this article is as real as it gets.
Thanks for sharing all this with us

this is great to listen too..im updating my stuff now!!

Thanks for the good info. Things like this are extremely helpful and you should continue posts with information from promotors. It’s good to know where they are coming from.

Thanks!

Thank you for an informative and motivating pep talk.
Best, Bertrand Laurence.

great tips updated profile straight away!

Thanks for this insight. It’s invaluable to here from those who know!

Thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview. It sure is helpful to hear the facts from the people who are doing the work. I am in the process of revamping our press kit and will certainly implement this advice!

Am I the only one who remembers the CMJ “standby” scam from last year?

S

Hi S:

Thanks for commenting, and I wanted to give some background on what happened with CMJ last year.

There is a tool in our promoter accounts called “Status Manager” which enables those who receive submissions (in this case, CMJ) to notify artists of their decision with one of the three statuses: Selected, Not Selected, or Standby. The tool was designed to send out notifications to artists at a time set by the promoter. The trouble and confusion stemmed from a bug in our system (since corrected) which failed to send out notifications to a number of submitting artists who were “not selected” at the correct time. When the artists eventually received the “not selected” message, it was very close to the event date. That, in conjunction with the fact that at the time our “hits tracker” was not built to track all the review-actions of a promoter (this, too, has been corrected), prompted a number of questions and concerns about CMJ.

To make sure this doesn’t happen in the future, we have corrected the “status manager” bug and updated the way our “hits tracker” functions. Sonicbids’ founder, Panos Panay, posted a response on September 27, 2007 (link below to that and to a response from the CMJ promoter as well), but we could and should have done a much better job communicating this to our members. The false rumors which claim that CMJ did not review the submissions that have spread are the result of us at Sonicbids not communicating this quickly enough, and we continue to apologize for the confusion this caused.

Sonicbids isn’t perfect, but we do listen to our members and you’ll soon see more changes that reflect the feedback we’ve received (the “hits tracker” was initially a member idea).

For more specifics, here is Panos’ message published on BrooklynVegan.com: http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2007/09/sonicbids_cmj_s.html – and here is CMJ’s post from two days prior to that: http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2007/09/cmj_responds_we.html

I hope this helps, and let me know if you have any questions at all.

Thanks,

Jenny

Like the above posts, i would like to thank you for a pretty good interview. What i don’t exactly get as with the SBSW, with so many bands performing – 1,100, what is the advantage of playing with so many other basically unknown groups? I love music and have worked to make a career at it for about 1/2 my life and i don’t think i could watch 15 bands a day for 7 days. That would only be a little over 100 viewed. On top of that, isn’t $45 is an huge investment for only the possibility of getting chosen? If i undersood correctly, domestic flight trans for US bands isn’t guaranteed and we’re mainly from CA. Using us as an example, that still leaves food, hotel, and 5 musicians trying to support their families.

Aside those concerns, this CMJ opportunity still has that “oh U might be seen by so and so” aura although i think submitting our band would just lead to a good try – you’re not selected. Yeh, our music is tight and we will tear it up with the best. However, after hearing your response about having an updated full calendar, it isn’t worth taking a chance because we currently cannot play out that often.

Thank you and applaud yer honesty,

Kabong

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=379170925

I enjoyed the interview and found it helpful. As I suspected an over 40 singer songwriter has no hope in these events. However when I started clicking on past winners on your site, every epk was de-activated. I tried about 20 randomly until I got annoyed enough to write this note.

Hi
My band was recently not selected for the florida music festival and i was wondering when trying to get accepted into a festival or function lke this what is the best way to make your self known to the selectors to improve my chances of getting accepted?

Very informative to have the decision-maker’s own perspective on this. My take on it is that he describes sort of a catch-22 scenario. You do small gigs in your own market, but if you don’t get gigs outside your own market because you get no gigs big enough to be publicized outside of it and drive you out there, less likely for a CMJ selection. Getting bigger gigs seems to me a more preferable goal than the pay to play scenario any way. Personally I’d rather be invited to play at CMJ as opposed to paying to enter a listening contest. Still, I guess the thrill of being selected is extremely appealing. As an artist, I have to suspect the only music from an “unknown band” that will blow away Mr. McDonald et. al. will be in the style they already like/listen to, or are at least familiar and comfortable with having in the CMJ line up. I’d be surprised at any significant departures.

You guys are a joke. You are doing this for the money!!!

Over 1,100 bands at 60 different venues over 5 nights.

Give me a break, even if you are a band that performs at this event the odds of you being seen by anyone that matters is about as good as hitting the lotto.

And let me say, your selection processes is a joke as well. There is so much politics with your event you should bury your head between your knees when you come on here with this staged promo that is supposed to sound like an interview that is nothing but a promotion to suck more bands in to paying money to enter, and then travel to your event that will mean nothing to 99% of the bands that are performing because no one that matters will see them.

It’s all about how much money you can make, which says it all about your event.

If you were serious about what you were doing as a benefit to artists you would have one venue featuring 10 bands each night doing a 20 minute set of their best songs.

You would have all the industry people attending in one Venue so any band that performs can be seen. Not the way you’re doing it to put as many bands as you can fit in every club in the city to line your pockets with cash!!!

But it is obvious this has become nothing but a money making opportunity for you at the expense of artists that don’t realize they have a slim to none chance of being seen by someone in the industry that matters.

And instead of naming all the artists that made it in the industry that happened to play at your event at one time or another. Why don’t you be honest and name the artists signed based on their appearing at your event. Funny how that number would probably be in the single digits, if any, for a 20 plus year event when you do that.

GREED AND MONEY IS ALL YOU AND YOUR EVENT ARE ABOUT… AND YOUR DOUBLE TALK IS A JOKE.

IT’S ASHAME ARTISTS ARE AFRAID TO SPEAK THE TRUTH ABOUT WHAT YOU ARE DOING FOR FEAR OF BEING BLACK LISTED. WHAT A SCAM YOU ARE RUNNING!!!

I find interviews like this extremely helpful. More please.

I am so thankful I saved myself from yet another delusion.
Thanks to everyone who added their comments. I look forward to add mine to events I paid to be reviewed but got baited and switched on. Hey you “entrepreneurs” out there, us artists are going to get tired of you making money off our submissions real fast.

Fooey.

try to viset http://www.mycountrylyrics.com
thank you
revital candiottti