Slashdot Mirror
Where Indie Artists Get Everything
anonicon writes "From the same people who brought you the Web's first corrupt CDs tracking list comes the first site where independent musicians receive 100% of the money that fans pay for their music or merchandise (of course, after the credit card company takes their cut from the payment). More information can be had here or here."
so far nothing to offer.
Listen buddy, I love food, and I especially love Chinese food. But these things really piss me off:
1. No chopsticks. What the fuck is up with that? More and more Chinese restaurants do not put chopsticks on the table by default. You have to ask for them. Hell, there's this restaurant I used to go to. It was *called* chopsticks - and you still had to ask for some. You'd think, that, as a marketing gimmick, they would use chopsticks in there. But no. It's always this big hassle. You always have to ask. What, you think we can't eat with chopsticks, or something?
2. The jokes. I am tired of hearing dog jokes in Chinese restaurants. It's fucking rude. There is always an idiot seated 10 feet across who cracks Chinese restaurant jokes in the middle of your meal. "Do you like your dog? Yeah, especially in Moo Goo Gai Pan". That shit ain't funny. See, if it were funny, people would laugh. That's the expected reaction to funny jokes. If people are not laughing, what can you deduct, shit for brains? Another one I always hear is "The Chinese Restaurant is the only restaurant where they welcome your dog." Fucking hilarious, I tell you. Want to hear something funny? The latest Chinese restaurant that opened in my street is located 200 yards away from the humane society. Now *that* is a marketing genius at work.
3. The numbers deal. What the fuck is up with the numbers and letters to designate the dishes? We can read, you know. We don't sign our credit card with a "X". We are not totally illiterate, for Pete's sake. I am tired of seeing those people say "I'll have the C32, mild, with fried rice on the side." Hey asswipe, it's a Chicken Low Mein. What's so fucking hard to say? I just don't get it. I find it stupid at best, and insulting at worse.
4. Why do all Chinese restaurants have a fish tank? It's a catch 22. When they have one, it's a cliché. When they don't, they look like they are not successful enough to afford one. The whole fish tank thing is a pain in the ass. I always have the sneaking sensation that someone in the room is eating the fish I was checking out while waiting to be seated.
5. The staff has to make an effort to speak English while around customers. It's fucking rude to see them talk to each other in Chinese - Mandarin to be more precise - right in your face. You never know if they're talking about the weather or if they are insulting your ancestry. Fucking little dweebs come here to live, great. Now learn to be polite. Hey, English is not my mother tongue, it's my third language. But I still make an effort to speak it while in the company of others. It's called courtesy, asswipe.
6. Is Tso a General, a corporal, or a colonel? Every other restaurant has a different rank for the guy. Just choose one and stick to it, for God's sake! Hell, some even spell his name Tsao, to further confuse the situation. Little fuckers can't get their facts straight.
7. Why do fortune cookies have to taste like sand? Can't they make a fortune cookie worth eating? The only thing people do with those is crumble them into pieces and read the "fortune" in there. The latest one I got - I shit you not - said "Everyone agrees that you're the best". No shit. Not only I don't get to eat the cookie, on account of the fact that I don't like the taste of sand in my mouth, but on top of that the thing spells the obvious. Check, please!
8. Why does the wonton soup usually look like a microcosm of a turd floating in a toilet bowl? That's just nasty, man. Surely, they could change the presentation so that you don't wonder who shit in your soup. Really. I mean, this being a restaurant, and all, and this being the first dish that you are served, that's not exactly the most appealing way to start a meal.
9. The buffet that serves other food than Chinese. What's up with that? I was in Florida recently, and we decided to have lunch in a Chinese joint that featured an all you can eat buffet. Half the dishes were stuff like pizza, crayfish, Jell-O, etc... It's a
No posters here yet, but revolutions take time
Guess my efforts shall now be in vain... or perhaps a bit of help/constructive competition won't hurt.
-Daedalus
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
Obligatory link to an article by Courtney Love:
Courtney Love does the math
The final score?
Band: $0.00
Record Label: $6,600,000.00
It's nice to see someone try to make it without the RIAA et al. I hope this kind of thing becomes more common.
People: Please support these guys even if you hate their music. If they turn a profit, other bands will follow suite.
I'm not Seth.
