Members Ryst Posted July 16, 2011 Members Share Posted July 16, 2011 http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/8t1V2x/www.mosesavalon.com/mosesblog/2569/music-business/cnn-and-robin-meade-scam-songwriters-out-of-thousands-in-latest-contest/ Moses Avalon - Want to help a billion dollar organization find an opening theme for one of their news shows and get paid nothing in exchange? Who wouldn Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members roomjello Posted July 16, 2011 Members Share Posted July 16, 2011 all song writing contests are scams. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members koolkat Posted July 16, 2011 Members Share Posted July 16, 2011 Hey, at least the CBC ponied up $100,000 to the winner of the new Hockey Night In Canada theme song contest. Why anyone would want to help out a govt cheerleading agency like CNN by donating a song is beyond me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members roomjello Posted July 16, 2011 Members Share Posted July 16, 2011 Yeah, ok but about 50 fold too low if they keep the same rate of stingers usage etc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members franknputer Posted July 16, 2011 Members Share Posted July 16, 2011 Moses never disappoints with his histrionics. Sure, it's kind of a lame deal. However, the part about losing a 20k/year revenue stream is BS. Through normal channels this would be done as a work-for-hire. The company would cut a check, the composer would deliver a track - end of story. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Paul McCartney Posted July 16, 2011 Members Share Posted July 16, 2011 Thinking about royalties you never get is dispensable, a waste of time. Maybe it is a chance for a unknown artist to get out of his mansard. I gave one song to "Bread For Life," a offertory for Africa of the International Red Cross. I feel great about my generosity, even thus I know that all Red Cross employee getting payed, and me not. The second time they asked me for a further song, I refused to give it for free, and their stupid response was: "Can you afford to not give the Red Cross a song." My answer was: "I can not afford to give songs to people who believe that I pay my bills with my great generosity feeling." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Philter Posted July 16, 2011 Members Share Posted July 16, 2011 Just when you think music couldn't possibly be devalued any further. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted July 16, 2011 Members Share Posted July 16, 2011 all song writing contests are scams.If you have your music on ReverbNation (and I still do but not for long, I think*) and you haven't turned off the river of spam they flood out to their artist members, everyday you probably get a packet of "offers" to play at some festival or try out for some TV show licensing opportunity, show or tour or other supposedly desirable gig. Almost every one of them has a submission fee, typically ranging from $15 to $50 or over. Turns out this is a money-making scam with RN and the people making the "offers" splitting the take. Having been in and around the music biz most of my adult life and having worked on a slug of demos for folks over the years, I know all too well how hope, mindless, unthinking, dreamy, irrational hope, springs eternal in the hearts -- but seldom the minds -- of so many musicians. You'd like to think no one would be suckered in by such shameless and disgusting victimization of musicians -- but if it didn't work, the damn scams would die away. Instead, every month, the number of come-ons and cons just increase -- and the sumission fees get higher. *I actually did, at one point, get an offer to submit one of my bands' music to a licensing agency with no fee -- and an offer that didn't go to my other bands, so, I figured it was real... It was when I was throwing out all the scam spam one day, I found the 'real' offer buried in it -- from many months before. It was a wee needle in the huge haystack of scams. I figured the lead was cold. More than a little annoying. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Jeff da Weasel Posted July 16, 2011 Members Share Posted July 16, 2011 If you have your music on ReverbNation (and I still do but not for long, I think*) I'm completely screwed in that regard... my distribution is through RN, which I set up way before they became a humungous spam machine. Now I just automatically delete any messages from them that aren't involving royalty payments. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted July 16, 2011 Members Share Posted July 16, 2011 I'm completely screwed in that regard... my distribution is through RN, which I set up way before they became a humungous spam machine. Now I just automatically delete any messages from them that aren't involving royalty payments. Yeah... I was on them fairly early, back when most sites were only letting you stream 128's or sometimes 192's, I liked that I could put up higher quality tracks -- and that they had a pretty good player plugin widget that didn't have intrusive ads/logos and such. But then the pay-to-be-considered spam started... and just kept growing. If you could just block any "offers" that required a submission fee, it wouldn't be nearly as annoying -- although certainly troubling to be on a site that profits from such sleazy business. (One of the reasons I long ago pulled virtually all my content off of MySpace -- besides, of course, that they totally sucked even before the makeover that made the site completely unusable [do they even check that damn thing? I doubt it... I think they just got what some suit thought was a 'modern' design -- at least it looked better than the super-cheezy old blue and white thing -- and then gave it the OK and no one ever went back to see if it actually worked -- which it mostly does not] was because MySpace had pushed everyone to sign up with that "third party" Snocap music-sales thing -- which went bankrupt owing musicians a LOT of money, but the remaining assets of which the bankruptcy court allowed MySpace to buy for reportedly about a penny on the dollar -- meaning that the musicians got totally screwed and MySpace made out like a bandit. But -- hey -- what would you expect from a company that hacked the phones of dead kidnap victims, dead soldiers from Iraq and Aghanistan, and 9-11 terror attack victims, and lots of other stuff that is only now coming out. I hope that operation -- from all of Murdoch's ultra-sleazy tabloids, to the Times of London, the Wall Street Journal, Fox News and everyone involved with it, goes straight to hell and takes that skank David Cameron with it.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Jeff da Weasel Posted July 16, 2011 Members Share Posted July 16, 2011 Yeah... I was on them fairly early, back when most sites were only letting you stream 128's or sometimes 192's, I liked that I could put up higher quality tracks -- and that they had a pretty good player plugin widget that didn't have intrusive ads/logos and such. I'm not talking widgets here. My digital distribution (i.e., where I actually make money from selling music) through iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, Napster, Rhapsody, and everywhere else is via ReverbNation acting as my label. My deal doesn't come up for renewal until December, at which point I'm strongly considering moving to a new service if for no other reason than to avoid the spam avalanche. