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!