JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum Legitimizing Pay-for-Play

Brian,

For someone not on their direct payroll, you're acting like it. That's fine. You're a big fan of theirs. But you're doing the classic propaganda move of grabbing unrelated and disconnected facts and trying to suggest one proves your point. I am not even sure you realize you're doing it.

The fact that you've written articles elsewhere certainly has confused things. All I can do is base my responses to you based on your direct responses to me.

Above I asked 4 direct questions. You said that you were going to answer those in an article rather than just answering them 1, 2, 3 & 4. Since then, you've flooded a ton of info here but none of them deal directly and simply with the questions without reading a lot of unrelated material to get to the bottom line. In your response 718528 you acknowledged you had not yet answered my questions. Read everything below that post and you'll see that you never did. I am simply trusting your own statements here Brian. If you had already given info that you felt answered those 4 questions previously, why didn't you say that instead of saying you'd come back and answer them? See the problem?

1. Do you have their names and direct contacts?

The answer is STILL no correct? YOu even add to that and say their communications tools are useless. That's far more pessimistic than anything I have said right? So who's the pessimist?

2. Do you know where they are located?

This was misleading on your part. You might have site stats just like you can get by looking at raw data from anonymous visitors to a website. (There are sites you can go to that can even tell you the average age of the visitors to your site... it's all based on IPs and cookie info). But for the real world purposes of an artist wanting to know where their fans are so they can visit their town and invite them to a show, they still don't know who those people are or how to contact them correct? That is the point of the question. It's useless info otherwise.

3. Have they actual purchased anything?

You only know of 1 single purchase tied to something that happened at Jango. It's dishonest to suggest that any other purchases are from Jango. At most it is wild speculation and hopeful thinking. It's more likely they randomly found you somewhere else and bought it in truth. And the fact that Jango doesn't directly track and share that info for you makes them even less useful than I originally thought. Another strike against them.

4. Have they responded to your notes to them?

You said 3 had responded. My point was positive. That's actually not bad for internet communications, sad as it may seem. 2 out of 100 (I even rounded up to make it sound better, how's that pessimistic?) is better than average. When I sent a JPF newsletter out to 50K people, I usually get about 500 responses. That's only 1%. Occassionally I get over 1000.. sometimes only 150. So the fact that you heard back from a few is good. Obviously based on how much it cost you, however, it's not so good. It costs me $50 dollars to send out our newsletter. That means I am hearing back from 500 people or at a cost of .10 cents a response. You paid $200 dollars and heard back from 3 people. That's roughly $66.00 per response. Not so good. And that was $200 investment to get app. $20 dollars in profit (and that's a guess.. how much did you make on your T-Shirt and CD?). Also not a great investment. And since you don't have the real contacts of these listeners, at best you're assuming they're real based on blind trust that the Jango numbers are fact. That's mighty nice of you. I am not so trusting. If I had REAL names and contacts of people who supposedly volunteered to be on my list by clicking something, I'd feel a little better about it all.

I will say this, you're a relentless propaganda cheerleader for these guys. I wish you'd use that passion to cheer on some of the good guys in the industry. Jango may be good people behind the scenes (probably are for that matter) but somewhere along the line they decided that they could cash in on indie artists desperate for airplay and their conscience allowed them to do it. I can see the theory being bantered around becase I have done that... i.e. how can we get more indie artists played on the radio? I've heard just about every scheme and I have weighed the plusses and minuses of all of them. Usually people will twist facts hard to point in their favor. But in the end, if you are paying money upfront, you need to see a clear cut return on your investment like any other investor. That means specific sales that are traceable, specific fans identified by name and with their contact info included (like CD Baby gives out so why can't Jango?) and it should be profitable, not a loss. There should be no discussion about how much you lost. You shouldn't LOSE anything.

People have very short attention spans. On internet radio when you're paying for airplay, if that person doesn't take action right then and buy your music, it's a loss. Because unless you pay AGAIN... they won't hear you again and people don't have that large of an attention span. And if your music is so amazing that they WILL remember, then it's even MORE of a crime to make you pay for airplay. At best, Jango is an uneeded middle man that has inserted themselves into the food chain because they can't make money any other way. That should tell you something right there.

Brian