SellaBand Bankruptcy Shows Poor Execution; Not A Condemnation Of Fan Funding
from the too-bad,-but... dept
With the news that SellaBand has filed for bankruptcy, we've been seeing some gloating among those who don't believe in direct-to-fan or fan-supported business models for music -- suggesting that Sellaband's failure is an indication that those models don't work. Of course, that's kind of like arguing that the personal computer industry is a failure because Osborne went out of business. Sellaband wasn't the first in the market, but certainly was a pioneer in promoting fan-focused business models. But a lot of Sellaband's troubles came down not to the model, but to actual execution. Every time we'd post about Sellaband, we'd receive a bunch of emails and comments from people who had really bad experiences working with the company.Unlike the more recent crop of companies in this space, that appear to be a lot more flexible, Sellaband was pretty rigid in its setup. Rather than designing itself as a platform for fan funding, it tried to position itself as a label that also used fan funding -- but that required doing a lot of stuff that labels help with, and one of the complaints with Sellaband was that it wasn't well setup to handle much of that. Separately, unlike other fan funding options, Sellaband used to require a band to raise $50,000 -- which is a lot more than many bands might need. Eventually this changed, but it made things slow going for Sellaband. Furthermore, one of the bigger problems with Sellaband was that it didn't quite have the model right. It did very little to encourage actual connecting with fans, and never did a really good job setting things up so fans had a good reason to buy. Sellaband seemed to assume that people would just support a band for an "investment" in their album. But that mucked up the fan relationship a bit. Fans support a band because they want quality product (music, experience, access) back, not potential monetary returns.
The failure of Sellaband is a failure of execution, but certainly not of the idea that you can create models that allow content creators to build business models by getting fans to support them via more creative business models.
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Filed Under: fan funding
Companies: sellaband
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Failure is always an option
Unfortunately, we don't have a free market. Apparently you can get so big that the government considers you "too big to fail." The second best option is to get big enough to be able afford to buy politicians dedicated to protecting your antiquated and inefficient business model.
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Re: Failure is always an option
That about sums it up right there.
Another adroit observation IMO. It is most annoying that our major media players incessantly define our system as being "Free Market", diluting the original context and worthy ideal into representing the twisted, mutated remains of a system of mercantilism.
The obsolete network of record labels, and their baffling level of access to legislative power (and the trampling of individual rights this cronyism is bringing about) pretty well illustrates the whole farce.
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CwF & Then DIY
Once you have a decent grassroots support network and a good strategy, you can then attract investment to take things to the next level. You don't need these kind of companies any more than the old record labels.
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Re: CwF & Then DIY
It doesn't sounds like SellaBand was doing it right, and I'm sure there are a lot of other companies doing it wrong, but that's not the same as saying nobody is doing it right (or providing any value to the band or their fans) or that they're all just middle-men.
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Re: Re: CwF & Then DIY
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Sellaband bought by German company
see http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=nl&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rtvnoord.nl%2 Fnieuws%2Fnieuws.asp%3Fpid%3D89402
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What a surprise.
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Re:
Actually, if you followed the details of SellaBand, you would know that it wasn't particularly "web 2.0" which was actually a big part of the problem. It was founded by former record execs, and really acted much like a traditional label. Hence the problems.
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Re: Re:
Sellaband had the field for music lovers and music writers to meet, interact, and get some funding together. They had contacts with some famous producers. They had lot's of promises that they never kept, and messed up alot of things that they did try to do (ArenaFest for example).
Mandyleigh was the first artist to 'come out' about how crap they were, and now others are following (after the bankruptcy).
With V2, it gets even worse. The T&C's have changed so that any investor get's their money tied up in SAB forever, after 15 days. That's a joke. I guess they want to either kill the whole thing off or just get in the suckers who don't read the T&C's. If you don't agree to the new terms, then after 12 days you are automatically in (as if you agree) and you're money is stuck there forever. So much for Escrow.
I`ll send you the new T&C's for investors by email.
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Re: Poor Execution
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Why would I bother?
That was then. Now they're more flexible on thresholds, but besides that, the model still doesn't seem that much better.
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