MKB Muzic

Panos Panay is blowing his own trumpet in a Forbes magazine article here:

http://www.forbes.com/2008/05/22/management-competition-sonicbids-oped-books-cx_jc_0522bookexcerpt.html

Two independent promoters have already told me that they would have my band for their festival, but that I needed to go through the motions of applying through SonicBids. What this tells me is that the application process, is, in at least some cases, a sham and a revenue raising exercise. The promoters already know who they want. My second beef with SonicBids is that, even though I signed up for six months to the service (to make the aforementioned 'bids' only), they attempted on two separate occasions to withdraw money from my credit account after the subscription period on the pretext of 'renewing' my account, a renewal I did not authorise. I spoke to another member, in this case a promoter involved in organising a multiple showcase at a major international festival, and he told me they had been doing the same thing to him, illegally withdrawing money from his account on a monthly basis long after the subscription had lapsed. He sent them a stern letter and they repaid him. In my case, I received no response to my 'please explain' letter. Has this been happening to anyone else? I'd be very interested in pursuing some legal action.

Posted by: Jim Moyer | May 25, 2008 6:17:20 AM

- WIRED MAGAZINE BLOG NETWORK

Ah, Sonicbids, not my favorite subject.

I could speak for an hour about these posers but suffice to say:

1) The founder bootstrapped the company through it's startup days by focusing on profitability. Good work. But after passing that stage, they should have focused on customer satisfaction and fixing the issues that the community is complaining about. Instead sold out to the VCs last summer, who will be even more focused on profitability (they know nothing else about the music business). This probably means Sonicbids - in terms of being an ideal web 2.0 solution between artists and promoters - is dead in the water.

2) The company is the biggest thing in the music biz in Boston. The employees have a rep of being cooler than thou, and no doubt, are more interested in keeping their cool jobs and the lifestyle it affords them than looking honestly at their "opportunities", which amount to unregulated lotteries overseen by different third parties (the promoters).

3) The founder says these lotteries are necessary because before, every band would bid on a reggae festival in Vermont, inundadting the promoter and making the service useless for him or her. Fair enough. So why didn't they just build in say 5 opportunity submissions in a monthly membership. That way people would pick and choose the 5 they bid on each month carefully. Sort of like LinkedIn where you can send a limited amount of mail each month.

But no, they chose to charge bands to bid on gigs, the numbers must have looked too good, and lo and behold, next thing you know they have one of the fastest growing companies in Mass.

(They do, in fact, give half the money to promoters, and keep the other half, whether you're bid wins or not. I've seen the contracts).

But the music community is small and the ethos of the web is about eliminating middlemen, not creating them where they didn't exist offline.


For this reason alone Sonicbids is screwed long-term unless they own up. The company would first have to admit it's mistakes and then focus solely on customer satisfaction. Implementing things such as the built in bids (as mentioned above) and promoter rating systems (like ebay).

With a dozen people on IT Staff I have no good reason to tell you why this stuff wasn't done last year (except maybe the VCs said, "no, look at the numbers!). You get the feeling a lot of people in that office are listening to Rhapsody all day and are more concerned with keeping their jobs than bringing in the talent and ideas that can help them.

This is turning into a classic waste of an unbelievable opportunity. I hope they work hard at addressing these issues and remember that the road to long term profitability starts and ends with customer satisfaction.


Posted by: Fordie | May 6, 2008 3:11:54 PM

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Sonicbids is a far cry from a classified advertising section. It is a very clever Lottery system ( yet to be determined if legal or not) preying upon the naive wannabe artists pursuing a dream in the entertainment industry.

They boast 150,000 Trusted members, however that number becomes very suspicious as well when you check the tool on the site called the Hit's Tracker, which is a joke looking for a place to buy a laugh.

Sonicbids at best is a sleight of hand website or three card Monty scheme in my personal opinion.

Musicians are not commonly known to be the Smartest or most sophisticated people in our society, but make no mistake they are not Totally Stupid either.

All one has to do to see where this company is and how it operates is go to the site and read the Trusted Members Posts in the forums.

But be prepared for some weird sounding ones because many of the dissenting ones have been cleverly moved about the site to tidy up the forum and "Divert the Heat away from Sonicbids".

Many Many others have simply been Deleted in a massive PR campaign by Sonicbids latest group of interns to deflect the heat off the management and corporate policy of the site.

Yep you can exercise censorship when you own the site :)) and try try try to put your own spin on it.

Many of those 150,000 trusted artists have long since left the fold and many more are about to follow as their subscriptions run out.

If the site worked properly all the time the tool itself is a wonderful thing to have in any professional artists arsenal of weapons to go about soliciting employment and promotion in the industry.

