It's now heading towards six months since the demise and rebirth of Sellaband, and an appropriate update to this blog is long overdue as a result.
Part of the reason for the delay in me putting my thoughts about the whole matter down in writing is hinted at if you went past my Twitter page in the couple of months after the initial bankruptcy. Shortly after the site went bankrupt I started having vision problems, and after a whole series of blood tests they've determined I'm not diabetic (at least not yet), but the reason for my ongoing inability to keep objects in focus at random intervals is still unknown, although they did find my vision in one eye has deteriorated significantly. I was forced to limit my time spent staring at things (particularly computer screens) as a result, so my original posting plans kind of went out the window.
Anyway to get back to the matter at hand, one of the things you ought to have noticed first is that the title of this blog has changed. No longer "The Sellaband knifelady" but merely "The knifelady". I felt it was the only appropriate action to take at the time, and at the moment my view on putting it back hasn't changed. So far, the "new Sellaband" management haven't managed to convince me the site remains worth supporting. Rather the case is more the opposite, particularly when I consider both what has (and hasn't) happened since my last post, and when I look at the current status of the site.
For those who have missed the action as it happens, here's a list of just some of the issues bothering people that were either present on the old site, or when the site reappeared. I'll take a better look at each one in detail in a moment.
1. Changes to Sellaband Terms and Conditions
2. Limited Edition CDs
3. "Leftover" artists
4. Revenue Share
5. "Inactive" artists
6. Discoveries
7. Non-deliveries
1. Changes to terms and conditions
The first big change after the new site came back up was a change in the Terms and Conditions of the site which meant it was no longer possible for believers to remove money from the site before an artist reached their target. This was a fundamental principle behind trusting the original Sellaband - the fact that if an artist left the site or just didn't go anywhere budgetwise you could take your money out at any time. The new T&C mean this has basically changed to a 2 week "cooling off" period. i.e. you can only remove money within the first two weeks of making the original deposit. After that, whilst you can remove your parts from an artist you can't then request that money back out of the site. Effectively it's stuck on the escrow account and you can only buy parts in another artist with it. A bit hard to understand why the escrow account is therefore still referred to as such, because it seems much less likely there could be any claim to this money by believers if the site goes bankrupt again given the new T&C. Most active believers seem to have withdrawn most or all of their remaining funds in the place as a result of this simple change. And yes, I was among them on that score. Two weeks is certainly not enough time for a site to recover after a bankruptcy, and when you're faced with the choice of getting the money within that two weeks or never being able to retrieve it again, most people made the obvious choice. With projects having no fixed time limit, the risk of buying parts which you can't retrieve has soared. Only one project to date has completed funding in less than a fortnight. In short, there's no incentive for believers to buy parts in Sellaband artists any more unless they are a few parts away from their target as the risks now outweigh the potential rewards.
Things don't look that much better from the artist side either. Artists who completed projects under the system where they could choose the budget and incentives, rather than being tied to the 50K deal are now finding they are having to collect the names and addresses of believers who funded them themselves, despite this information being in the Sellaband system. Believers also have to work at this, rather than it being automatic as the best Sellaband does is send a mail asking you to send your details to the artist. So far, two artists I believe in that fall into this category have completed their projects with Sellaband, and I've had to chase up BOTH myself in an attempt to get my CDs (one received so far, the other I'll have to wait until at least the end of August for as the artist is away). Compared to the old Sellaband system, if this is showing the start of a trend it's highly disturbing - I've had no such problems when Sellaband rather than the artist has been the sender for a completed project in the past.
The overall feel given off is now one of the greedy middleman who takes a percentage of the money believers deposit up-front as admin fee, plus a further 10% of the project amount if the project completes, yet does nothing in return for the artist as they are left to organise themselves and deliver the project to believers. Matthew Ebel's reason for leaving the site therefore looks spot on - what is the point of using a middleman if you still have to do all the work yourself?
Sellaband say their reason for the change is because the site was not legal due to the fact you could remove money at any time. Interestingly, the spin-off project of one of the original founders Africa Unsigned, is still running and still offers believers the chance to remove their money at any time. What is legal and what is not? Are Sellaband's reasons genuine or are believers just being fed an excuse for this change in the T&C? The jury is still out on this one.
