Wednesday 1 July 2009

July 1st 2009 Hatchet Day

So much for my hopes that this was going to be a short post this month. I already knew there were going to be some interesting stories as a result of the knifelady returns, but I never quite realised all hell was going to break loose (but more about that later)

Results from last month
First off I just have to mention Alita's Curse for being the first artist I've bought a part in that has actually said thankyou in a comment to this blog (see the comments on my June 1st post). I get artists saying thankyou in different places and different ways but this is the first time one has come through on here. The nearest I've had before is artists thanking me for giving them a mention.

The story on Mysti's profile MAYHEM also continues. I had a personal message from Ray Baisden in my inbox on Sellaband confirming the split with Mandocello. To quote Ray: "So there is no Spellbox or Mayhem any more". Whilst I've asked for clarification that this means Mysti won't be taking over and chasing a second 50K on the Mayhem profile, that hasn't been confirmed or denied as yet. I can only leave you to draw your own conclusions - mine being that the Mayhem profile is probably a dead one for the forseeable future.

I landed up with an interesting comment from Blair on my profile page as a result of my mention of The Average Person last month, which I thought I'd share part of here
Thanks for the mention.
SAB must love my stuff so much, I asked them to delete my account over a month ago now and they can't seem to bring themselves to do it :)

Enough said I think. I can already see those who have commented on Sellaband's efficiency before smiling knowingly to themselves.

There often seems a certain irony about this blog. Either I plan to write about an artist and they disappear before I get the chance, or I suddenly start taking an interest at around the time they decide to call it quits with Sellaband. And yes, it's happened again in the form of Laixa deciding to leave the site. The biggest irony being that the goodbye song posted (called "Sometimes") becomes the second song of theirs to grab my interest.

Also, one artist didn't thank me last month and I bet you can guess which one it was.

This month's gainers and losers
As a result of Sellaband's second round of deleting inactive artists, I haven't removed any parts this time around. Of the artists listed in my last hatchet day post, only The Sundial Project actually showed up. The rest got deleted automatically.

With the site so hard to navigate at the moment, plus the volume of artists who have had their profiles deleted from Sellaband that are now mysteriously showing up in my wishlist once again (go through and count the "unknown" artists) I haven't officially marked any for deletion next month. I'm going to give it another month to see if/how many of the major problems the new site has get fixed before I decide how best to tackle the problem.

New investments
It probably comes as no surprise that I haven't bought any parts on this occasion, and I don't plan to in the near future either. I'm waiting for the artist listings and search to be fixed because buying parts is just going to be a pain at the moment without it. I do have a couple lurking in my wishlist that were due to get parts this time around, so I'm hoping you'll see those in next month's post, when I'm feeling a little less shellshocked. However I've got a distinct feeling there aren't going to be many parts bought for the next few weeks and it won't be possible to blame it on the Summer, or the credit crunch either. If you're not in the charts, the top 50 artists or signed up in the last month and gained some kind of budget already, the chances are you're currently impossible to find. Looks like a return to the old days, only in a role reversal. i.e. instead of the only way to get to a believer profile being through remembering which artist(s) they have most parts in, now it seems you can only find an artist by first finding a believer who already believes in them (assuming you don't know the artist name already). If you're looking for a particular artist, it seems like a good time to visit one of the "noisy" believers like myself, because I don't see how anyone is going to find artists easily otherwise.

Prior to the chaos created by the new website, I bought another 5 parts in We Love The Underground and Chupacabra very kindly gave me a giftpart as a result of their win in the Sixpack.

Watching
It's very hard to watch artists at the moment for reasons you should understand by now, but I'm still going to have a go.

