todd berry of greyday records on musicfestnw and sonicbids
Coachella Pic ©Justin Kent
Todd Berry writes: In 2007, MusicFestNW began using SonicBids to accept applications for showcases, a move that spurred some controversy around Portland and the greater Northwest, and they are continuing to use SonicBids for this year’s festival. Personally, I think it’s disheartening to see MFNW head in this direction, but as a reply to Dave’s post this morning stated, they probably have a very good reason for it (will the bands be paid more? MFNW is already more than fair on that end; will wristbands be cheaper, or maybe even the festival be FREE this year?). Most likely this is an attempt to make MFNW a larger, mass-appeal music festival; however, it is my understanding that this is exactly the sort of approach that led to NXNW getting booted out of town in the first place with MFNW taking its place.
I’d hate to see MFNW become SXSW, where the guiding principle of exposing a region’s fresh talent and neglected artists morphs into Lollapolooza West, or worse still, West Hollywood in the Pearl. I don’t see this happening, at least not with the current crop of folks on MFNW advisory board running things, [many of whom support the Portland music scene everyday] but it does puzzle me that they would choose to work with SonicBids when there are plenty of models out there that don’t attempt to earn profit from submission processes, and don’t charge artists to be considered for work.
The future of MFNW is a much broader topic; on the subject of SonicBids and the models Dave mentioned earlier today, I’ve had quite a few conversations recently with industry folk and artists alike regarding how SonicBids, Taxi, BandForce, even MySpace (who somehow consider Interscope to be an indie) are damaging the industry by driving down the value of what a musician can actually earn, and what a musician’s work is actually worth. The two most common examples:
1) A licensing agent friend of mine was talking about how the payout for media placements is already getting smaller and smaller (whenever a TV budget is cut, for example, the first thing cut is the music budget), especially for indies, and that avenues like MySpace devalue this further by running “contests” where your music gets used in an episode of your favorite TV show. Rad, right? Except that it’s MAYBE 10 seconds in the background, you don’t get credit, nobody knows it’s you, and you don’t get paid. So the show gets free music, the site gets ad revenue, and the band gets ten seconds of “fame”. It’s the musician, in the end, that is screwed, as they have a right to be paid for their work, which is being used in a creative (I use the word loosely in regard to American television) endeavour which will earn money in various formats–advertising from the initial and subsequent airings, royalties from dvd/HDdvd/itunes sales, streaming, etc.– yet part of that creative team, the musician, will not get paid. These “contests” set a precedent where for-profit use of an artist’s work becomes looked at as free promotion. This is dangerous as it affects a musician’s ability to sustain him/herself as media licensing is one of the few remaining ways for musicians to still make money playing music.
Fair payment for format usage, by the way, was part of the reason for the recent writer’s strike as well as the rumored upcoming SAG strike. And just so you know, the majority of music licensing for media already does not include multiple format royalties.
2) SonicBids: I’ve had issue with them for years; when they started out, I thought they were a great model for unifying the industry through the web. In their early days, there were plenty of places you could submit Electronic Press Kits [EPKs] for free, including smaller venues, blogs and zines, college radio, even the smaller festivals. Now EVERYTHING has to be paid for, and the main problem is that it is, in part, contributing to the lack of promotion that venues actually provide these days for their shows (not all venues, there are still plenty of people out there still doing their jobs, of course), as a venue can charge $5 or $10 to receive a submission, which in a major market can be hundreds to thousands of dollars a month. Then in turn that means they are less concerned about recouping on a show and can push that responsibility onto the band. I brought this to the attention of a friend of mine who booked for a venue on the east coast and she severed their ties with SonicBids. For her, the “$5 is the price of assembling and mailing a promo kit” mentality didn’t hold water, but sadly for many venues and events (and apparently even labels!) it does.
It’s not shocking that people would try to make money off the current state of chaos the industry lies in, but some of it is kind of sickening. Not to keep attacking Myspace (I mean, hell, we all use it, right?), but the fact is that they make money off your music; every time someone goes to your site, they earn ad revenue. Check that, FOX earns ad revenue. And if you’ve ever tried to place an ad on MySpace, you know that those rates aren’t low.
Maintaining an ethical approach to the industry these days just seems to get harder and harder because, let’s face it, things like SonicBids are borderline payola, and actually function similarly, just with much smaller payouts and no guarantee of exposure. There are some positive models out there (ReverbNation, for example, shares their ad revenue with bands, and byofl.org is, as always, free) and some very good people trying to work WITH the independent industry, but it’s hard to compete against a slick-looking, “get famous quick” model unless everyone can realize what is at stake.
So to bring it back to MFNW, again there is hopefully a bigger reason at work here, and hopefully we’ll again see a solid representation of the Northwest music scene at MusicFestNW. If not? Well, there’s always PDXPopNow…always free for everyone.
May 13th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
My small (odd one-day family arts festival with a wide variety of bands) festival added SonicBids as a method of recruiting last year. We always allow artists to apply without any fee via our website, by email, or by mail. My policy? If you don’t have the five bucks, email your SonicBids/MySpace/Website/Any other online presence. The SonicBids page directly links to ours, so SonicBids patrons can choose to apply direct, even if they have never heard of us before. Companies that choose “fee only” submissions CHOOSE to do that.
That said… There are a lot of great local bands that would never apply if they hadn’t seen it on sonicbids. There are also artists that chose to pay the five dollars after having submitted the traditional ways for a couple years, just in case the sonicbids got more attention. I feel a little guilty about those. I have 2 cds and your presskit, and I… probably won’t ever book you.
I listen to every single submission though. I assign others to listen by genre. And they do.