Unfortunately the management has concentrated almost solely on income and getting new subscribers rather than making the site what they proclaimed it to be for all of the existing ones.

Amateurs and dreams will be a bit more tolerant of this activity or lack thereof, but Professional artists and managers and agents will not stand for BS and will call it as they see it.

Let's keep it Real here :))

Have any doubts? go read the forums.

Posted by: Tca$h | Apr 16, 2008 9:52:52 PM

- WIRED MAGAZINE BLOG NETWORK

!)I have been a sonicbids member for over a year and a half, and GUESS WHAT ? There ARE illegalities. Such as: leaving opportunities up that the promoters have closed. (WHO GETS THE drop box fee ? Sonicbids. YES they know about, no they have not fixed the "PROBLEM"...wink wink nudge nudge.


!) Their Drop boxes are deceptive and have no promoter standard (ANYONE CAN BE a promoter, and make their billing as deceptive as they want) THEY DO NOT HAVE TO contact artists regarding the opportunity submitted to, there is simply no accountability.... read the forum posts and see for yourself.
"Promoters" that do/say anything to sucker an artist in to pay the fee ?
They are abundant on sonicbids.

!)The Customer support is so bad they are actually going to TRY to overhaul it, as described in "member support" by "LOU", and if you know this company they only make changes when they are deluged by outrage and it impacts their bottom line.

Why would anybody want to pay even $6 bucks just to have an EPK they can get for free on an ever growing number of websites. some that have even more accessible features including the "hate em or love em" Myspace.

Finally the "support staff" never addressed simple fixable website problems that other EPK sites such as PPK.com DO have such as a workable hit tracker and an EPK that is flexible and does not make a non-performing songwriter look like an idiot.

I am outta there and am glad this blog opened up the discussion on a very controversial company, that is walking a thin line. At this point IT IS GOOD journalism to present the discussion and let the public weigh in as we have done.


Posted by: Mad Ashell | Apr 10, 2008 4:10:10 AM
- WIRED MAGAZINE BLOG NETWORK

There is an ongoing investigation, to be taken to the FTC, regarding one of their "drop-box" scams.

They have dozens of "dead" drop boxes, so that customers submit to promoters who have pulled their opportunity dwon from the website, YET sonicbids leaves these attractive offers open and available for c.c. payments.

Sonicbids and Chief Thief Panos Panay continue this scam unabated, as well as allowing many unproven "promoters" to operate scams DIRECTLY on their website. Sonicbids only requirement for a promoter to operate on their site regardless of their credentials, is $$$$.

They are so ashamed and now afraid of all this getting out of the bag they no longer allow the pubic to freely view their forums, and also now have swept the posts that have "outed" them under a fake "Lounge" that only allows kiss-ass posts.

Their are countless posts on this now hidden forum of members submitting money to fake "promoters".
Their support staff has made minimal effort to even attempt to refund customers who have been cheated.
Its unfathomable that they have gotten away with it.
Frank
05-21 -2008-......01:03:54 - MASHABLE NETWORKING NEWS

I too have watched SOnicbids's services deteriorate over the past few years. THeir fees increase regularly and their customer service is like beating your head against a wall. They claim NO responsibility for their promoters at all. So... BUYER BEWARE.

Sonicbids claims it is the artists' responsibility to police Sonicbids promoters *before* they pay to submit to them. Sonicbids does NOT claim that they have policied the promoters already, and vouch for their promotion as genuine. In fact, once artists figure out that a promotion is a SCAM, SOnicbids tells them to request a refund from the promoter directly, as SOnicbids ONLY refunds with the promoters permission. GOOD LUCK GETTING A REFUND! All this double talk even though SOnicbids keeps 50% of EVERY SUBMISSION FEE ARTISTS MAKE. DOes this seem fair to anyone? anyone?

Julian
-05-20 2008....09:43:41
- MASHABLE NETWORKING NEWS

Sonicbids has deteriorated tremendously in the last year. While their pay-to-play "drop box opportunities" have always been a long shot gamble, they now mostly consist of shady promoters who collect money from hopeful artists. Many of these "opportunities" have turned out to be major scam situations--or worse yet, there is NO ACTUAL GIG!!!

The promoters go AWOL, never to be heard from again. Sonicbids does nothing to help--and they should, because they receive HALF of the fees!

Many of these terrible situations have been written about in the Sonicbids Forum. So! Just recently, they blocked the Forum from public view. You have to pay a membership fee just to read them.

In place of their community Forum, they have created a "Lounge" blog, full of cheerful "tips" from their CEO. NO negative comments are permitted!
Jackie
-05-19- 2008.....19:44:10 - MASHABLE NETWORKING NEWS