I book bands for a popular music festival in a major dairy producing state and every year, SonicBids contacts me looking for us to use their service to accept band submissions. The first year they contacted us, though I had read the bad reviews, I decided to have a look for myself so I signed up my band to test it out. The spam started immediately and was unrelenting. Now this should be all you really need to know as no legit business would spam folks and is an excellent indication of the kind of company you’re dealing with. Still, I spent a bit of time checking out SonicBids.

I was really being too nice to them… but it’s not all their fault, they’re only enabling the scam; promoters are allowing the scam. Let me cut to the chase: legit promoters don’t charge bands to submit themselves for a gig. Period.

But on top of that, the site just sucks. I mean, as a promoter, I couldn’t easily search through the bands on their site and find ones I’d be interested in hiring. Searching for genre was worthless, no good way to search by location, keywords didn’t return reasonable results, etc…. So I couldn’t and wouldn’t use their site to find an artist. Which makes it necessary to let the bands find me… which just happens to support their paradigm.

The icing on the cake was when the SonicBids recruiter called again (and they will hound you forever; they still call every year) and explained that “the submission process can be a revenue stream”. I told him we wouldn’t be using their service and cited the reasons above.

Long story only slightly longer: technology has made it easier than ever for musicians to market themselves (for free even) and promoters to find the bands that will make their events a success. If SonicBids actually cared about helping bands and promoters connect, they could use technology towards that goal but instead they used it to reinvent payola.

Our little requisite dance also gives them the opportunity to try and up-sell me on their phone service… with the ridiculous notion that if somehow I spend more money on their crap, I will save more money. Whatever. But my question is: are they completely stupid or some of their customer are. Probably a bit of both.

Long story only slightly longer… if you want cheaper internet and could give a crap about cable TV, this is the way to go and only requires about 4 minutes of your life biannually.

UPDATE: I received an email in response to this post from a manager at Charter (Eric K.). He informed me that Charter now offers an internet only, 2 year contract for $29.99. As I explained to Eric, I’m not a fan of contracts or companies that use them as they’re an obvious sign of poor business practices. That said, I would also prefer to just pay a fair price for internet and lose the cable TV altogether (free, over-the-air HD is more than enough TV for me).

So I’ve signed up for this contracted $29.99/mo internet-only service and canceled TV (though it did take two calls to make it happen; the first agent stating (incorrectly) that I needed a TV service to get the deal). Maybe in the future they’ll lose the contracts and promotions and whatnot… we’ll see. For now, my dance card is full for two years.

Here’s a hint for the second question Sconnies… the left lane is for PASSING. Also, not on the test but equally important are:

• Turn signals… use ‘em
• Parallel driving is bad and causes traffic
• Don’t drive in someone’s blind spot
• Driving under the speed limit doesn’t get you into heaven
• Cell phones make your bad driving worse
• Stopping traffic, regardless of intentions, is bad

If you have any further questions about driving, just ask a FIB.

]]> http://dasspunk.com/2009/sconnie-driving-test/feed/ 0 http://dasspunk.com/2009/did-glenn-beck-rape-and-murder-a-young-girl-in-1990/ http://dasspunk.com/2009/did-glenn-beck-rape-and-murder-a-young-girl-in-1990/#comments Thu, 08 Oct 2009 18:50:00 +0000 dasspunk http://dasspunk.com/?p=512 It is very unlikely that Glenn Beck Raped and Murdered a Young Girl in 1990. And just because he has never denied that he raped and murdered a young girl in 1990, does not mean that he definitely did do it.

I personally do not think Glenn Beck raped and murdered a young girl in 1990 but I support the rights of the many, many Americans that have their doubts and think it should be discussed…

“Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up.”

On a similar note, since I was just building a new website, I will once again beg y’all to STOP USING INTERNET EXPLORER. Please? Pretty please? Sugar… top? Use ANYTHING else. Chrome, Firefox or Safari would make fine choices and all are MUCH better than IE.

If only I could bill M$ for the time required to code around their buggy, crappy products.

]]> http://dasspunk.com/2009/microsoft-revenge/feed/ 0 http://dasspunk.com/2009/worst-ever/ http://dasspunk.com/2009/worst-ever/#comments Fri, 16 Jan 2009 17:34:41 +0000 dasspunk http://dasspunk.com/2009/worst-ever/ ]]> http://dasspunk.com/2009/worst-ever/feed/ 0 http://dasspunk.com/2008/enough/ http://dasspunk.com/2008/enough/#comments Fri, 12 Sep 2008 17:05:17 +0000 dasspunk http://dasspunk.com/2008/enough/ I’ve been trying (and yet failing) to ignore the current political fracas that inevitably culminates into a 50+ kurik turd that is finally ceremoniously flushed on Tuesday, Nov 4th. Although both candidates are guilty of scat slinging, I feel McCain is sinking to new lows and as such, wins the scat muncher award for being the douchiest douche. Congratulations.

Whatever. The long and the short of it is, the republicans have had their day. 2920 days in fact (give or take about 27% of that in vacation time). If you think this country is doing fine, I suggest you get out more but feel free to stay home the first Tuesday of November.

I will say this… if the Demecrats, once in office, screw up as badly as Bush has, fine. I promise to vote for the next republican shepherd. No really, I will. But y’all have had your time and screwed the pooch in impressive ways. Please sit down, you’re turn is over.

Next…

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