Welcome to the last hatchet day posting. As mentioned in my previous hatchet day post, things are changing for next year, but you'll have to wait for my review of the year post in its usual spot between Christmas and New Year to find out exactly what the future holds.
With the 1000 true friends post taking up so much of my time over the past couple of months, the shorter hatchet day postings over that period mean I'm a little behind on some of the things I should have been mentioning.
The most obvious of these comes in the form of Ivan from My First Robot who deserves every credit for being the only new artist I've noticed since the bankruptcy for taking a real interest and attempting to get involved in the "battleground" otherwise known as the Sellaband forum. Trying to work your way into a crowd when you're new is hard enough at the best of times, and it's definitely not been the best of times on Sellaband over the past few months. I seriously don't have enthusiasm for Sellaband at the moment, so I haven't been going round talking to artists like I used to, but just because I appear disinterested, doesn't mean I don't notice and appreciate things like this - I just find it hard to encourage this kind of "right behaviour" when I feel there's so much wrong with the system it's on.
It may also interest you to know that I actually voted for My First Robot in the Sellaband competition that pitted them against So What for a festival spot, even though I personally like their music less and have never actually seen them perform live, whereas I have seen So What live. So why, you ask? Well, for me a festival is about live performance and having tracked down and watched several videos of MFR on Youtube, I actually think they currently have the better live performance, so that's why they got my vote to go. A shame really that Sellaband decided to put an artist many were familiar with already as a result of their time on the site against one basically unknown to Sellaband users - I suspect many went with the obvious choice and just didn't even bother to check out the opposition to make a genuine choice.
So in many ways I'm kind of sad to see them as one of the "new artists" caught up in the whole "Sellaband parts-shifting" controversy. Unlike some of the artists Sellaband is favouring for receipt of parts, they're obviously around and interested, even though active believers don't seem to have been particularly interested in them to date. Given the potential for a big storm about Sellaband shifting money of inactive believers into inactive artists (particularly newer signups) this is one artist I'd rather not see caught in the blast radius through people deciding that all "Sellaband favourites" (or buddy bands as Thor calls them) are lazy good for nothings taking the easy route to a budget by sucking up the vast majority of inactive believer parts. They certainly don't deserve that tag.
I also find myself wondering whether Sellaband is going to dig itself an even bigger hole by starting a competition at this point. It's got a kind of damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't feel to it, where you can almost feel people waiting for Sellaband to shift a heap of parts while it's on, hence influencing the result, yet at the same time I wonder just how well the competition is going to do while so many people aren't interested in buying parts due to the no refund policy, and/or one or more of the other ongoing issues lurking around. But so far no parts shifting has happened and there is a rumour floating around that Sellaband have said they won't be shifting any money during the competition, though I've seen no official confirmation (or otherwise) of that fact.
All the parts shifting has actually been making it even more difficult to work out which of the newer artists in particular is actually "out there". One artist has already been accused in the forum of being on the receiving end of parts from Sellaband but not actually being on the site, despite the fact there were status updates from them appearing in-between all the "dead believers" including information on how to get hold of the free track they were promising when they reached 1000 euros. In addition artists are actually getting some "real" believers appearing in between all the "dead" ones and that produces its own set of problems on the artist side as well. With nearly 71 pages of artists containing at least one part, it's obvious there's still a lot of parts shuffling to come, even before Sellaband get around to looking at inactive artists, hence the hell of believers being able to tell which artists are actually active and the hell of the artists knowing whether the believers are "real" or not looks set to continue for months yet.
And that's not a good thing from either point of view.
This is just one of the problems making Sellaband still look like a bad place to be more than 9 months down the line with the new management. With Sellaband locking money in the system, who is going to take a chance on an artist being active or not when it's completely unclear? Seems it's time to get out banging on doors and throwing the spam around again, or brave the Sellaband battlefield (i.e. the forum) if you're an artist wanting to convince people you're alive and not invisible.