2. Limited Edition CDs
To add insult to injury on the believers side, Sellaband then came up with a solution to the LE Cds that believers had left with them to be sold via the shop. Quite simply put, they asked believers to either pay for the shipping and have them all sent home or basically treat them as a donation. i.e. they would ask the artists in question if they wanted to pay the shipping to have the CDs sent to them instead. If nobody wanted to pay this postage Sellaband were planning on using them for promotion. Yes, that's correct. Either you had to pay to get the CDs you already paid for sent to you or or they would be given away and you wouldn't receive a penny for what was actually your property. After an outcry, it seems someone came forward to offer free storage for the remaining CDs but several believers are so sick to death of the place they've actually paid to have their remaining CDs sent home, hence severing the last of their ties with the place and their likelihood to even visit again, never mind spend money. Not a good start for the new management.
Despite this backtracking, the issue still isn't resolved. Even though Sellaband have turned round and said, "OK, the CDs can still be kept with us for free and sold in the shop", in actual fact not a single artist is showing LE CDs as being available to buy, even though there are still definitely a large number available for most of the artists in question.
There are also a number of legacy issues to worry believers which have still not been sorted out. Some of these have been discussed on the Sellaband forums, but there are a number that appear to have been overlooked.
3. "Leftover" artists
Firstly there are a number of questions regarding the "leftover" artists from 2008. For those not in the know, there are a number of artists who completed their funding back in 2008 but no CD has yet been seen, despite the 6 month (later changed to 9 month, and more recently in the new T&C 12 months) required for completion of the project. In some cases we know there have been delays due to the "old" Sellaband being very slow in bill paying, but only one of the artists in question is currently looking close to releasing a CD, as believers have finally been asked how many CDs they want sent home. There is also a nice "caveat emptor" in the message from Sellaband which basically states that you can have all CDs sent home as soon as they are available for free, but if you choose to leave them in the shop and then later change your mind, you'll have to pay the postage. Given the lack of Limited Edition CDs actually available in the Sellaband shop (as I've already mentioned) it will be interesting to see how believers react to this one.
But, let's not forget that things are not simple any more. As the site went bankrupt, artists were entitled to release themselves from their contracts with the site and reclaim their masters. What this means for artists who haven't even produced a CD yet is unclear. Do they even have to produce a CD any more? Do they have to sign a completely new contract? And from those few questions, I'm sure you can figure out a flood more that come to mind. The management for Clemence have already asked for her albums and downloads to be removed from the Sellaband shop (this has been done), and this in turn raises questions about the remaining LE CDs believers have left with Sellaband for this artist to be sold in Sellaband's shop.
We then have the case of the post-2008-but-pre-bankruptcy artists. Under Sellaband's incentive system, there were things like publishing share as well as revenue share included, along with vouchers for half price CD copies from the shop. So let's go back to that magic question about the site going bankrupt and artists being entitled to release themselves from their contracts and stop and consider the implications for the revenue and publishing shares for believers. If an artist walks away, is the reality that the contract with believers has been broken too? i.e. that believers will never see any revenue share or publishing from these artists?
One artist falling into this category is Slim Void. At the time of writing, believers have still not received anything from this artist, despite tracks being available to download since April. None of the promised CDs, no discount vouchers - nothing. Nor has there been any announcement as to when these might be expected. A visit to their page merely reveals a plan which states "All done from our side" and no real enlightenment from the comments on their wall either.
4. Revenue Share
But further to the comments I've already made about revenue share, there is of course the fact that this same problem applies to virtually every artist who has ever raised a budget on Sellaband. Nemesea chose not to sign up to the 5 year deal that was offered when artists were given a choice back at the first main T&C change in 2009, and they were out of their 2 year deal period when the site went bankrupt, but for other artists the question of what happens with the revenue shares for believers remains.
Sellaband have recently sorted out the transferring money part at least, meaning the first payment this year to believers has finally been made. However I expect some will be confused by the new 2-tier balance system, where the "old" balance contains money that cannot be removed from Sellaband and you have a second balance (called the revenue balance) with a choice of paying out to Paypal, or transferring to the "old" balance to spend. It's also unclear whether money transferred from the revenue balance to the other is subject to the 2-week "cooling off" period in the T&C from the date you choose to do the transfer, or whether this is immediately locked and cannot be removed. Anyone intending to leave money in the site in the hopes of buying a part later will therefore probably leave this in the revenue balance if they're smart. Though some would say the smarter option is to remove the money altogether.
5. Inactive artists
Obviously the changes to the Terms and Conditions sparked a number of artists who wanted to leave the site. Additionally, regular readers of my blog will know I've been complaining on and off since April 2007 about the fact that Sellaband just don't delete profiles of artists that have left the site. It probably will therefore come as no surprise that there has been very little "tidying up" of inactive profiles since the bankruptcy, covering artists in both these categories. In fact, you don't have to look very hard to find profiles of artists stating in their Sellaband profiles they are "leaving Sellaband" but still showing within the top 100 artists on the site. Whilst Sellaband is putting out some nice "pretty" updates to its website, such as a twitter-style activity feed, it seems that the real issues with the site that could be sorted, such as this one, continue to be as overlooked by the new management as they were with the old.
