Bandcamp suggestions...are they worth it?

infocat wrote: While I don't come close to listening to all of the "bandcamp bands" recommended here, I have found a couple of dozen bands on bandcamp that I enjoy and have bought CDs from.  I think bandcamp is a great place for both new and established bands to release their music.  I would also hate for a band to not be added to PA just because bandcamp is their only/primary distribution method. Long live bandcamp!

Let's be VERY clear here:

Any new thread created in the Suggest New Bands and Artists lounge is a direct request to us to evaluate the band or artist for inclusion in the PA.

 

That lounge has very specific guidelines to make the suggestions process more effective: Band submission procedure.

 

Fortunately Svetoni suggestions are so poor we do not have to worry about finding pictures, biographies and discographies for these bands because >90% of them are never going to be added to the database.

 

To date he has suggested 100s of bands in the Suggest New Bands and Artists lounge, 43 in the past two months. How many of those have been added to the PA? Not many. Of the last 43 suggestions? = 3. The total number of reviews and ratings for those three bands? = 1 (and that was cut'n'paste cross-posting from JMA ... gee thanks, we already owned that one)

 

Just looking at those past two months: if each band takes a minimum of 1 hour per team member to evaluate and each team is a minimum of three people that equates to 129 man-hours work - add to that the sterling efforts of Chris and the New Bands team in monitoring those threads and we are looking at 150 man-hours effort for no real gain for the PA. If we had to pay minimum UK wage for that we'd be signing a wage bill of a thousand Euros (and everyone here is worth much more than minimum wage).

 

Two months of submissions = €1,000 for one review that we owned anyway.

 

Frankly, that is not good enough.

 

A rough guess of the total number of suggestions he has made is >500 - that would be 1,500 man-hours wasted effort  ... just so he can crow about iamthemorning and Via Obscura. Somehow this does not seem worth the effort.

The way I regard this situation is a bit different from others I guess. That we have people that suggest many new possible artists that merits a check is for me natural when regarding the following from the bleeding obvious department:

This sites stated vision:
PROG ARCHIVES intends to be the most complete and powerful progressive rock resource.

And mission statement:
The Prog Archives Web site Project came out from a common dream of a small group of fanatic progressive rock music collectors who decided to develop a WEB SITE for the online progressive rock music community, with the goal of providing extensive Progressive Rock Music information, as well as interaction features for the prog surfers.

We have been collecting this DATA for quite some time, but we are far from finished. There are still plenty of old records to be remembered and added to the site, plus all the new creations that are being made. We not only welcome any feedback you may have about the site, but any help you can provide us.

We appreciate your support, and your feed back is very important to us, cause we are always looking forward to become... We have a small staff, and all of us have a primary job, so we work our asses off to get the whole thing up and running on our spare time.

Whether you are an artist, producer, recording engineer, record label or just a fan and don't see a record that you feel should be in this web page, please contact us. We welcome any chance to improve this site.

---

The problem is that the site's internal mechanisms as they are today are too work intensive to handle the influx of suggestions. Which for me suggests that there are three solutions to the problem:

Either altering the site's vision and mission statement to regulate the influx of suggestions

Or altering the site's internal mechanisms so that the site can function in a manner that enables it to follow up on the vision and mission statement currently active.

Or opting to live in a situation with permanent extensive backlogs.

This is regarding the situation from a business oriented point of view of course. Much the same as when a business is too successful to cope with incoming orders - you either expand, narrow down your field of interests or tell your customers that there will be an extensive backlog due to high demand. As far as I'm concerned telling some of your customers to take their business elsewhere tends to be a less than optimal solution, but it kind of works as a short term fix - until the next demanding customer comes along.