This continuing poor looking situation was really the decider for me in asking for the little money on my revenue to be paid out to my Paypal account, rather than dropping it in an artist. The Sellaband system didn't disappoint on this score, but you could also say it failed to impress, seeing as the confirmation that my payout request had been received took seconds to appear from the automated system, but the money didn't arrive for nearly 7 working days after the original request. That's slower than the last time I requested a payout and about the same as the time before that. So one aspect I'd say that hasn't changed from the old Sellaband relative to the new, as this is the first payout I've requested under the new management.
Also on the subject of revenues though is the fact that no money has been credited to believer balances since the swap from dollars to euros. Sellaband say this is because the system needs to be tested, but I'm struggling to understand what the heck is taking so long considering there seems to be nothing fundamentally different with the system in the first place. As a result I'm back up to over 5 euros of revenue waiting to be transferred. So much for a quarterly payout system (as per Sellaband's own T&C) seeing as the last time money was actually transferred to believer balances was somewhat more than three months ago.
One piece of good news, it does appear that Franz from Sellaband is finally starting to take an interest in what little is left of the community. Though to be honest the "history lessons" and feedback he's been getting would have been part of a process best started months ago. Rather than the proactive approach of take over, get to know what's what and then try and move forward, it seems the reactive approach of take over, wonder why things don't happen like you thought and only try and find out why months down the line has been taken instead, and to my mind that puts Sellaband at least 6 months back on where it could have been. Only time will tell if the lessons get taken to heart though - once again it took me "growling" on the forum about revenues not being paid according to the terms and conditions before even the figure "waiting" got updated, and as already stated the money hasn't actually been transferred to believer balances yet, nor does there seem to be any likely date for when it will be.
The other result of my lack of enthusiasm for Sellaband at the moment has been that I've realised I am listening to pretty much no music at all on the site. Despite the fact it is a place where you can listen to music, it seems a part of me has subconsciously rebelled and decided there's little point in listening to an artist's music when there's no likelihood of me buying a part any time in the near future. For existing music I'm finding myself listening to Songza instead, but I haven't yet developed any single preference for a place to discover new music. Of the two sites for this that I've tried recently, weloveyoursongs.com has quite a few interesting looking artists, but the scam of a voting system which reminds me so much of some of the tricks the mobile phone companies use, puts me off wanting to spend much time there. The other site The Indie looks at first glance like a much more interesting site from the point of finding new music, but so far I've been struggling to find much in the way of artists that sound halfway decent. From comments on artists pages dating back to early 2010 or in some cases 2009, it seems to me the site really ought to be showing a lot more life than it is, but with no forum and seemingly no fan community perhaps this shouldn't come as so much of a surprise despite the fact I think it has an awful lot of potential otherwise as far as music lovers are concerned.
Back to Sellaband on the case of the invisible though... how many of you actually noticed Sellaband did a live stream of a Public Enemy concert? The concert was actually streamed on the 2nd November, but the banner announcing it only appeared on 1st November as far as I can tell. Unless you were lucky enough to get it as the random banner on the homepage and clicked through to the details, it's likely you'll never have known about this seeing as I didn't receive any e-mail from Sellaband or see any news article about it. Of course in true Sellaband style the text on the page itself was confusing, stating the live streaming would take place on October 2nd, even though the title clearly said November. Sellaband later put up a news article with a video of an interview they'd done before the concert itself, but I kind of feel the more interesting opportunity was botched here.
With Public Enemy having raised their budget the next "known" artist name to sign up has been Jonathan Davis of KoRn. Funding here is for a live DVD that is from a concert filmed all the way back in 2008 for his solo project Jonathan Davis and the SFA. However you need to buy two parts to actually get the DVD, as one part only grants you online viewing access for 24hrs. So far there's been much less publicity surrounding this signup than when Public Enemy came on board, but it seems a number of the diehard KoRn fans are already aware and have been quite happy to stump up 100 euros each (plus transaction costs) for the signed box set. With a $75,000 budget required, it will be interesting to see exactly how much interest does manage to find its way through the door, and how fast, given the 12 month deletion clause for projects.
