank me, and I will be watching them with interest as, incredibly, they have actually shown a few signs of life otherwise. More about this artist later in this blog!
Well after a couple of weeks I finally had a message back on Myspace from Jo of Luna Assassins which confirms they're leaving the site. I'm therefore going to run my "12 days of Christmas" again this year (this is where I choose an artist to highlight every day for 12 days by buying a part - you can probably dig up last year's forum thread if you go deep enough) and also treat the Luna Assassins parts as a pot of money to draw from unless the "change" that's coming on 1st December is one where Sellaband actually do their housekeeping. So unless Sellaband do actually pull their fingers out and delete the profile, expect my parts to slowly reduce.
Walter B hasn't heard any more about Kristianna than I have so I've removed one part already and will continue to withdraw slowly over the next couple of months unless I see some kind of reaction. Likewise there's still no sign of life from Sasha Vella so the same basic rules are now also in effect.
Finally, it seems the artist out there that I mentioned last month who has some rather eager believers just hasn't got the message. Within a few hours of Jess King announcing she was leaving the site I was receiving PMs inviting me to move my parts from Jess to this artist instead. Talk about walking on others graves! When will people get the message that I'm not going to invest where I'm told, but rather where I decide? So I predict an artist is going to get a rather nasty shock in their inbox after I've finished my hatchet day and uploaded the photos from last night, because if I get one more such "invite" before my next hatchet day blog (and after I've dropped off the warning so I can be absolutely sure the artist is aware and the believers aren't doing this off their own initiative), then I WILL name and shame. And that would be a pity because I'm convinced Greebo would be interested in the music, even though I'm not particularly sure, but there's no way in hell I'm going to point him in the direction of listening to an artist whose believers are basically trying to bully parts out of other people. To the artist in question, I'm going to say this publicly: You don't need these tactics. Irrespective of whether I personally like the music enough to buy a part, I actually know you've got what it takes to succeed on here, but at the moment you're doing yourself no favours with me, and for all I know, possibly other believers too.
This month's gainers and losers
Not a single artist I mentioned last month as being under threat showed any sign of life so it's goodbye to Skin Diary, The Reverend Coyote, The glo, Tico Verde and Jon Curtis
I landed up splitting the parts reclaimed between just two artists this month. As I said last month, MOPI are proving to be one of my favourites on here, so the choice to increase was an obvious one. MR-10 is the other recipient, mainly as a result of the Selloween gig last night. Get less covers and more originals in the set list and fulfil that potential, because that was one cracking gig!
Next month's "under threat" list is as follows: Air Raid Anthem, Devil's Food Cake, Lo Mass Republic and Percy Mejhagen.
It seems that as well as "believer fatigue" we're also getting quite a few cases of "artist fatigue". As well as Jess King announcing her intention to quit, Cris Tanzi, Chapter 9 and Marc Supsic have asked for people to buy (or reduce to) just the one part and Telepathy and Tarek Sidani announcing they're scaling back on their activity on the site, at least for the present. I've not shifted any of my parts in these artists, nor do I intend to at present, but I can only hope that there is a genuine "change" on the way because the signs don't look that healthy at present. In fact you could say it goes even further than this given that I posted a thread in the forum back in August announcing my intention to come visit a gig or two in the euro-zone of Europe in November if anyone had one planned. Given the response from artists (or rather the lack of it as I only had a response from one artist in the euro-zone) to that thread, I've abandoned the idea. Obviously I was mistaken in thinking artists would jump at the chance to get a face at one of their gigs they wouldn't normally see, and possibly even a chance to convert me into a believer if I wasn't one already. Is this the ultimate symptom of "artist fatigue"?
New investments
I put the "curse of the knifelady" on Lucia Barreto earlier in the month. For those unfamiliar with this phenomenon it means I bought the first part, which seems to be akin to a death sentence as far as getting believers is concerned - just ask any of the other artists I have "first part" in as I'm still waiting for one of them to hit 10K, never mind 50K! Lucia herself is friends with So What and I suspect it's they who persuaded her to sign up. I just hope she stays active as she seemed quite keen for her first few days on the site.
Next on the list is Cubworld. The conversion actually happened earlier in the month when he posted "Wounded" and I could actually feel the hairs starting to stand up on the back of my neck. I think this is the first time I've actually felt that "something" that others see in him. It's a hard thing to describe and the nearest I can get is by drawing a parallel to a young Finnish guitarist I've met called Markus Nylund - he wrote a song called "Millionaire" and when he plays it you can actually hear the room go quiet and people start to listen. Listening to "Wounded" feels exactly like that.
As the first has fallen on a weekend, we obviously haven't received any payout from Sellaband yet, so I've only bought one more part today and that was in I Am Not Lefthanded who only signed up a few days ago. Hopefully this means I'll be spending more next month, but to be honest I haven't actually found many artists really grabbing my attention recently.
Watching
I wasn't watching Sunsoma that closely before but I will be now, as they didn't turn up at the Selloween gig last night. I've left a message on their page, so I hope things are alright.
The inclusion of the Sundial Project in this week's Sixpack reminded me that I haven't been near their profile in ages, so I've resolved to go visit some of the other people I haven't been near in a while, such as Seventh Sin, Soulslide and Grant Stevens. Incidentally, you can download the latest album from the Sundial Project for free if you go visit their profile - I've got as far as the downloading and just need the time to listen. They're inviting feedback in a thread on the forum for anyone who does download - you might have to dig down a bit in the "road to 50K" section before you find it though! The album I downloaded from John C Fraser is now next in line to be listened to, and he'll tell you how long ago I got a copy of that!
