Sonicbids sounding much, much better.
A little while back I joined Sonicbids, an aggregator service for song contests and the like, as well as a service for connecting bands with promoters and licensing deals. I saw it as a kind of poor man's Taxi, a way to get my songs into the hands of playa's, without having to pony up Taxi's high fee.
Sadly, my early impression of Sonicbids was not very good. A "magazine" I had submitted to accepted my song right away, without even listening to it (I could tell because of Sonibids' stats feature), and after researching the 'zine I bit, I figured it was some kind of shell company set up for money laundering purposes. I wrote to Sonicbids to tell them of the charlatans that were exploiting the Sonicbids service, but the response I got was less than uncool. The Sonicbids team basically said I was responsible for determining whether an opportunity was legit or not. I wrote back asking ARE YOU KIDDING? What's your vetting process, can I get a refund, do you know WHO these guys are? The response: nada. I was on my own.
So it was a HUGE surprise and HUGELY impressive when I got the email below. Give it a read. It's clear, honest and to-the-point, offering an apology, a refund and a committment to improve the Sonicbids process.
THANK YOU SONICBIDS. I WILL BE A MEMBER OF YOUR SERVICE FOR YEARS TO COME. YOU ROCK.
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Hi Jeff,
This is Tony from Sonicbids. I looked further into the hip hop magazine you submitted to. I reached out to them to correct their use of the dropbox. They were unresponsive, and consequently, we shut down their listing.
Because of this, we will be refunding all bands who submitted to this opportunity. The site credit will show up on your and their accounts in three to five business days.
I also wanted to share our policies and procedures around promoter screening. We did have an initial phone conversation with this promoter, and required him to send us a copy of his magazine (as we require with all magazine listings) before we allowed the listing to be opened. For first-time festivals, we require copies of city permits. For compilation CDs, we require a receipt from the manufacturer and a copy of the CD.
We’re in the process of redesigning our gig listings
so they provide more useful information to our bands before they submit. (In
your case, if an opportunity comes with additional fees post-selection.) To
better-communicate the improvements we’re making to the service,
we’ve put up a Builder’s Blog at www.sonicbids.com/buildersblog
If you have any questions, feel free to contact me directly. My contact info is below.
(I didn’t want to intrude on your blog by posting this publicly, but if you’d like to share this email with your readers there, please feel free to. Thanks again.)
Tony