(Go hire Girls, Guns and Glory). I like those guys a lot. My real email address is on the SonicBids reply. I appreciate the artists that add me to their mailing lists, even if rejected. I have never unsubscribed unless the band updates were weekly/daily.(If you are that awesome, then offer monthly updates for your more casual fans.)
I thought about asking SB to reduce the amount, by half. I realized that bands outside our locale, with no shot at a yes would be more likely to apply, doubling our listening and reducing chances by half, because of the sheer headache.
I did hear a band or two from the UK that I wanted… and the price was airfare. That was damn tempting. They still paid five though, and I feel a little guilty about that. Mostly because I didn’t tell them I actually liked them. Once you have to yes/no too many people, you don’t deviate from the “standard reply” too much, and I think that sucks.
I’ll shut up now, regards, -c
May 14th, 2008 at 1:45 am
No need to shut up at all, Carrie, and I totally get what you’re saying, but let me ask you this: how much do you make from just accepting kits through SinicBids? And do you think that’s a fair way to be making money, for the artists to be paying you, instead of it being a result of actually putting on the festival? In other words, why is it fair that musicians pay out of pocket to be considered and organizers make money before they actually do any work (or in some cases, like the still questionable CMJ debacle last year, possibly NOT do any work)? Not trying to attack you with those questions, I’d honestly like to know what you think…
May 14th, 2008 at 6:37 am
It isn’t fair. If a large scale event is booked exclusively through a paid service, and the fee is high, (especially when the event is already well-funded and sponsored), it can easily cross into scam territory. There is very little way to keep people honest.
May 14th, 2008 at 7:35 am
I completely hear you on that. Though I have issue with charging a fee at all for submission, anything above what the artist would pay to put together and ship a physical submission is really questionable ethically IMO.
I was asking about any scale, however; on the event coordinator side I do not know how these things work. At $5/submission, for example, how much of that would be paid out to you from SB? The total, a percentage, etc.? And even at that small an amount, is it still ethical to be taking people’s money to be considered for events that already earn for the organizers? Since you have some experience with them from the events side (we used them in I think 2004 for a while), I’d like to hear how it works from that side, and how you personally view it.
May 14th, 2008 at 11:39 am
Todd, the agreement actually prohibits disclosure of details, or I’d happily post them all. I don’t find it ethical for a fee to go to the event organizer, and for me it isn’t enough to make a difference. I’d prefer that they charged artists less and and didn’t give what is essentially a kick back the organizer. I wonder how many events would still use SB then? And would it be more ethical if the details were disclosed?
May 14th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
What is Sonicbids so afraid of that they can’t be transparent in their dealings? I’d say this is a classic case of musicians beware…to answer your question Carrie, yes it would be more ethical to disclose their business practices - have they never heard how businesses on the ‘net are succeeding by using radical transparency? Here’s the link should they be reading.
May 14th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
@carrie–It would certainly be more ethical; they’re a company working in a very public manner, with many, many people. It seems somewhat shady to me that a company like that would include such an agreement, and even moreso that they would take a good portion of the submission money themselves, as they already charge the bands to host profiles (that I can at least understand on a professional level, as they are hosting EPKs and have to pay for bandwith and storage, though obviously not at the rate they charge). Also, again, I’m more curious from an event organizer perspective, please don’t take any of this as an attack on you; you sound like you have a good understanding of the situation (and you still allow bands to submit without SB, and I have no problem with bands paying for the choice to be lazy).
@dave–non-disclosure agreements seem to come up a lot these days; I’d tell you the ones I’ve signed in the past but I can’t. ;) I completely agree that they are suspect, though, and I haven’t signed a contract including a non-disclosure clause in years, in fact it’s pretty much a deal-breaker for me these days, because on the independent level the only real reason for non-disclosure is to cover up how you’re screwing someone (or because you have an overzealous lawyer, which is probably the more common case). But they’re popping up more and more, and along the lines of what you said in your piece, bands are getting desperate enough to agree to them.
May 14th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Todd (and Dave), I don’t take any thoughts, points or criticisms as attacks at all. There is a comment on a Wired article in April that references the contracts and the percentages that I wouldn’t dispute. I can see how bootstrapping the business might benefit from making the promoter side win/win. However, after that it probably should have shifted to an artist-centric service, once the events were there. I didn’t realize that prior to 2005 promoters could list events with no charge to the artists, for instance. The tide of the internet makes all services sour slowly. Ebay is a great example. People will always game the system to the point of destruction.
May 14th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
@Dave.. it wasn’t really a question, it was a ruse to make you say it, not me. So thanks. <3
Actually I had typed out a sentence or two more on the subject, with a typo, so mid re-write I hit enter instead of delete, leaving a dangling question.
May 16th, 2008 at 7:27 am
[...] from my earlier screeds, I’m a fan of Dave Allen’s music blog, Pampelmoose.com. A recent post reprinting the words of Todd Berry of Greyday Records discusses some practices in the music biz that drive the value of a musician’s work [...]
September 5th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
[...] Secondly: Todd Berry from Greyday Records talks about the Sonicbids service. This was the primer for the Sonicbids situation in the MFNW cover story. Musicfest’s utilization of Sonicbids, a company that organizes bands’ digital music and press kits for bookers, has caused a minor stir in the local music community. As it stands, the only official way for a band to apply to MFNW is to subscribe to the online service. Former Gang of Four bassist and current Portlander Dave Allen of Pampelmoose.com argued on his site that, for the service to be fair, bands should know how many slots are available for a festival. Todd Berry of local label Greyday Records has similar concerns. [...]