Scamming Musician Websites

In my quest to find the right people to play with I am a member of various musician related websites, I’ve met a few interesting and a few not so interesting/tallented people through these sites, not to much result but valuable none the less. A few of these sites require a cash subscription to use them and are certainly worth a punt as they are not normally much and if you don’t like the results you just stop the subscription. As luck would have it I’ve found the majortiy of the best sites are the free ones as finding people can be a slow business so subscribing to a site for 6 months while you find the right people can be not very cost effective.

I got a message request from a drummer that looked quite positive on one of these sites, hell I’ll name it http://www.bandmix.co.uk (not giving them a link though). This site is a total rip of at over £5 per month you are unable to even attempt to contact anyone until you have paid. This system for me is flawed as I could sent off 100 requests and get nothing back and waste money waiting, as if anyone replies at least on of you has to be a member to be able to communicate. This is the problem I no longer subscribe as I wasted months of money with little or slow turn around, so thought I’d just let others contact me if they wanted. My drummer friend contacted me but as it took me a few days to respond his subscription ran out, so I can no longer reply to him without re-siging up for £5 pet month. Needless to say that’s not happening I’ll find another way to contact him, but just be aware of this stupidly bad business model and be aware of my frustration at having an interesting drummer message me, but not be able to respond.

BBC – Concert Promoter, Radio1′s Big Weekend.

It’s taken me almost a week to write this post as my work life balance is very much tipping the wrong way at the moment.

Last weekend I attended Radio 1′s big weekend, which for those of you who don’t know is a free two day festival event with multiple bands playing over the duration of the weekend, it’s hosted by a national UK radio station called “Radio 1″, which is owned and run by the B.B.C

First of all the event it’s self, wow, what an amazing event, the best orginised festival I’ve been to by far, all aspects of it where run like a swiss clock – all other festivals and gigs should look at how this was done, it was fantastic. The acts themselves where a great mix of new up and coming (unheard of) tallent, to current “stars” on a set of stages in tents hosted around the venue, which was this year in Swindon. The acts ranged from DJ based music, through rap, R and B (debatable that these acts are called R and B) dance music, pop music and a few more rockier style bands.

Pretty much every one I went to see where good,  Basement Jaxx stood out for a great live performance with a great mixture of live musicians and electronic/sequenced music. Great live set and good crowd pleasers. There was something there for everyone no matter what type of music you had. We also had really nice weather which made it all the better.

The only negative aspect is that each band tended to do a 20-30 minute set, wich 40-50 minute gaps between them due to setup/take down time, (ironicly the state of live music today where multiple bands do shorter sets than the setup time they take) I’d like to have seen longer sets to get to know bands you don’t know more, and enjoy the ones you do better. A fantastic weekend event though and all free !

The interesting queston is that this was all setup, funded and promoted by the BBC, which is %100 funded from the licenses payer’s fee. The BBC stands for “British Broadcasting Corperation” who’s function is to provide broadcast information and programming, which they do a fantastic job of, with TV, Radio, Internet content. However I’m not quite sure (despite how good it was) the BBC’s job is a concert orginiser or promotor, the BBC is British “Broadcasting” Corperation, I don’t quite see how concert promotor fits into that description of it’s services. Looking around, I can only blindly estimate that the cost of the two day even was 100 thousand pounds -  don’t know. Should this ammount of money be paid for by the whole of the UK TV licenser payers funding ? it’s a really tricky thing as I’m so impressed with how well everything was done and how much of a good time I had, yet especially in the financial climate we are currently in, or just in general cannot see how it is the job of a national broadcasting company which is a public service copmany to put on and promote concerts with our money ?

Bit of a negative comment I know, but it’s only food for thought.