As part of the correspondence achieved by the knifelady's return, I had a conversation with She's themorning and thenight which I think reveals a lot about many artists on Sellaband. You can follow the full conversation by going back through comments on my page (and obviously on theirs) but here's a little taster.
When I heard about this site I got excited - but then I had a look around and did some research on it, and it's just another place for our music to be - we're going well in other areas - as long as we keep our name here and there it all pays off, so we aren't looking for the money really - just a few more fans. We have access to a recording studio where we get to keep all of our revenue. So we're lucky that way - the only thing we need now is marketing - that's the only difference between us and bands that play sell out shows these days, anyway take care.
It seems to me that this is typical of why many artists sign up to the site in the first place, yet it's not the reason why Sellaband is said to exist. I'll be interested to see how much funding they do pick up as a result. Whilst their music doesn't seem overly different and interesting to me from some other artists on Sellaband, it's one which ought to find some listeners based on what others are liking on the site. So if you're into people like Daniel Ward-Murphy, Kane Sole or Meg and Mark (amongst others I could name), then here's another artist you might find interesting.

Metibla has caught my interest but I'm not quite ready to believe yet - I need more music to make up my mind, so will be sitting on the fence watching to see whether I can find enough I like. Someone has already offered me a gift part in this artist, but as those who know me will know, I don't accept gift parts in artists unless I'm convinced I like their music. i.e. if I'm not "ready" to buy a part myself, there's nothing you can do to tempt me into believing in a particular artist. I much preferred the "free part" gift parts which you could spend in any artist as a result and would quite happily accept those. Guess with the website changes I won't be sending or receiving many gift parts at all any more as they seem to have discontinued these, and you can now only buy a gift part for someone if you first specify the artist it is for. Not fair on the (potential new) believer to choose an artist for them, and not really fair on the artist if that believer then finds an artist they like more and decides to move the part after it's been claimed. With a "free part" you got the value added to your balance and could decide at your leisure - something which seems to me to be a much better way of enticing people in general in, rather than those who have been introduced to the site as a result of a particular artist. To me, the "gift part" system now only works as an incentive basis for artists to try and get their existing fans to support them, rather than something which can be used as a way to introduce new people to Sellaband in general, and therefore I view this as a very bad change.

Antropy is a very interesting new signup, but is suffering from only having the one track on their profile at the moment. I will be watching the profile for more music, but I'm already very interested with just the first track.

I think DJDJ is a very promising young artist, however not being as heavily into the dance/trance styles of music I much prefer the more classical track she's had posted, even though it would appear from the conversation I've had with her it's not representative of what she'd really like to make as an album.

And of course I can hardly leave this section without mentioning The Clooneys. If you haven't recognised them yet, then perhaps you remember the band Snelle Jongens who were on Sellaband, who renamed themselves to Snelle Fellas. Well with the split of that project, Arnold has come back and this is his new project. I'm unsure at this point if I'll find them too rap/hip-hoppy just like I did with Snelle Fellas, but early indications are that I might not, so I'll be keeping an eye out to see if they can convince me to believe in them.

Video of the month
Again, as I'm sure you can guess, there's no video of the month due to the new website. So I'm going to use this opportunity to send you to listen to someone I regard as an up-and-coming talent instead. I first encountered this particular artist as a solo performer, when I ran across a (very roughly produced) acoustic version of one of the songs you'll get to hear an updated version of by following the link (called "Drop Dead Gorgeous"). To quote a friend of mine when I played her the track originally - "The production is terrible, but wow can that guy sing!". Remi Miles is now getting a band together under the name Kuliks. Check out the music on his Myspace page and see what you think of how he's coming along in the 3 years since I first discovered him.

Sixpack Stories
Is the Sixpack no more? I saw a "potential sixpack" (well potential sevenpack really) showed up under the old website, which still has partial navigation based on the route I took from the old forum. The page in question is very slow to load whenever Sellaband are doing something with the main site at the moment, but you'll see the list of artists include Mount Fabric as well as the eligible loser from last week. Possibly a strange choice there - did I miss something, or didn't J A Marczak win a previous Sixpack? Or is my memory at fault and that believer in the list called Sixpack is someone else? Wonder what artists and believers think of a previous winner being put up for it again, if indeed that page I spotted was due to be the Sixpack before the new site went live.