Don't you think that this wonderful concept should have a few artists to start with --- exactly whom is participating in this revolution? They should have prominence on this site -- the "founding fathers" as it were.
I want my old mtv! (where they played MUSIC videos)
So do not mod him down! Chinese places are just like this and good ones are hard to come by! This is more news than Slashdot has had in ages.
Good idea... no artists yet though (at least in the half-dozen genres that I checked).
That site has been great... particularly for finding crippled/broken CDs BEFORE you buy the stinkin things. I'm a fan, primarily because I don't own a regular CD player... but I own four computers with CDROM drives.
Well done, charles... well done.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Could the Slashdot editors possibly have taken this seriously??! This is a small website with zero artists. A good thing I guess, but definetly not an industry revolution
These things do "take time".
What makes a man want to be a mouse? (Python's Flying Circus)
yeah, don't mind my english... hear=here... I is a edumakated kollege graduite!
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
INTRODUCTION
1. The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in "advanced" countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering even in "advanced" countries.
2. The industrial-technological system may survive or it may break down. If it survives, it MAY eventually achieve a low level of physical and psychological suffering, but only after passing through a long and very painful period of adjustment and only at the cost of permanently reducing human beings and many other living organisms to engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine. Furthermore, if the system survives, the consequences will be inevitable: There is no way of reforming or modifying the system so as to prevent it from depriving people of dignity and autonomy.
3. If the system breaks down the consequences will still be very painful. But the bigger the system grows the more disastrous the results of its breakdown will be, so if it is to break down it had best break down sooner rather than later.
4. We therefore advocate a revolution against the industrial system. This revolution may or may not make use of violence: it may be sudden or it may be a relatively gradual process spanning a few decades. We can't predict any of that. But we do outline in a very general way the measures that those who hate the industrial system should take in order to prepare the way for a revolution against that form of society. This is not to be a POLITICAL revolution. Its object will be to overthrow not governments but the economic and technological basis of the present society.
5. In this article we give attention to only some of the negative developments that have grown out of the industrial-technological system. Other such developments we mention only briefly or ignore altogether. This does not mean that we regard these other developments as unimportant. For practical reasons we have to confine our discussion to areas that have received insufficient public attention or in which we have something new to say. For example, since there are well-developed environmental and wilderness movements, we have written very little about environmental degradation or the destruction of wild nature, even though we consider these to be highly important.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MODERN LEFTISM
6. Almost everyone will agree that we live in a deeply troubled society. One of the most widespread manifestations of the craziness of our world is leftism, so a discussion of the psychology of leftism can serve as an introduction to the discussion of the problems of modern society in general.
7. But what is leftism? During the first half of the 20th century leftism could have been practically identified with socialism. Today the movement is fragmented and it is not clear who can properly be called a leftist. When we speak of leftists in this article we have in mind mainly socialists, collectivists, "politically correct" types, feminists, gay and disability activists, animal rights activists and the like. But not everyone who is associated with one of these movements is a leftist. What we are trying to get at in discussing leftism is not so much a movement or an ideology as a psychological type, or rather a collection of related types. Thus, what we mean by "leftism" will emerge more clearly in the course of our discussion of leftist psychology (Also, see paragraphs 227-230.)
8. Even so, our conception o
"Why did they cancel my favorite Sci-Fi show? I downloaded ALL the episodes!"
In case the site gets too much traffic, here's a mirror.
Looks like almost all of the corrupt CDs are in Europe. America is almost home free at the moment.
I wonder if this is because Europeans are more accepting of restrictions on their liberty, or if the publishers believe that they can use laws like the DMCA to effectively combat music theft in the United States.
If this thing ever takes off (they're at zero artists right now... not a good sign), I'm just curious as to how Fat Chuck is going to pay for bandwidth. Anyone can put up a website. I'll believe that they take 0% when I see it. That's like opening a retail store and selling everything for what it costs you. Sure, the customers are happy, but you have expenses, and with zero profit, you won't be able to stay open for long.
I don't understand the "broken" list -- it includes DMB Busted Stuff. I bought this when it came out, ripped it and it worked fine. The second disc is a DVD, maybe that's what caused the problem...
SYS 64738 NO CARRIER
...myself.
