Hey Folks,

I wanted to drop a quick line here and let you know that I’m heading off to Popkomm next week with Panos and Aliki, who is our wonderful Marketing Program Specialist. We ran a gig listing for Popkomm this year and so I’m off to see bands that were selected and get feedback from them and other Sonicbids users.  Of course, I’ll be doing a lot more than that, which is why you should keep an eye out here on the SonicBlog and follow me on Twitter. I’ll be sure you keep you updated and take lots of pictures for you to enjoy.

See you in Berlin!

Tess

When I’m not sending out emails about new Sonicbids gigs, I’m on the road, meeting our members in person. This weekend, I was in Atlanta at the Atlantis Music Conference. Close to 100 Sonicbids members were selected to showcase, and you can see some of them on the Atlantis media player at http://www.AtlantisMusic.com.

I spoke on a panel called “Making Money in the Music Industry: How to get that BLING in your THING,” along with Jonathon Alexander, the CEO of Tap it Fame, Aaron Arnold, the CEO of Music Is My Business, Glenn Litwak, Entertainment Lawyer, Jeff Beal, Director of Business Development, Hardline360, and Brian Calhoun - Owner of Label Management Systems, Inc. Jonathan was an excellent moderator, and I learned a ton from Aaron and Brian.

About 60% of the audience at the panel were Sonicbids members! The panel discussion included all kinds of different ways to make money with your music, mostly branding, sponsorships and licensing. Some of the things that got a great response were ideas around NACA and optimizing sales at live gigs. I was able to chat about some new features we’ll be launching on the site, money-making gigs, and some of the things I do for my own band to make money with our music.

I also met a few our members, Reggie Perry ( Nobody Famous), an MC and producer, and his manager, Kareem, Brian Mazzaferri, a singer/songwriter from Illinois and Elli Perry, a singer/songwriter from Atlanta. I learned a ton about the kinds of gigs open to MCs, what it takes to break into a new genre and taking the plunge and hitting the road. I’m the one with the orange purse.

I hope I get to meet more of you guys down the road. As always, “Thanks for Reading!”

Jen

Hi Folks,

I just thought I’d post a cool article from the Wall Street Journal for y’all to enjoy. The article talks about Guitar Player magazine’s fourth annual Guitar Superstar Competition. Earlier in the Summer, we had a gig listing open to submit to this competition and ten artists were selected to be finalists via Sonicbids.

The article also features Sonicbids Artist, Vicki Genfan, the winner of the competition and only woman to participate. Not too shabby, eh? (Okay, my feminist side actually wants to say: Heck yes Vicki, go women!) I highly recommend checking out her EPK when you get a second.

The article also features the other Sonicbids artists who finaled, such as Makana, the guy, Mike Orlando, and more. Check out the whole article by clicking here.

Enjoy!
Tess

Hey all,

Those of you following me on Twitter might have noticed I recently picked up a copy of Wattstax.  Watching that got me thinking about all the other great concert films out there so I thought I’d share my top 5:

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Hey good people,

Tess and I recently traveled far away once again (about less then a mile) to help with “ushering in” of Discmakers new office in Boston. They are very good friends of ours and we have worked with Discmakers for a number of years. They held a great party at the Middle East Downstairs. There was free food for all attendees and an hour of an open bar, which for some reason attracted quite the crowd.  Not sure why people would be so into free food and drink…I’ll have to figure that one out.

The night soon kicked into quite a few bands that would rock the stage in-between Discmakers throwing out free t-shirts. Including Jackalope, To the Masquerade, our very own Black Betty and the bad habits, Static of the Gods, and George Vala. Tess, as always, with her “raging” dance moves enjoyed the party. I myself, am very similar to a deer in head lights the entire time, especially when my picture gets taken.

A bunch of other Sonicbidders came out as well, even Benjy… who disappeared shortly after this photo.  We’re still looking for him.

Greetings Friends,

We had a very special visitor in the Sonicbids office this week.  Let me preface by saying that we have a ton of cool visitors coming into the Sonicbids office all the time, but this one in particular was such a big hit, I wanted to write a blog post about her. Without further ado, I’d like you to meet Betty — the coolest Labrador Retriever you’ll probably ever know.  The photo here is Betty posing happily in front of our Sonicbids sign on our office wall.

We hosted Betty in the office for a few days because her owner is a local musician and is currently on tour. Betty had throat surgery so she can’t bark anymore, and the poor girl also had her spleen removed last year. Goodness knows that no dog wants to be cooped up alone while his or her owner is away and it’s clear Betty has certainly had some rough times.  Naturally, we here at Sonicbids welcomed Betty with open arms while her owner is out gigging and made sure she had a good time.  She was great fun to hang out with and she will probably coming to visit us often. I’m certainly excited about that, since I believe dogs are good for your health and happiness and it only adds to the awesome work environment we have at Sonicbids.

Hooray!

Tess

Hi Friends,

So, we all know how super-amazing-incredible-awesome the SonicBlog is, but today I wanted to share a link from another really interesting blog I’ve been following:

http://www.musicthinktank.com/blog/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-professional-musician.html

The blog post there is about what it means to be a “professional musician” and I think it really applies to a lot of the bands and promoters that we here at Sonicbids primarily work with.  The author, Steve Lawson, touches on the idea that there can (and should) be success and professionalism in music, even if you aren’t dealing with huge record labels, marketing campaigns and the like.  Being technically savvy and business-oriented with social media (like Sonicbids) are all part of this concept.

I suggest you read through the article, and perhaps think about how you can apply these ideas and thoughts to your Sonicbids Account.  It would be awesome to hear your thoughts and responses, so feel free comment back.

Rock on,

Tess

Hullo Friends,

Tony & Tess here again.  We wanted to tell you about our night at the Rock’n’Roll Social.  We traveled far and wide to make it to the Model Café in Allston, MA. It took a whole 25 minutes, which was a tough trek for us ‘cause we’re not good with the whole moving around …thing.

The Rock’n’Roll Social is a monthly event where local musicians and industry folk mingle, chat, network and just have a good time.  We came in equipped with a bunch of promotional stuff providing some free membership time to Sonicbids (and an entire keg of Harpoon). We also raffled off two free years of Supersonic Membership loaded with $25 of site credit—conveniently, the perfect amount to submit an EPK to SXSW.

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Greetings to You, Dear Reader.

We are Tony & Tess, both part of the Member Relations department here at Sonicbids. Some of you may already be familiar with us (you may have even spoken to us on the phone), but since we have this spiffy new SonicBlog, we thought a more formal introduction would be appropriate. We both went to school for audio production and recording technology, and we both enjoy painting and are obsessed with all things music.  However, Tess went more toward the business side of things—with experience in radio and band promotion—while Tony went into live performance and media production.  Naturally, we ended up together here at Sonicbids.

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As a fan of RUSH, Rock Band and The Colbert Report I felt obligated to post this video of RUSH attempting to play Tom Sawyer on Rock Band.  Although I’ll never be as good at real drums as Neil Peart, I do think I’ve got a shot at being better than him at Rock Band drums.