Elsewhere on the site another artist we've seen before came back. The Funeral Honors raised virtually no interest the first time they were on Sellaband and disappeared off to Slicethepie where they successfully qualified for the $15,000 funding target. They've come back to Sellaband to try and raise a 34,000 euro budget, but despite having a plan that's better looking than the vast majority out there, it seems the interest level still isn't there. And whilst you might have expected their successful excursion to slicethepie means they've picked up some new fans along the way, it seems they haven't succeeded in bringing anyone back to Sellaband with them to support them as they are still on a big fat 0 euros. For those looking for an amusement factor though, you might be interested in the fact their old profile is still on the site and they seem to be visiting both profiles.
All Ages are actually also a returner to the site. Their original profile was deleted for inactivity back when Sellaband actually had a clearout. I'd already removed the parts I had in them some time before that as part of the hatchet day process. Another case of great music shame about the interest. Seems they haven't learnt anything since their previous visit to Sellaband either, judging by the amount of funding they currently have.
The only other new artist that's managed to make me notice them is a very recent signup Lillith through appearing on the forum asking for advice as they were new on the site. Perhaps further proof that my interest in Sellaband as a site is running at an all time low.
I finally got my act together recently and managed to drop in on one of Aly Cook's "kiwi Sofa" streams... well nearly. In actual fact I arrived about 10 mins after she'd finished while she was busy uploading the recording and pretty much everyone else had already left, so I stayed around and watched that. I think I've been spoiled by the likes of Mysti Mayhem and Matthew Ebel though, because I have to admit I wasn't a big fan of the audio quality. I have to admit it's the first time I've actually heard her live (well, ok, nearly live!) and despite the audio issues all I can say is Wow. I thought Mysti had a big pair of lungs, but I think Aly has an even more powerful voice. If you haven't dropped by her show yet, then my advice is do because she sure can sing. Meantime I'll see if I can get my act together again and make another visit to see if the audio was a one-off or not.
The only other thing worthy to mention at this point is the charity profile that has been started. It would seem this works differently to other profiles on the site, as the information I've read says money cannot be moved from this profile once donated and also that Sellaband don't take any administration fees if you donate to this project. Whilst I think it's an interesting development and also a nice idea in general, I do have a few worries lurking around. Firstly there's the rather bizarre statement on this page on Sellaband stating "UK charity registration pending" when the Foundation's site itself appears to be set up in Germany and the official UK government site clearly states "Unless your organisation is governed by the laws of England and Wales we cannot register you as a charity". Secondly of course is the fact that (in the UK at least) charity donations are tax deductible, meaning that if indeed it does get registered as a UK charity it would make no sense to make a donation through Sellaband anyway, if you believe in their cause and are based in the UK yourself - they'd get at least an extra 20% by you giving them the same money direct! Thirdly, although it states Sellaband doesn't take any administration fees, it isn't clear if you'll still be charged a fee to cover any Paypal/credit card fees on top of the basic donation. Call me overly suspicious, but given some of the things that have happened round Sellaband in the past, this currently comes across as something trying to take advantage of people's good nature, rather than a genuine charitable opportunity. Whilst I'm not averse to the general idea behind projects like this, this particular project is one I'll be staying clear of because I can find no basis for it actually being or even trying to become a charity (UK or otherwise). Even their own site seems to be more interested in company partnerships and sponsors.
So that's it for my last hatchet day post. Look out for my review of the year between Christmas and New Year, when you can discover (amongst other things) a moving Christmas story from Sellaband past, my impressions of my year with Matthew Ebel (remember I'm essentially a complete stranger who dived in at the deep end by joining his direct funding approach at the most expensive level possible back in January) and where (and why) this blog is heading next year, as well as my usual (yet at the same time different) music and artist favourite charts of 2010.