They do take some money. It costs $60 for the first year and $40 for every year after that (as seen here)
Even if they didn't ask for payment they might still take donations or some well meaning people might choose to fund it out of their own pockets (as with the Wikpedia)
In all seriousness, I think that it's a really good idea, if they can pull it off. The problems with signing to a major label are covered nicely in an article that can be found here {http://www.arancidamoeba.com/mrr/problemwithmusic .html), and trying to market your music by yourself can be an exercise in utter futility. There's both safety and promotion capital in numbers.
Here's hoping... *crosses fingers*
Doing my level best to piss off the religious right wing...
This service doesn't add much to what's already out there. You have to pay them $60 for the first year, just to get a subdomain listing that shows your CDs, links to your website, and lets people order your stuff. Then, if somebody does order something, you get an email and have to process the order and send it out. The only thing they do is handle the monetary transaction.
How is this any better than musicians setting up their own site and using paypal (which takes out a lower percentage for credit card charges)?
This doesn't seem like a revolution, just a way to make money off wannabe musicians that think they might sell something.
yee eye speak art noise fluently as best i can art love owns war talk war in my face and yeah peace will wage back at cha
It looks like plain old web hosting, with a few links to your site, plus a merchant account. Indy artists would not get any decent marketing or promotion, or get their CD's produced and pressed.
It's like starting a web hosting business and saying "I will not take any of the money you make via the website!".
Totally ghost written. That doesn't make it BAD, and I'm not casting dispersions on Courtney Love- I think its admirable that she would use her fame as soap box to tell the Truth, so props to her. But something about her doesn't strike me as a researcher.
Obligatory Steve Albini article
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Be aware that most of the music there, it's simply just crap or short samples of commercial albums.
Thats all well and good, but just wait until the indie artists start having someone press thier cds for them.
Mod point free since 2001
he's the beste!
Yodel, the freenet bank only charge a 1% transaction fee, and I believe it's all anonymous, ie.. their is no building of a profile for the fbi.
The moderation system is not to keep the conversation on topic. It's to weed the good out from the bad. If you thought this comment was a waste of time, fine, mark it offtopic, but don't automatically mark it that way just because it has nothing to do with the story. Sometimes the best comments can be OT.
And of course i'll now be instantly -1 offtopiced, evenly from people who didn't read this, just thought it was OT (relevant to the parent is not OT!) and those who have a twisted sense of irony. *sigh* ;-)
Free Java games for your phone: Tontie, Sokoban
where are the windows. I've been looking for a sit down joint that has them this would be impossible to find.
SCREW FLANDERS
Surely the bands have costs of their own. They have to spend money on marketing, recording, persuading radio stations to play the music. Stuff like that. A record contract bundles this al up into one packages (and then overcharges horrendously - that's monopolies for you), but if you don;t use a record comapny, how will people know to buy your music?
What's stopping them from doing what many other websites do? They could just place advertising on their site.
It makes my day to discover that artists are getting their pay for doing some fairly skiklled and specialized kinds of work. I recall that when I was a practicing artist (oil and charcoal on canvas) my paintings, etc. were typically appraised in the $400 - $1000 range. Not that I ever got that much, despite the sheer cost of the raw materials and 4 years of art school.
Nowdays, I go to Broadway shows and the local philharmonic to support them, in addition to donations.
C|N>K
...there is, among a longer list, "Live Animals", yet fails to mention dead ones. Apparently Fat Chuck has not heard of Ozzy Osbourne.
Who are you? The new #2 Who is #1? You are #617565. I am not a number, I am a free man! Muhahaha.
My brother-on-law sells on CD Baby and seems pleased. Not sure how they structure the deal, but the basic idea is to allow independent artists to get most of the money.
None of these sites solve the much larger problem of artist marketing, IMO. That's the one service that the record companies offer to the artists that no one else can get close to (in part because they lock competitors out of radio access, for example). There's room in the market for someone to do that, but they're going to have to find other means of getting to the customer other than radio (sites like Epitonic.com are a good step in that direction).
...on April 24th, 2003 we launched Fat Chuck's Music
It's been up for maybe 2 days, give'm a break. OTOH, maybe they should have done a bit of promoting and signed up some artists before their 'launch' so the site wouldn't look so barren.
Let's see... no artists in hip-hop, none in easy listening, none in popo, none in... hey, HEY!!!
Ain't nobody home!
Is this a bad joke by a sniggering Hilary Rosen? Is this her plan to give artists 100% of.... NOTHING?
