An artist named Uro just left this comment on my site.
Everything below this line was written by Uro.   

 
This weekend, I contacted the CEO of Sellaband with these issues about their service:

Johan:

This is Uro from Canorous, an Electro/Folk/Pop social justice band based in Brooklyn NY USA and Budapest Hungary.  I write and arrange all songs, play keyboards/programming sing lead and back-up.

We have landed a producer/engineer and a mixer that have worked with [confidential] and were founding members of the band [confidential].

We also have our own publishing company, copyrights to all my 75 new songs, and legal rep. from Greenberg Trauig in New York.

My "day job" is as an executive in the Mobile Entertainment segment.

While I'm impressed with your new music business model, and wish you success, I'm concerned about some of what I see as fatal flaws, an unsustainable business model due to near future artist backlash against Sellband. Perhaps you realize that your business model is still evolving, perhaps not.

Anyway, here are a list of issues:

1. 1/3 of all sales - This term is completely inappropriate, but especially on digital distribution outlets that are NOT a Sellaband website.  We would only agree to 20% of revenue sold on a Sellaband site, not all 33% from all sites/brick and mortars.

2. 1/3 of all publishing - This is also inappropriate, since I have my own publishing company. We want 80% return using Sellaband, and I'm bringing in my own producer and manager--not yours.

3. Master Recording - I can't believe that I'm even discussing this with you. What are we Chuck Berry? Master recording is owned by us if we are raising the money. Period.

4. Leftover balace on $50k budget: We would want all of the leftover balance, if any.

5. Emails and mobiles of users - If we are to market our music, we must play live gigs, and therefore, we will need access to our entire sellaband email/mobile number lists. Period.

6. CD release - We don't want to release ANY hardcopy CD: we ONLY want a digital album (no individual tracks online) and mobile downloads released.

7. Free downloads - absolutely no free downloads whatsoever: streaming ok.

8. Widgets - I want to able to place widgets on my sellaband page from other social communities.  A must.

If most of the terms are not agreed to, then, no, we are not interested and we'll not recommend SellaBand to other bands/artists.  Taking 1/3 of everything is too high of a price to charge for something that should be sold for a low flat fee. Tunecore and Nimbit have already done this and this is the immediate future of music.

A flat fee would be much better and piss less artists off--like us. If you, are having trouble with the math - 50,000 artists paying a $100 annual fee for SellaBand services would generate $5,000,000 in gross ANNUAL revenue for SellaBand - without extracting a single percentage point from a single artist - IF that is how you did business - but that's not the case.

Let me know if you will agree to our terms, most of our terms, or revert to a flat fee model.

Yours sincerely,

Uro

He replied with this comment today:

Dear Uro,

Thank you for showing interest in SellaBand.
You may be right that there are still some flaws in our concept and that certain aspects need to be tweaked. However, the answer lies not in the points you raise and we see no reason to meet your demands. You can sign up to SellaBand and agree with the current T&C, or feel free to try your luck elsewhere.

Best regards,
Johan Vosmeijer
SellaBand

Then I replied back with this one:

Thanks very much for reply Johan.

Perhaps when your answers get circulated to all social networking band sites, forums and blogs and/or realize that you are not getting the quality of artists that you want will you then see a reason or two to pay attention to our requirements.

As it stands, your business model is unsustainable: it is basically a web 2.0 version of the old record label business in that the label controls artist and rights.  But actually, you don't offer something that they used to: real old-fashioned Marketing!

And so, your business model, my friend, is history (along with your company) if you don't change.  We can always set up a paypal account on our social networking band page to get donations, find top producers who are not tied to labels, etc, your business is not unique.

We understand that you have expenses (web servers, hosting, music industry professionals, etc.), but at the same time, we, as artists, we will not be extorted any more.

So, in closing, consider this: in the digital music business you need we, the Artist more than we will ever need you--you have no choice but to negotiate with us--either you will now, or you will soon enough, it's your choice.

Until your business model changes with the times, we will definitely pass on your offer, however, thank you.

Good luck.

Regards,

Uro