As to my own votes, after voting for Exoluta, Chupacabra were next on the list to receive mine and I voted for Alita's Curse both weeks they were up, despite being tempted to vote for Lip Service as I really like their sound.

Sellaband
Firstly, let's have a look at the easy bit. I guess you're interested in "the knifelady's return". I've had quite a mixed response level to the messages I've left around. Many of those artists I don't contact often have acted as I expected and quite happily responded, but there are a few I was expecting to hear something from and I haven't. Probably the most notable of these is Wetwerks, who also seem to have been going through a slow and steady parts leak over the past couple of months. Even though someone is still obviously visiting the site, the lack of response where they were always very good before does make me start to wonder what is going on.

I've had to put my plans on hold for continuing to see who is out there and what they're up to though. Yes, you guessed it - again it's the website change that's responsible. I'm going to talk about that more in a bit, but it's obviously very hard to find artists when they've been made all but invisible on the site. Might actually be a good way for Sellaband to weed out the inactive ones though, because there ought to be about 4000 artists complaining they're not visible right about now. Personally I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of an inbox of that size, and remember we're only taking into account complaints that your page isn't visible here, not any of the other problems people are experiencing. I can't very well try and encourage artists with the site barely usable, so it looks like the knifelady is going to have to pretty much crawl back into her shell for a bit and just keep in touch with anyone she can easily reach for the time being.

As for the ongoing stories of Sellabration and Arenafest, well we now know that the Arenafest situation appears to have disappeared into legal territory, and that Sellabration is not going to happen (well at least not when expected) presumably due to money being tied up both in preparation for Arenafest and resolving the legal situation that has arisen. I'll leave it open to the conspiracy theorists to decide whether/how much Arenafest is being used as an excuse for cancelling Sellabration or not, or whether there are other factors at play here too.

The next thing to mention obviously has to be the MaWa - Danny controversy. To be perfectly honest, I see MaWa as being guilty of no more than "being German" on this one. And that's no more a crime than me being guilty of "being English". I've been (un?)lucky enough to be employed by a firm with an Austrian parent company back in the days when I held down a regular job, and whilst some Germans might consider it an insult to be compared to Austrians (and possibly vice versa), what little experience I have suggests that Germans tend to hold very similar values and react in similar ways to their Austrian counterparts. "Being German" is not something I can describe any better than that - it's something you've either experienced and got your head around or it's something you haven't. It's quite an alien and frustrating thing to deal with if you're English, and it seems to be even worse if you're Dutch. I happen to think Danny fell straight into that cultural difference hole and couldn't cope with what he found there. Whilst Danny's reaction was indefensible, to me it was also not an unexpected possibility under the circumstances. If it were possible to be... well.. "slightly less German" occasionally, I get the feeling the non-natives might stand a better chance of coping. Something like this could have been stopped before it got out of hand.

I kind of wish you could get an appreciation for the way other cultures think and react in school (particularly European neighbours), but it seems to be something you have to both experience for yourself and more importantly be interested (and open-minded enough) in having a go at learning before you get thrown in at the deep end and (inevitably) fall down a rather big hole as a result. It's one of the things I like about Sellaband. Having been given a bit of a culture shock myself as a result of dealing with Austrians, I like the potential opportunities for at least trying to gain an understanding of others - I think it's an important skill nobody can do without in this day and age, yet I don't think it's one which can be taught.

I'm glad MaWa is lurking round reading this blog still (as can be evidenced by his comment on my last post), because it gives me the opportunity to try and say that I understand, maybe not completely, but enough. I can kind of see both sides of the equation on what happened, with the stressed out IT guy on the defensive as a result of a project going somewhat differently than expected (been there, done that myself) coming up against the ideals of German efficiency and "Es gibt nichts Gutes, außer man tut es." and.. well.. both parties reacting in a way that looks very familiar to me as a result. I don't really have the words to get across the message I'd like to say to MaWa, but let's just say I hold a very English hope that one day that German phrase can reach a point of truth and we'll see him round Sellaband again as a result. Oh, and for all those of you wondering, the English equivalent is not a literal translation, but rather the phrase "Actions speak louder than words".

