Sonicbids Rolls Out Free Gig Submissions – UPDATE
Last month when ArtistData was gobbled up by Sonicbids there was more than a few sad faces at NRP offices. But Brenden from ArtistData assured us this was for the best. Sonicbids had more resources, could reach a bigger audience and bring a better product to the musical middle class as Sonicbids caters too.
Well recently Brenden made a welcomed announcement, Sonicbids will be moving to FREE gig submissions. Yippe!
As some of you know it costs money to submit to most (bigger) gigs. SXSW, NXNE, Pop Montreal, CMJ, etc., all cost you around $30 a go. In the course of a year for an up and coming band that can add up. Especially as Sonicbids stores your credit card info and applying is crazy easy to do, so you can do some damage to your pocket quite quickly (These submission fees come on top of your monthly Sonicbids membership).
Sonicbids claims “We eventually want the vast majority of the gigs on the site to be free, but we are going to roll things out slowly so we can test how things work.” This sounds like a great intention, but I’m skeptical on how this will work. SXSW for example, is able to pay for much of their back line setup from the thousands of submission fees bands send in. If you take that away a large chunk of revenue will be lost.
Update: Panos from Sonicbids let us know that premium gigs like SXSW and CMJ will continue to have fees… because they always have, predating the creation of Sonicbids. Sad face
So I wonder, with the addition of free gig submissions and the acquisition of ArtistData, will a price increase be coming down the pipe for Sonicbids users? It doesn’t seem that unlikely. But for now you’re still going to be paying for most gigs. No free SXSW just yet.
Category: Digital Music, Money, Music Career
Hey there, this is Panos, founder of Sonicbids. I want to make a quick clarification: as I mention on my blog, Premium listings like SXSW, North By Northeast, etc. will carry the regular submission fees. This has nothing to do with Sonicbids — they’ve been there since before I even founded the site nearly 10 years ago.
That said, expect to see many, many gig listings carry no fees (I am hoping for the vast majority) over the next few months.
As I mentioned, we are testing this out so this will be rolled gradually.
Panos
I represent several artists who attempted using Sonicbids, what they quickly came to a mutual experience was that Sonicbids preys on musicians to make themselves and venues who partner with them wealthy, meanwhile the so-called “opportunities” from “Promoters” are few and there is no system for the artist to know if the venue actually even reviewed their EPK, furthermore the entire notion of paying a venue to audition for a booking at their establishment was invented by Sonicbids and a horrible idea for musicians, most of these venues they host you have to pay to send them your EPK, oft times they want you to bring in their entire crowd with your fans, who in turn make the venue money, then they dont even pay musicians to travel or play their venue after profiting off their fans, Sonicbids is a bad business for musicians trying to get gigs, its a great racket for the owners.
Agreed Maria.