Windhawk wrote: The way I regard this situation is a bit different from others I guess. That we have people that suggest many new possible artists that merits a check is for me natural when regarding the following from the bleeding obvious department: This sites stated vision: PROG ARCHIVES intends to be the most complete and powerful progressive rock resource. And mission statement: The Prog Archives Web site Project came out from a common dream of a small group of fanatic progressive rock music collectors who decided to develop a WEB SITE for the online progressive rock music community, with the goal of providing extensive Progressive Rock Music information, as well as interaction features for the prog surfers. We have been collecting this DATA for quite some time, but we are far from finished. There are still plenty of old records to be remembered and added to the site, plus all the new creations that are being made. We not only welcome any feedback you may have about the site, but any help you can provide us. We appreciate your support, and your feed back is very important to us, cause we are always looking forward to become... We have a small staff, and all of us have a primary job, so we work our asses off to get the whole thing up and running on our spare time. Whether you are an artist, producer, recording engineer, record label or just a fan and don't see a record that you feel should be in this web page, please contact us. We welcome any chance to improve this site. --- The problem is that the site's internal mechanisms as they are today are too work intensive to handle the influx of suggestions. Which for me suggests that there are three solutions to the problem: Either altering the site's vision and mission statement to regulate the influx of suggestions Or altering the site's internal mechanisms so that the site can function in a manner that enables it to follow up on the vision and mission statement currently active. Or opting to live in a situation with permanent extensive backlogs. This is regarding the situation from a business oriented point of view of course. Much the same as when a business is too successful to cope with incoming orders - you either expand, narrow down your field of interests or tell your customers that there will be an extensive backlog due to high demand. As far as I'm concerned telling some of your customers to take their business elsewhere tends to be a less than optimal solution, but it kind of works as a short term fix - until the next demanding customer comes along.

I see your logic Olav, but what it would entail would amount to a huge cataloguing site like Discogs, where something like 80 percent of it's listings reside in the shadow. 

Guldbamsen wrote: I see your logic Olav, but what it would entail would amount to a huge cataloguing site like Discogs, where something like 80 percent of it's listings reside in the shadow.  I don't think there's an upcoming Prog Revolution on the horizon any time soon - the amount of members actually visiting this site has always seemed pretty set to me, that is as far back as I can remember. People come and go, but we're still basically the same amount of users, and I don't see any real proof of them talking about these artists.  And personally, I'd like to see the site remain in it's current form - without having to hire all kinds of extra hands who would do nothing but add artists that worldwide maybe 50 people know the names of.

Windhawk wrote: For limiting suggestions somewhat, documenting that a band selling their music through Soundcloud or Bandcamp also use other sales channels and/or also have their music available in physical format might eliminate some suggestions. I do find that the majority of so called Bandcamp bands actually do so however, except some of the free releases. This band for instance, have their album for free on Bandcamp. But visit their facebook page, and you'll see that they have an actual CD to sell too. But it might be an idea to ask those who suggest artists to document that this is the case.

Dean wrote: I strongly believe we should not be expending too much energy on these bands. If they have a web-presence outside Bandcamp and the ubiquitous social network channels then (and only then) should we look at them, but that should be at the discretion of the respective Sub-genre Teams, not as a golden rule that they must follow.

^ Speaks volumes...very poor.Perhaps an admin can tell Svetonio, no bio,album links,no reviews( retrospect), no deal. It does affect the integrity of the site

Svetonio wrote: Oh no! I am suggesting something because of the same reason why for example I am voting on PA polls - just for fun   I dont expect any adds, but if will be some - thats fine. I am not a musician or roadie from the bands I suggested; so I really dont care are they gonna be added or not.

(Sade for Post/Math Rock)

Ivan_Melgar_M wrote: Hey, you noticed the interrogations signs after Camelias Garden, 3 reviews and 84 ratings sounded fishy. BTW: Good call with Harvest, the name sounded familiar (Not only for the label), I believe there's a third band with the same name. Iván

Yup - two hours deleting bogus ratings and suspending people with multiple accounts. Not quite what I had planned for a Saturday night.