I thought eMusic was the height of marginality, but these guys have them beat.
As for Chuck, I'd LOVE to see the pitch for this business model:
1. pay for lotsa hosting & bandwidth
2. 100% to artist = no margin
3. ???
4. profit!!!
Now I can't wait til monday...
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I have been using World Party Music (http://www.wpmusic.com) for several years and it is much more convenient. They charge a flat fee of $1.00 for handling, they do all the inventory handling, shipping, and just send me a check for the amount of my sales minus $1.00 for each sale. They charge the customer the shipping charges and they are responsible for any taxes on the sale.
This has already been done before. Go take a look (and listen) at cdbaby. They have over 34,000 artists, and a lot of them are pretty darn good. I buy most of my music there.
Your sig mentions EMusic. I listen to a lot of jazz. For the price of a CD every month, I get unlimited *legal* MP3 downloads of classic stuff. Bought a Penguin guide to jazz on CD to help sort through EMusic's collection, and have pulled maybe 11G of tunes in three months (and I haven't been hitting it that hard). It's practically more than one can listen to.
I guess it's a product life-cycle thing. Relatively few people are buying classic jazz these days (compared to top 40/pop/alternative), so the record labels are figuring they'll take what they can get for it.
he's charging artists to list their merch there. i assume this is how he plans to run the site.
Has anyone else noticed that under the "kitchen sink" page down by the assorted links section, slashdot is linked with the tag "News for Nerds Nothing matters"
Interesting slam...
I support my indie artists.
Jim Thirlwell (a.k.a. Foetus, Manorexia, Baby Zizanie) has a couple of cd's for sale at foetus.org. Radiolarian Ooze is awesome. Check out his aud/vid link for some samples.
Another oldie but goodie is Alternative Tentacles where you can find Jello Biafra and lots more.
Any other good indie stuff for sale out there?
While Fat Chuck's is subscription based (you pay a $60 annual fee), CD Baby charges $4 per CD sold. So Fat Chuck's is a better deal if you know you are going to sell more than 15 discs (probably a fair bet).
The other difference I see is that Fat Chuck's only processes the transactions, they don't ship the CDs. CD Baby is a real on-line store and maintains inventory. When they start to run low on stock they send you an email. If they run out they won't sell your disc anymore (but they will issue "rain checks" if they are relatively certain they will be receiving more soon). Derek (CD Baby's president) is a great guy with a lot of music industry experience as well, and he puts out a lot of advice for aspiring artists.
Somehow I think I'd rather just pursue my own online transaction capability rather than go through Fat Chuck's.
I've been looking for something like this for a while. My band (see sig) uses Papal, but we only get one or two orders a week, we sell most of our stuff at shows. I think Paypal is a little cheesy and unprofessional, but setting up your own credit card payment system is way out of a small band's league.
Chuck is just spreading the costs of the credit card system amongst all the bands.
What I didn't see is ho well it integrates into an existing site, so theoretically people buy a CD without even knowing they're in a frame on a different site. Maybe I just answered my own question.
As for 0 artists, you're right. We launched about 36-48 hours ago, the idea's been in development for about 6 months.
:-) Remember, if there was no opportunity to stay in business, the idea wouldn't have been started. We're not interested in being a dot-bomb.
Per bandwidth, 300gb/mo is $95.00. If I need more, I can get 2tb/mo for about $600/mo.
As far as keeping 0%, that's absolutely no joke. When you pay for an artist's CD, the money moves from your bank through the processor (2CheckOut) directly to the artist. We keep nothing because we're not even in the payment stream.
My expenses for now are $10/month for cheap hosting. I think I can handle it.
Peace.
Bandwidth is cheap. Ads are not cheap since they generally alienate your audience and cost you visitors (pop-ups! pop-unders! egads, the horrors!).
For more info:
http://www.fatchucks.com/about.html
Scroll to the end. No ads.
I am crushed to see Einsturzende Neubauten on the list.I remember when they were an anarchistic band all about the beauty of destruction and decay.
Now they are just corporate dupes playing dance music.
*sniffle*
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
groupies?
Tat Tvam Asi
Consider checking out this post from above you:4 602
:-)
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=62025&cid=581
When artists sign up with us, 100% of the money that fans pay for their music goes to the artist (after the CC company takes their cut). CD Baby keeps $4/album and they keep the shipping. When you're selling your album for $15, which scenario do you believe you'll make more money in for each sale?
