Comments on: todd berry of greyday records on musicfestnw and sonicbids

By: UPDATED! MFNW MANIA: Girl Talk’s Crazy Show / Todd Berry of Greyday Records on Sonicbids-- local Cut

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 22:35:47 +0000

[...] 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. [...]

By: The Music Industry Vs. The Freelance Writing Game | freelance-zone.com

The Music Industry Vs. The Freelance Writing Game | freelance-zone.com — Fri, 16 May 2008 15:27:28 +0000

[...] 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 [...]

By: carrie

carrie — Thu, 15 May 2008 03:13:58 +0000

@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.

By: carrie

carrie — Thu, 15 May 2008 01:35:38 +0000

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.

By: Todd Berry

Todd Berry — Wed, 14 May 2008 21:01:41 +0000

@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.

By: Dave Allen

Dave Allen — Wed, 14 May 2008 20:25:12 +0000

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.

By: carrie

carrie — Wed, 14 May 2008 19:39:34 +0000

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?

By: Todd Berry

Todd Berry — Wed, 14 May 2008 15:35:39 +0000

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.