Biggest worry of the month is probably Spellbox though. After a bulletin announcing that their cam streams would be live again from October 13th, I haven't actually spotted any confirmation of days/times anywhere and this date wouldn't have fitted their usual Friday sessions anyway. Their budget has also shrunk to just over 2K now and their profile hasn't been updated in over 2 months which is completely out of character. Fingers crossed it's just the ongoing promotion of Mysti's album getting in the way, but I'm starting to feel the need to rattle a few cages and find out what's happening.
In terms of people dropping by my profile, story of the month is basically an artist who hasn't. I had a friend request from an artist on Myspace with the attached message "Hi I see you're on Sellaband". Having seen hundreds (well thousands) of bands on Sellaband, I automatically assumed they were a recent signup as the name didn't ring any bells, however when I reached their Sellaband profile I discovered the last message on their profile was actually from me and dated well over a year ago! The artist in question is Quarter2. Needless to say, I still like the music but what I wrote back then is unfortunately still true today, and I haven't had them leave a message on my Sellaband profile either.
Rooga dropped by to say they're now back on Sellaband, as they'd been away on tour.
Most noticeable of the "people i don't believe in (yet?)" set of profile posters have been Anne Marie Sunshine and Meo and the Alternative Preachers, mostly because I bumped into both of them during the Tiffany Gow countdown chat. In the first case I've been interested enough to wishlist straight away, but in the second nothing has caught my interest yet.
Sixpack Stories
I actually decided to start this new section before the current Sixpack was posted, and, in fact because of what happened the very first Sixpack week because I thought you'd find it interesting. The aim is to tell you any interesting stories I've encountered as a result of the Sixpack and I will also be revealing who I have been voting for in previous weeks and why.
In the first week all six of the artists chosen were basically "new and untested" therefore logic dictated that my choice for the week was going to be between the two artists I had already bought parts in. In the end, I went for The Hoodoos because I preferred the music but by the end of the week I was wishing I had gone for Promethic instead. Remember I said at the start of this blog that there was only one artist who hadn't thanked me. Well that artist was The Hoodoos. In fact, they still haven't.
So although they finished the first week in second place, I didn't actually vote for them the following week. Amazingly The Hoodoos did seem to actually come alive in the second week of the Sixpack, presumably through hearing they'd actually done quite well the first week and they even posted a new track. I'll be looking to see how "alive" they remain though. The second Sixpack week actually proved quite a hard choice between Alex Joe Marczak and Conflict in the Sky, but a combination of the fact I am a rocker at heart and I also often have a soft spot for the underdog, meant that Conflict in the Sky got my vote that week.
I was originally thinking of voting for them again in the 3rd week but unfortunately for them Sellaband threw one of my real favourites into the mix in the form of Morris, so no prizes for guessing where the vote went.
Which brings me neatly onto the current week's voting. Well, I don't know who chooses the Sixpack but they sure have picked some interesting (dare I say controversial) choices this week. I'm voting for Morris again, as you may have guessed but there is actually more than one artist with an "interesting" story in the rest of the lineup.
Most obvious is I Kissed Charles as people have already dragged the threads up from when they were asking how to delete their profile because they were already signed. Indeed the question we can expect to be answered on Monday about signed artists is actually from me as a result of their selection in the Sixpack. I'm hoping for a definition of what Sellaband consider a "signed artist" as part of this answer as there are circumstances I can see where there's no real conflict of interest e.g. when an artist has their current album signed but wants to start fundraising for another which isn't. I think this is one area not clear at all to believers (let's face it, how much does your average person know about the workings of the music industry) and hence one area where a proper clarification could make things a lot easier for all concerned. In actual fact, I wouldn't be averse to seeing Sellaband working with some of the smaller "indie labels" - in terms of partnership there's probably benefit to be gained from both sides.
But a less obvious potential source of controversy that nobody seems to have pointed out or got wound up about is the current 3rd place The Last Grand. Hands up how many people noticed they were on Slice The Pie? I'm not over there so I don't know how much of the 15,000 funding they were looking for has been raised. What I do know is that they're advertising on their Sellaband profile that they're looking for people to go and fund them on Slice The Pie and only one of the two sites (Sellaband and Slice The Pie) is mentioned on their own website. And I'll give you three guesses as to which one that is (and the first two don't count!)
Add to that the fact that The Words will be performing in the hopes of getting a deal from either EMI or Sony next week and I think we can agree it's definitely been an interesting selection on the Sixpack this week!
Sellaband
As if the current Sixpack wasn't enough potential source of controversy,
Ferry is back as furr:www.unrocked.net. For those who missed what happened - last year he was 13 and was kicked off the site along with the various artist profiles he'd set up after he pretended to be a well known Dutch artist. Interestingly, this new profile says he is 16. Reformed character or an accident waiting to happen? I know he's been spotted by other long time believers but I see that Sellaband haven't deleted this new profile, so I'll leave you to make up your own minds what the real truth is here.
Change may be coming on December 1st, but will it be too little, too late? One thing is for sure - if it isn't seen to resolve some of the long-time issues, I can't see the site surviving 2009 given the reactions I'm seeing from both artists and believers at present.
That's all for this month. Hopefully I'll get that post about expectations done before next hatchet day, but the need to earn a living keeps getting in the way!
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