Sorry, the devil is in the details. This has never been done before outside of live shows and car trunk sales.
Peace.
All they have to do is hold out long enough for some of the businesses they're competing with to start feeling the pain. Then they can sell their website to their competitors (who will buy it just to stop losing customers).
I went to their website, and their is a $60 account payment fee to start, $40 a year afterward. I'm sorry, a band could set up a website and sell online with Paypal for a cheaper price than that. It bothers me that they tell the bands "keep 100% of your profits".
Fatchuck's 100% offer is a nice marketing gimmick, but it conveniently neglects to tell artists that they have to have the stuff first beforethey can sell it. If a musician pays out for 100 pro-grade CDs and 100 decent T-shirts, signs up on Fatchuck's for $60, and only sells a handful of each in 12 months, the artist is still out for the cost of making the CDs and T-shirts. It's one thing if it's a touring band that can sell their stuff at gigs, too, but if they can do that, why pay the extra $40/year?
I dare say that CafePress.comand its high base prices are still a better option for a lot of artists that can't afford to pay up front for the goods, although Mixonic tends to offer better rates for CDs. Why there aren't more inexpensive CD creation services like those two really baffles me. (And yes, I know about MP3.com and Ampcast, but CafePress and Mixonic don't ask for $100/year to sign up and don't fill your CD with ads like MP3.com does.)
Visit me on the web at Permanent4.com.
Actually, because of the Verizon case, I have decided to boycott all commercially recorded music which forbid the rights to free distribution. By boycott, I don't merely mean "refusing to buy" CD's. I mean refusing even to listen or download such music (even illegally). Yes, that probably means that I will no longer listen to Philip Glass, Suzanne Vega, etc. Once they wise up and liberalize their licenses, I might consider listening to them again. And I might also consider checking their CD's out of the library (whenever I feel a pang of nostalgia, in the same way that a Russian might for a moment miss a gulag's watery soup).
The restrictive licenses of music companies essentially lock commercial music in the vault. I'm not interested in picking locks anymore just for a momentary glimpse at these so-called "precious" flowers. I'm interested in enjoying what is free out in the free air. Let all those "precious" flowers in the vault lose their color, rot away and turn into crap. Good riddance.
We as creative artists need to wean ourselves from this enslavement that we call "copyright enforcement." The people and companies who benefit by starving artists, drafting exploitative contracts and preventing works of art from being distributed freely deserve nothing less than our contempt.
You may say: how could I survive without vault music? Simple. If the music rots away in the vault, it was already dead to begin with. Who wants to keep dead flowers around? Instead of locking flowers in the vault, it is better to appreciate them in the open where it's easy to pick and admire. We are like bees admiring the flowers all around us, flitting about, taking what we need and moving on (and propagating the beauty of what we see at the same time). Flowers look pretty among other flowers, not inside some ugly dirty vault guarded by lawyers with vulture-like beaks. As the public areas become more covered with flowers, the desire to possess the rotting heaps in the vault will seem more bizzare, less relevant. The best way to increase the number of flowers in this world is to open the gardens up to bees. Anyway, it is folly to think that a group of lawyers (and that is essentially what a music company is ) owns a song or a human voice or an image. The copyright to Beauty is owned by one person, and that is God. His lawyers are ruthless and know the law of nature backwards and forwards. The license they enforce allows infinite creation and multiplication, but banishes those who say beauty belongs to one.
Freeing myself from the music of the vault provides an opportunity to learn about artists with more enlightened views toward distribution. I plan to patronize them in many ways, including donations. Also, I plan to attend more concerts and still pay for my commercial-free Internet radio ($5 a month) until decent creative commons radio stations emerge. It doesn't mean that I am opposed to paying money for music per se. But when I pay for music, I want either to have free distribution rights and/or the certainty that the artist is receiving at least 50% of the money I am paying. What do artists for major labels now receive? 1%?
Actually lawyers are not completely the culprit here. It would be a trivial matter for lawyers on either the artist's or industry's side to draft a limited duration copyright. All ownership rights could expire after about 5 or 10 years. Artists are partially to blame for not insis
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Houston
In the interest of fair disclosure, it should be pointed out that the submitter of this article (anonicon) is a principal of the company.