This "incident" is basically what has prompted me to want to start the story of my own vision of Sellaband. Going through those who have me as friends on Sellaband and looking at the names of those who used to be active supporters and have now either left, have faded completely into the background, or seem to view the site negatively is a very depressing experience. Sellaband isn't the same site I joined, yet at the same time it is. I see so many of the things I "saw" struggling to survive or get off the ground in the first place, and I found myself thinking of MaWa's "Where did it all go wrong" post. At best, it's my attempt to make a difference and possibly introduce people to things they haven't thought of before. At worst it will probably prove to be an interesting piece of history if/when Sellaband should fall. The time is right, and I hope to get started in the next couple of days. It does feel somewhat overshadowed by the rather negative experience the new website is producing though.

And so, finally we come to the mess, otherwise known as the new Sellaband website. I was asked if I would take a look and do some testing on this back in the first week in June. It just so happened that JohanV managed to contact me by mistake on Skype around the same sort of time and he asked me at the time if I'd been invited to take part in the testing. I told him I had, but I'd not had the chance to take a proper look as it appeared I was going to need a pen and paper. Perfectly true, because when I really did get into it, it only took a couple of clicks before I had that "oh dear" feeling. Problems all over the place, and with half the system not even being linked in, some of it was just plain impossible to know whether you were staring at a real bug or something which just wasn't implemented yet. I pulled together an initial list and sent it in, fully expecting that I'd go back in a couple of weeks, (hopefully) find some or most of that fixed and another series of problems would have appeared. Plus I could take a look at some areas I'd not really tested fully at that point, and send a new list in. Having worked in IT, I know how seriously depressing it is to have stressed yourself out on a project and then get hit with a buglist that feels like several years in length, whereas if you get thrown the same thing in more manageable chunks somehow it doesn't feel so bad, even though it is.

It seriously looked like a site barely at the start of its test cycle, not one towards the end of it. So many bugs were popping up it would basically have needed a full time job to have collected and reported as much as I could find, and (like other testers) being merely a "volunteer" rather than an employee, you could say I have more important things to be spending that level of time on. About three weeks after that initial look, the ominous message about "site maintenance" appeared and I found myself thinking that surely they wouldn't be so crazy as to put it live - apparently, as we now know, they were. In actual fact there are things not working in the live system which were definitely working in the test system - the videos were OK for one at the time I looked at them. I'd say there are significantly more bugs in this version of the website compared to the previous one when it was released, and I've got a feeling it's going to be quite a while before the site settles down into a state that you don't need a qualification in IT to work out how to use/get round the problems without someone else telling you how.

Incidentally, I still need to sort out my own "about me" profile information since the change, but at least I have enough knowledge of html that I can probably set things up quite nicely, once I work out what is supported and what isn't. Not going to be the easiest of jobs using the ugly scrolling lightbox that seems to be inconsistent with the way the others work on the site mind you, but at least Sellaband are aware of that problem.

One other word of warning to anyone using an old browser version out there, because I know there are people still using IE6. Boudewijn tells me they are not going to be supporting this, so basically if it doesn't work properly when they've finished fiddling with it (and I know a number of things that don't at the moment) you'll need to upgrade or look at an alternative browser.

And in case you were wondering, this blog won't be migrating into the new blog feature on my Sellaband profile - it'll be staying quite happily here. What I do plan to do though is use that feature to tell you when my monthly hatchet day post is actually live, so that anyone who drops in at random rather than receiving this by subscription knows I have actually got something there for you to look at. Being late on posting this is something I don't like, but when people give me rather a lot to talk about, the inevitable tends to happen and it takes me longer to write down what's in my head than I expected, and this month is no exception.

So my final thought for this month has got to be, please give me less to talk about next month so I can actually get this published on time, but more importantly, please Sellaband give me something positive to talk about for a change!