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted July 16, 2011 Members Share Posted July 16, 2011 I'm not talking widgets here. My digital distribution (i.e., where I actually make money from selling music) through iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, Napster, Rhapsody, and everywhere else is via ReverbNation acting as my label. My deal doesn't come up for renewal until December, at which point I'm strongly considering moving to a new service if for no other reason than to avoid the spam avalanche.Yeah... I decided to go with TuneCore long ago -- and have an album credit there but I keep dragging my heels for probably no good reason. It's just that once you put it up on iTunes, it's kinda carved in stone. I hate commitments. Just ask my XGFs. For a no-startup-cost music sales (and free streaming) solution, I really favor Bandcamp. It's clean, straightforward, easy to set up, and you can customize your band pages there, keep all extraneous crap off them (no ads, no other band stuff, no continual upsell crap like ReverbNation) -- and they give the best cut around, as far as I know (as long as you have a micro-payment PayPal account hooked up to it, anyhow. The regular PayPal structure makes a single sale not all that remunerative.) The player, however, while decent, isn't as nice as the RN player. And the streams at BC are all 128 -- even though your purchasers have the options of lossless (both Apple Lossless and FLAC) on down. Also, they limit you to giving away only 200 free downloads a month, unless you pay for more, which costs between 1.5 and 3 cents a DL, depending on quantity purchased. They tried to make it free but they said that a very small number of bands sucked up most of the DL bandwidth with big free promos. On the up side, if you're feeling generous, a free download can be a single or a whole album, of any size. The free 128 streams are limitless, however. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members philbo Posted July 20, 2011 Members Share Posted July 20, 2011 all song writing contests are scams. Yeah... I entered lyrics from a song I wrote into a poetry contest in the newspaper about 10 years ago and won an invitation to go to Los Vegas (at my expense)... I still don't understand why Los Vegas; maybe it was a front for a travel agency? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted July 21, 2011 Members Share Posted July 21, 2011 I won a free dinner and slideshow about an amazing new timeshare condo resort opening soon just outside Kabul. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Goobers Posted July 21, 2011 Members Share Posted July 21, 2011 I gave one song to "Bread For Life," a offertory for Africa of the International Red Cross. I feel great about my generosity, even thus I know that all Red Cross employee getting payed, and me not. The second time they asked me for a further song, I refused to give it for free, and their stupid response was: "Can you afford to not give the Red Cross a song." My answer was: "I can not afford to give songs to people who believe that I pay my bills with my great generosity feeling." Actually, the Red Cross is largely volunteer, with most of its 100 million members unpaid. But good on you for feeling great about your generosity, the purpose of charity according to you, and declining their "stupid" request because you Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted July 21, 2011 Members Share Posted July 21, 2011 The HC Songwritng Forum occasionally gets spammed by interns and street teamers working for various songwriting contests (and every once in a very long while someone reads the forum rules thread [the sticky one that says in the title in all-caps read this before posting] and actually contacts us before trying to promote their pay-for contest in the forum). I'm already pretty cynical, but it's just another brick in that wall. Recently I was checking the Facebook Page for the HCSWF and noted that the International Songwriting Competition had graced it with a bit of promo spam (no rules there, to speak of, so I, in my extended roll as forum mod, let it stand and actually asked how much it cost, what IP rights they claimed on entrants, etc. They pointed me to the rules, as expected -- but I was pretty amused to see them say only a sentence after giving out with the entry fee ($30 -- What? You expect people to listen to the first 30 seconds of your music for free?) that they'd had over 15,000 entries last year. That, of course, was too much for me to pass up, so I did the math and remarked, "Nearly a half-million dollars in submission fees. That's impressive!" Haven't heard back from them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted July 22, 2011 Members Share Posted July 22, 2011 I'm surprised CNN doesnt charge you for the "honor" of using your composition. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Paul McCartney Posted July 22, 2011 Members Share Posted July 22, 2011 Actually, the Red Cross is largely volunteer, with most of its 100 million members unpaid. I don't know about that, but I know that The International Red Cross headquarter in Geneva which commisioned that one song, that in this building in Geneva nobody works for less then $60'000 per year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Paul McCartney Posted July 22, 2011 Members Share Posted July 22, 2011 Have a look at that, and email which emanated out of my mail box today: Hi, In January we did a song writing contest. It was a lot of fun and great to see the talent! Neuro Drinks just started a contest where you can win a Rok Box and cash by scoring one of their commercials. I got in on this one and I encourage you to as well! Here is what I just entered, I challenge you to do better!!! Here is how you enter: http://recording.org/blogs/cleanpants/396-songwriter-scoring-contest.html . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members seahorse Posted July 23, 2011 Members Share Posted July 23, 2011 It is what it is. You can spend a few minutes writing a "contest" song and maybe win a trip to Atlanta. It's not like you're writing Yesterday or Satisfaction. I'd do it just to meet Robin Meade. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Goobers Posted July 28, 2011 Members Share Posted July 28, 2011 I don't know about that, but I know that The International Red Cross headquarter in Geneva which commisioned that one song, that in this building in Geneva nobody works for less then $60'000 per year. The Red Cross is one of the largest and best institutions ever created. You want good people who make more than $60,000 per year working in that building, overseeing the operation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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