Which makes this article nothing more than a blatant advertising piece.
Taco, why don't you put the advertising articles where they belong: In the banner ads. Stop wasting our time with "submissions" that are nothing more than thinly-disguised marketing pitches.
I guess it's too much for Slashdot submitters and moderators to actually read the site they're linking to, but if they did take this extrodinary and nigh-unheard of step, they would see that the the phrase "independent musicians receive 100% of the money that fans pay for their music or merchandise (of course, after the credit card company takes their cut from the payment)" is demonstrable false. Lets look at the other fees mentioned on the site itself , shall we?
"Fat Chuck's Music costs $60 for the first year and $40 per year afterwards. The only other fees associated with Fat Chuck's Music are below:
1. Paid by Check. Getting paid by check in the U.S. or Canada is $4 per check. However, direct deposit is free! Check payment is free outside of the U.S. or Canada since direct deposit is not possible there.
2. Wire Fees. Wire fees change depending on how much is sent to you. Check out the complete chart for more information.
Wire Payment Fees
To wire your payments to you.
$100-$200 Gross Sales -> $33 Wire Fee
$200-$300 Gross Sales -> $30 Wire Fee
$300-$400 Gross Sales -> $27 Wire Fee
$400-$500 Gross Sales -> $24 Wire Fee
$500-$600 Gross Sales -> $21 Wire Fee
$600-$700 Gross Sales -> $18 Wire Fee
$700-$800 Gross Sales -> $15 Wire Fee
$800-$900 Gross Sales -> $12 Wire Fee
$900-$1000 Gross Sales -> $9 Wire Fee
$1000-$1100 Gross Sales -> $6 Wire Fee
$1100-$1200 Gross Sales -> $3 Wire Fee
$1200+ Gross Sales -> No Wire Fee"
Some of these may indeed seem very reasonable (though the wire service fees seem a bit stiff), but it is far, far away from the "100% except for credit card fees" implied by the over-eager submitter. It took me all of 45 seconds to find this imformation. Is it too much to ask submitters and moderators to do likewise?
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Some claim this has been done before with CD Baby. CD Baby (as mentioned in another post) takes $4 per CD sold, plus shipping and handling. Others mention PayPal, obviously forgetting the problems exposed recently with PayPay.
Chuck's site is a popular site already with the corrupt CD list, and it's only a matter of time before they come. So, rather then pan the idea because it may not look professional or because it doesn't have any artists signed up yet, applaud it and Chuck for wanting to do the right thing for the artist, giving them the money they deserve.
tinfoilmedia
Consider checking out this post from above you:
oops! The comment you linked to was submitted after the comment you replied to. Therefore, by generally accepted Slashdot procedure, the comment you replied to was not Redundant.
http://www.paypalwarning.com/u cks.com/
e n/approved_countries-outside they state: "PayPal accepts withdrawals to local bank accounts in these countries. (they list the countries) Users in ANY country may withdraw funds to a U.S. bank account"
http://www.paypals
I just signed up for a paypal account, and after sending 4 people money via my credit card, they have "limited" my account.
They refuse to tell me why my account is restricted, but they demanded that I fax them more personal information.
I faxed them my drivers license and a utility bill, but they claim they never received them! Since my fax log assures me the fax was successful, I can only assume that my personal information is now floating around somewhere for all to see.
Again I insisted that they tell me why my account was being "limited", so we could both work toward a solution, but their reasons continue to be a big secret.
After many either unanswered or unrelated replies, I decided to close my account. Oh, but you cannot close your account while it is "limited".
Paypal will not reactivate my account unless I give them all of my checking account information. Enough information to transfer funds from my checking account.
Since Paypal has been extremely unprofessional, if not worse, in it's actions so far, there is no way I'm going to send these morons more personal information to loose or share.
I called and requested they close my account. They informed me that they cannot close my account until I send them the checking account information. I then became very agitated and demanded they close my account.
They put me through to the dispute resolution department that they said would be able to close my account. That person requested I fax them my request, and they would close it.
I sent the fax 10 times, since they lost my faxes before, but surprise, surprise, they have yet to close my account.
They have now changed their story again; the lady (if you can call her that) on the phone told me that they will not close my account until I Give them my checking account information. Her logic was, they want to make sure the account is mine before they close it! isn't that rich!