6. Discoveries
In addition to the obvious problems, there are also some worrying stories beginning to emerge. Reports that the curator handling the bankruptcy is looking into a $300,000 discrepancy in the escrow account as part of that process have been coming to light. Given this represents the equivalent of 6 projects under the original Sellaband T&C (and more than 10% of completed projects so far) it's quite a worrying figure and doesn't inspire confidence, particularly when combined with the other issues floating around.
The other thing discovered has been the existence of "special contracts". In fact, based on the responses to the forum thread, it seems the "special contract" rather than the "standard contract" could perhaps be considered more the norm. The suggestion here, is that the set of T&C artists agree to when they sign up does NOT in fact form the basis of the contract they sign on completion of their budget. Rather than merely a rubber-stamp approval to confirm on the conditions they originally signed to, it would appear contracts have in fact been written up and agreed on an individual basis for many artists in the past after the target has been reached, without believers being aware of this fact. How many of these "special contracts" also have bearing on the next section is unclear
7. Non-deliveries
The rate of non-delivery of promises has actually been quite shocking. Some of the cases are down to artists quite simply promising to tour and promote so that you WILL get a return on investment, and hence convincing believers to buy parts. There are however a number of cases that could be considered more serious than this. Here's just a few of the highlights.
Second Person's album was essentially a concept album consisting of 5 songs with 5 associated videos that all believers would receive. The first video was released along with the album, but the other 4 have never seen the light of day. Second Person cancelled their second Sellaband project a while back because the members "wanted time off to deal with their solo projects", so it is still unknown if/when the rest of these promised videos will ever appear.
Clemence did a 7 song album for believers, however it was then revealed she had gone on to record a further number of songs and would be releasing a CD with a record label containing BOTH these songs and the songs from her Sellaband project. Essentially, purchasers of that CD would get a double album with 14 songs for the same price that they could buy her 7 song album from Sellaband. There was an outcry. Sellaband promised believers they had agreed a deal with Clemence and believers would also get a copy of the other album for free. No prizes for guessing this has never been seen.
AIOIA were another concept base. In this case believers were promised 3 CDs about this "alien culture". The Sellaband funding would be used for one of these albums, one was already being produced and separate funding would be achieved for the third. However the poster of this information subsequently fell out with the artist and apparently various legal actions ensued. As one of those not interested in this particular project, I have no idea what believers eventually received, but judging by the large number of comments on the forum at the time, it certainly wasn't what was promised and believers weren't happy about it.
What now?
So in summary then, despite the fact there are artists continuing to crawl through to targets, the Sellaband landscape actually looks quite bleak. Too many issues remain as big red flags with the system with no clue as to when they will be resolved, and given past performance of artists who have been left unregulated it's still impossible to recommend Sellaband to others nearly six months down the line. Add to this the fact there are other sites out there offering artists exactly the same service under better conditions for both artists and believers and it's clear that without some radical changes soon to address the situation, the only way will be down into another bankruptcy.
As a result, like others I'm waiting to see what Sellaband themselves come up with before I consider putting any money into the site in future. Quite simply there are better choices around. Also believer confidence has been dented too heavily for most existing ones to want to support the place at the moment. Again, another fundamental principle behind the original Sellaband applies here - the fact that they had industry professional experts who would control the process, rather than you feeling you were being asked to give your money to any tom, dick or harry you'd never heard of before that came along is one of the things that gave people confidence to join the site. History has proven somewhat different to this and with artists now left in complete control and Sellaband clearly stating in their T&C they won't be responsible, the question becomes how can you know which artists you should trust? And with existing believers (including me) giving off no-confidence vibes, what chance is there for new blood to be brought into the site?
The issue of non-delivery also has wider implications for fan-funding. I'll be exploring that in two posts time, when I take a look at what lessons there are to be learned based on my Sellaband experiences and revealing why Sellaband as it currently stands and similar services could be definitely proved as obsolete and unnecessary in just over 12 months from now. Anyone interested in fan-funding or the concept of 1000 true fans should definitely not miss this one.
For my next post though, I'll be looking at some of the artists I've encountered on Sellaband. Some are still around the place and some have most definitely moved on, but all have one thing in common - they are ones I am still following. Everyone has their "artist gems" from the site and these are mine. Find out who I'm following and the story behind why next time around.
