Mandyleigh’s Sellaband Story

Hi readers, its been a while sorry about that. I really wanted to post Mandyleigh Storms experiences of Sellaband, having been luck enough to spend time with both Mandyleigh and Gary I can say that they have always been upfront and honest so I have no problem believing what has been said. Honest thoughts and opinions are welcome but please no personal attacks so here goes
“My Sellaband experience

Sellaband promote themselves as the next era of online music, with artists and fans collaborating in a beautiful partnership which gives birth to amazing music and worldwide recognition. Well I am one of the Sellaband artists, and I can tell you from the heart that although that is what they apparently aim for, I believe it is far far different. In my opinion Sellaband are on online collection point for artists to showcase to music lovers and ask for money/investment and a beautiful album is produced with the proceeds, but they have little care or interest in the music once it has seen the light of day.

Here I will be honest and tell you my particular experience of Sellaband as the “Record Label 2.0″. This is all my opinion and experience and may (or may not) be different with other artists. After nearly two years of Sellaband doing next to nothing, I have to release this for my own sanity. I used to suffer from suicidal depression, and unfortunately, I am suffering from it again, thanks largely in part to Sellaband and their lack of support generally, and in particular their lack of support in a copyright claim on one of the tracks.

In June 2007 I became the 7th artist to reach the Sellaband goal of $50,000. People from all over the world liked my rough demo’s enough to support me and help fund me an album. Little did I know at that time that Sellaband would be practically non-existant in promotion, truth, communication and support. I think they are very good at confusion, ignorance, sarcasm and (in one particular case) abuse.

I made my choice of producer and recorded my dream album in the UK with the producer of Van Morrison… Mick Glossop.

“Fire & Snow” was released on February the 14th 2008. You can download the album for free.

Sellaband may be reasonable as a site where people with money to invest, meet people who create music, and they may also be a good place for contacts like Mick Glossop and some other great producers…. but, in my opinion they are totally useless at promotion. Sellaband can have partners like The Orchard, iTunes and Amazon as arena’s to sell the albums… but what’s the point if no-one even knows the album exists? When the album was released Johan said it was “magical and emotional”, and “the best Sellaband cd released yet”. Without promotion for the magic though, it`s stayed hidden in a box.

Sellaband have the attitude that they instigate the album, but all of it’s promotion is down to you. Their publisher offered a small promotion budget at one time of 2,500 Euro’s, but they give you no advice or direction on how best to use it. Sellaband also promise promotion via their partners, but rarely do these materialise. One case of not living up to promises is that the Amazon.co.uk site have a ‘Vines’ initiative, where Amazon.co.uk send out albums to preferred customers who then give honest reviews of the albums on the site, which helps give those artists some much needed exposure. Sellaband said that my album would be on there soon after it was released. It wasn’t. They then said that Amazon were going to do a Vines on my album and others from Australasia as some kind of ‘Down Under’ (with Maitreya and Vegas Dragons) theme…. nope, never happened. They said it would definitely happen by January 2009…. never materialised. Yes I know plans can change with 3rd-parties, but the Vines happened for some others. Wy keep promising something they can’t or had no intention of delivering? Also, there was hardly any communication from Sellaband. I had to keep emailing them to find out of any possible plans, and mostly didn’t get a reply, and sometimes a reply which wasn’t very clear at all.

Sellaband also said they would get a distributor in Australia so the physical cd’s could be sold in stores here (for at least Vegas Dragons, Maitreya and myself). We even gave them a list of the main distributors. They said they would meet one of them in Midem. Never happened. Maybe the distributors weren’t interested (if they did actually contact them)… Sellaband never said anything about distribution in Australia again and I gave up asking.

At certain times Sellaband have been, in my opinion, rude, abrupt, sloppy and also vague. It was hard to get the album artwork done as there was little information on how best to design it, so my husband found out most of the technical details himself and informed Sellaband of them. Deadlines were missed with the release of my album for no apparent reason. It was a real chore to get them to transfer the money in time for the flights to Amsterdam (we borrowed money from my family to pay for the tickets while we waited for Sellaband to get their act together). I did express my concerns on many issues in June 2008 in a confidential email to Adam Sieff (A&R), and in reply Adam just glossed over many of the issues.

After the album was recorded, Adam doesn’t really do much to help the artists in my opinion. Or maybe it’s just me, as I haven’t spoken much to the other artists about their experiences. I thought A&R were there to help advise on how to best promote an album with whatever funds were available. Adam helped with the recording of the album, and found me a place to stay in London during the recording, but once the album was finished there was not much coming from Adam at all.

Just over a month after the album was released, I got a threatening and abusive email from Casper about ‘Deep Sea Green’ (one of the tracks on the album). He was claiming I had stolen his music!. That page will also also let you know about why I didn’t trust Casper after we had met in Holland, and the melody and lyrics he has stolen from me). Basically Casper refused to let his music be used on the album for Deep Sea Green, so after getting some professional guidance from the experts (Adam, Johan and Mick), my melody and lyrics were recorded with totally different music (written by Johnny Scott, Van Morrison’s guitarist). This cost more money and time and it would have been much more preferable to have Casper’s music be involved… it might have been an even better sounding song, but we never had that option. This (the ‘Deep Sea Green’ issue) is a major part of my dissatisfaction with Sellaband and the major cause of my suicidal depression re-appearing… in fact, I feel totally betrayed by them on this. I couldn’t truly count on their support, even when the head of the company is supposedly behind you 100%.

After initially saying he was behind me 100% against Casper, Johan then did little to actually sort it out. When I did sometimes get a reply on the issue, he said there was nothing they could do and it was something that had to be resolved between Casper and I. After getting the runaround with Sellaband and then later with BUMA/STEMRA (click the link above for the full story), I eventually (after nearly two years) gave Sellaband an ultimatum.

On the 8th of January 2010 I gave Sellaband until the 31st of January 2010 to sort out the ‘Deep Sea Green issue’. At last, something happened.

A new person (Mars) would be in charge of this matter, as he used to work at BUMA. Mars seemed pretty decent and was at least communicating with me in the first part of January to try and sort something out. He said he was going to set up a meeting with someone he knew at BUMA when they were back from holiday.

Right now, nothing has still been finalised and I haven’t had any reply from Sellaband as to an update.

My time with Sellaband started on so many highs, but after so many disappointments and, in my opinion, betrayal, it has ended on a great low. I think the people who are in charge of Sellaband are incompetent and severely lack communication skills (not just with me but with the whole Sellaband community, and many have complained about this). The real force behind Sellaband are the people who fund the artists to make their albums, and it’s they who I feel sorry for. There are alot of great artists on Sellaband, some wonderful music, and it was a great idea to somehow bring the music and the audience together to create some magic. Unfortunately, I don’t think the leaders at Sellaband have any interest in the music itself, just the money leading up to it, and maybe striking it lucky with someone who is either already rich (Clemence) or already very well known (Public Enemy) and are able to do all the promotion/advertising themselves while Sellaband sit back and take some of the glory. For the rest of us unknowns, small fry… it’s a bittersweet experience and leaves a disgusting taste in my mouth.

The lesson here is twofold: If you don’t have a proper promotion budget or strategy, your music is stillborn. Also, write down proper contracts binding musical collaborators to actually supplying their music/lyrics/melody for a song to be released commercially…. so they can’t refuse to contribute one minute and then whine about it when you go ahead and just use your part with something new.

Sellaband: Great idea, pity about the execution. Hopefully they improve.”

This can also be found at http://www.mandyleigh.com/sellaband/ including links etc

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