When I asked her why the person before her told my they would close my account, she got very defensive and rather rude. After listening to her lengthy explanation that had little to do with my situation, I again asked her if the person I talked to before was wrong and should not of told me that they would close my account. She became very upset at this point and threatened to hang-up the phone on me.
She said "how would I know if that person told you the wrong thing?" Gee.. I don't know, maybe because you just gave me a ten minute speach on Paypal everchanging policy, and I just told you exactly what the other person said!
She at least was able to give me a reason for my account being "limited", unfortunately the reason violates their own user agreement.
You see, I travel for business and log-on to the net from many countries. On this page of Paypals Website: http://www.paypal.com/ebay/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/g
"ANY COUNTRY". So the lady (again questionable) on the phone says my account was probably "limited" because I logged-in from Poland.
So when thay say "any country" they must mean any country except Poland.
They also claim that they will reinstate my account if I fax them a utility bill, and driver's license, something I have already done.
In fact, when I log into my account, there is a checklist of things I must do to fix my account. One is fax them all my personal info, that one is checked-off, the other is give them my checking account info, that's never going to happen.
Paypal's response to the BBB said they have not received my utility bill and driver's license. Clearly they are stupid or lying, and I'm leaning toward the latter.
Paypal has no intention of fixing my account; they just don't do that. They limit your account, steal your money, and blow you off, in that order.
So basically you are nitpicking the difference between "100% except for credit card fees" and "100% except for transaction fees"? Heck, I assumed that credit=transaction right off the bat, although my GF is a business-type so I might have developed a slightly off-kilter filter than you.
Oh... wait... never mind...
Who is your webhost. I like those prices. Is it colo?
Someone from Urge Overkill had been trashing Albini in a magazine. His response was "Well, in five years I'll still be making records, while they'll be giving blow jobs in bus station bathrooms for pocket change."
Severed Heads also offer improved versions of their older stuff - and the latest album (Op) comes with a key to access 'upgrades' - i.e. extra songs and new versions. On top of all this, you can hear just about everything they sell as a (low bandwidth) MP3 before you buy.
Cut up the middleman!
Who would believe in penguins,unless he had seen them? Conor O Brien - Across Three Oceans
If could listen to the music first...
(had to do it)
-=fshalor
Hi Anon!
I pay $9.95/month for 30gb of traffic at hostforweb.com, a pretty good hosting company. If I need to go to 300gb/month, they charge 95.00. The next step up in case things get crazy is sanethosting.com:
http://www.sanethosting.com/
They charge $200/month for colocated hosting (including 330gb of transfer) and $99/month for every 330gb block after #1.
Hope this helps!
Chuck
Heh, didn't read the about page. It pre-empted my next point (to run text ads ala Google).
:)
Fair enough if you don't want to advertise on your site. Cool idea, and I'm looking forward to purchasing in the future
I have to *hunt* for the list of stuff to buy. It should take me to that with big pictures of the things on sale. For 6 months in development.... your deployment plan sucks.
First, I think your business plan sucks. Most cash-strapped bands would rather pay you a percentage of sales with a cap. This way, those bands just getting started don't have to fork over huge cash...$60 is a big risk.
Second, why do they need a merchant account for each band? Fuck that. I want to shop like Amazon and buy a bunch of albums from many vendors.
Third, they should ship you the CD-ROM image, and the cover art, and you could charge them a resonable fee to assemble the CD and ship it... if the customer doesn't want a CD-ROM download, etc.
Fourth, your web site design, and organization is pitiful. It's confusing and someone looking to buy alternative music doesn't have a hope of finding what they want.
Basically... you arn't offering valueable services. You don't understand your market. Good luck. Too bad you got publicity on Slash.Dot, I'm sure there are many other sites doing it better that deserve metion... your site, unfortunately, isn't one of them.
The last thing I want to do is make money off of "wannabe musicians"
Stop trying to be altruistic and just offer a good service for the money. By trying to be 'free' you are offering a stupid service that just makes it worse for newbie music people. Why don't you spend some time and offer a *valueable* service?
but it's just plain dumb. The other businesses will work beacuse they are smater than you
"People who are uncompromising with what they believe"
I should point out that this description also fits Hitler, Saddam Hussein and Stalin.
Your wordage essentially means "people who are unreceptive to dialogue." I don't think that's very awesome.
+++ATH0
Uh, wait. I can set up my own account at 2CheckOut for $50. The only other service he provides is hosting. This is nothing "revolutionary", people.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
Actually, I tell a lie - but the AOTC soundtrack ripped perfectly on my Bondi Blue G3 at work, even though my iMac and iBook at home didn't much care for it. But seeing as I was given the CD for free anyway as a promotional item, the net loss to the music biz is £0.00...
You must think in Russian.
MP3 sound samples (full songs) you can download off our site.
All we did was upload (we snailmailed the CD for replication) our info, all we have to do with fulfillment is wait for them to send the checks. They handle the credit card stuff and create the goods on demand. The prices are a bit high, but creating stuff on a one-off basis is expensive even with everything basically automated.
Check out our site... it's in the sig below.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Seems artists are not anxious to get 100%. What gives?
Cheap hosting, hmm.
Slashdot effect, hmm.
Your bills may increase next month, I fear.
Obligatory use of the word obligatory in an obligatory obligatory. Of all the words to select to become ubiquitous, why obligatory? Obligatory obligatory obligatory. I guess it's because it can replace any word in a sentence and it makes sense (enough so that you can make fun of anyone who doesn't know what you're talking about).
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
The RIAA is making money of each and every CDR sold.
Banaaaana!
If bandwidth gets to be too much, why not consider BitTorrent? I'm sure if you wrote a custom tracker, you'd be able to keep piracy to a minimum and lower your bandwidth costs.
Just a thought.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
All this kaffuffle over DRM and music on the web sure makes real musicians crindge. The very thought of using a junky sound card and cheap crap audio to play compressed junk downloaded off the web tells me more about the state of the recording industry than any slashdot article to date. Todays recordings are so heavely saturated with production added tracks. The music sounds equally bad with obligatory boosted db under 200 Hertz, to kill the crap added in the mids. Over 200 Hertz is where most real music happens and a lack of real musicianship becomes obvious. The fact is that todays average web music listener has no sense of what they are hearing anyway. What is a music video anyway? It is usually an excuse for a lack of musicianship. Bill Gates is right. The average computer user needs to see everything. Why should a real music listener want to use todays computers for music in the first place. How hot would Brittany be if she was a chunky 200 lb diva, NOT. Musical talent and merit means nothing to todays pop music scene. Thats why pop music web sites selling mp3s are doomed. The great music productions of the 50s 60s still are far better than any crap being turned out today. There are still a few record companies, who re-release great classical, jazz, rock, r&b, folk etc. Apart from that there is no future for the modern record companies, as the visual image of a performer has become more important than the musical content on a disk. Is the record turntable a real musical instrument? Are generated rythym loops good groove? Call me old fashioned. I consider it a compliment. Give me real fingers on strings and someone who can do justice to a good tune, on a well mixed release. For that I will always gladly pay. Who cares about the DRM of the crap coming out of todays one hit wonders, in two years it's mostly worthless and forgotten anyway.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
Re: anonicon, sounds like you folks are on the right track to me. I presume you are affiliated with Fat Chuck's, and I have gotten some valuable information from that site. As an old guitar picker/songwriter, I want to wish Fat Chuck's every success. It's time for the RIAA to die. There is just so much great indie music out that most folks will never have a chance to hear, thanks to those money-grubbing RIAA bastards. Long live Fat Chuck's, and may a pox befall the chickens of the RIAA & MPAA. They have outlived their usefulness.
Didja ever notice how ubiquitous ubiquitous is? As if it is popping up all over! And given this all pervasive quality of ubiquitous, I'm surprised that we don't see more of it around. I guess I'm much obliged.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Yes, yes, I know. This is a shameless plug. Please Humor me.
Angie Nussey is an artist that I really like a lot. Piano, vocals and guitar. Good little jam session every monday night.
Her web site has a bunch of realaudio clips up so you can give her a listen, or order one of her CDs if you feel so inclined.
PS: I am not her, nor do I know her at all really. I just like her music.
Thanks!
And so it did, but the above link is clickable.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Me too! If *I* was a musician that is exactly how I would market myself!
fart/faart/(coarse) (v.intr.): emit intestinal gas from the anus. (n.): emission of intestinal gas from the anus.