As you may know, we have an open door policy for our members to drop by anytime, but this night will be extra special, since we’re bringing in a couple of friends from South By Southwest: Brent Grulke (SXSW’s Creative Director who oversees their team that reviews and selects the bands) and Scott McNearney (SXSW’s Sponsorship Manager).

This Tweetup will be a very casual get together, where you’ll get the chance to not only socialize with your fellow local peers and the Sonicbids bunch over food and drinks, but to also meet the folks from SXSW in person and pick their brain on what they look for in their showcasing bands.

So come down and join us next Wednesday; we’d love to see you!

RSVP here: http://tinyurl.com/SonicbidsTweetup

Tess and The Sonicbids Team

PS: If you can’t make it, have a listen to this phone interview we did with Brad First from SXSW’s selection committee.

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UPDATE on 10/28/09:
The Tweetup is today! The hashtag to follow and tweet to is #sonicsxsw

Also, be sure to say “hi” to our Sonicbids Twitterers:

Me (Tess) for support: http://www.twitter.com/sonicbidstess
Lou (product): http://www.twitter.com/sonicbidslou
Benjy (fresh gigs & application deadlines): http://www.twitter.com/sonicbidsbenjy

Hi friends,

Happy belated Valentine’s Day! Just thought I would give a little update about what happened this past week at the Sonicbids office.

Last Thursday we hosted a meeting for the Boston Young Entrepreneurs (BYE). BYE  is a non-profit that helps young entrepreneurs in Boston develop, launch and grow their businesses.  It was actually co-founded by our very own Panos Panay (seriously, does this guy ever get any sleep?) in February, 2005–just four years after founding Sonicbids. It’s a great organization that helps young professionals realize their dreams of starting their own business, which ultimately helps bring business, jobs and capital into the city of Boston. In this crazy economy, I’d say something like that is pretty important! On the third Tuesday of every month, BYE hosts “a business plan presentation by a member entrepreneur,” and then the group analyzes the plan so they can help the member strengthen his or her company.  To learn more about it, check out http://www.bostonyoungentrepreneurs.com/

A bunch of us in the Sonicbids office hung around to see what it was all about (check out some photos I took below) mostly because we realize entrepreneurs and artists aren’t all that different! If you think about it, both groups need to know how to sustain themselves using their talents, find the right niche of people to connect to, and develop a plan to grow their resources… the similarities are endless. There are a lot of resources out there to think about your own business plan as an artist that I encourage you to check out.  I did a quick search through some cool music blogs and here’s just one that I found by Kavit Haria on Inner Rhythm: http://www.innerrhythm.org/blog/how-to-write-your-music-business-plan/

Feel free to post any other articles or links you think might be helpful for your fellow musician-friends.

Enjoy!
Tess

So with that in mind, I thought this the right avenue to get some good old fashioned top 5 banter going between our staff and our community.  Here are my (and Sawyer’s) 5 favorites.

5. Fleet Foxes: Fleet Foxes

Have you ever thought you were cool and liked something super obscure, only to find it for sale on the counter for Starbucks on your way to work?  Yea. It happened to me with these guys.  That said, I can see why it did.  This record is a sweet, sweet combination of accessible and different, and though a certain alternative radio programmer I spoke with this year called them ‘the least edgy band he’d heard in decades,’ that’s all well and good.  Maybe the truth is, I’m not so edgy myself.  I’m wearing boat shoes and a collared shirt, I dig this record, and I’m not afraid to say so.

4.  Darker My Love: 2

This record rules.  It’s versatile. It’s coherent.  It rocks really hard.  I like it more with every listen. The first track makes me feel like I’m actually edgy despite the boat shoes and collared shirt mentioned in the last paragraph.

3.  Spiritualized: Songs in A&E

I would have put this at number two, but I’m kind of ticked off that track 5, Soul on Fire, has been stuck in my head since May.  I secretly liked this record better than the band’s critically acclaimed ‘Ladies and Gentlemen…’ until yesterday when I listened to ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ for the first time in a while and decided I was a moron for thinking anything could ever be better than that.  I stand corrected, but ‘Songs in A&E’ is near perfect in and of itself.

2.  Bon Iver:  For Emma , Forever Ago

I don’t want to talk about this one.  It’s too pretty and I might weep gently if I try to describe it in too much detail.  People in the office would judge me.

1. TV on the Radio: Dear Science

If you don’t own this record, go buy it now.  It’s great front to back, and still innovative while being by far their most accessible.  I saw them live at the Wilbur in Boston this fall and it was my favorite show of the year.  My number 1 by a long ways, and I listen to it at least once a week.

So, all in all a great year for great bands. I hope you’ll reply back with your own so I can poach your musical taste to selfishly expand my own horizons…

Back at Sonicbids HQ in Boston, Tess and Tony drew from hundreds of raffle tickets to see what lucky conference attendees would receive our awesome prizes. There were separate raffles for Popkomm, CMJ and WOMEX, and several winners from each one. Prizes included recording gear from Yamaha and Tanager Audioworks, as well as free registration to SXSW and NXNE. We felt that the selection of winners was too important to be hampered by “traditional” drawing processes, so Tony and Tess sprawled out on the kitchen floor and devised the most progressive and accurate methods of raffle drawing imaginable. Check out the pics below to see how it went down:

Happy Halloween from us here at Sonicbids. The office had a fun time dressing up for the holiday, it’s my personal favorite and I like to make it a weekend long thing. This year I came in dressed as Indiana Jones and the Legend of Fox in Sox, which is the sequel to Crystal Skull when Indie recovers Dr. Seuss books…. I heard it’s still in the writing process.

There are some other great costumes, such as Joe the Plumber from Jerry who is the master of our database, and now political humor. And even great retro looks as Ben Donohue who took on a great supporting character from the Goonies. The whole product team took on different Sonicbids items. Such as rounded corners, a submit button, and Lou came dressed as an EPK.  Even our intern, Kevin McCaul, got in on the action by dressing up as The Terrible Trivium from the Phantom Tollbooth (something I know nothing about). Check out the photos below.

Happy Halloween!

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

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.

For now, we’d like to give you a look into our typical day here, so you can see exactly what we do to help you and make sure Sonicbids continues to be a valuable resource in your music career.  First and foremost, we talk with bands and promoters constantly.  In fact, we are an inseparable team who combine like Voltron to form a question-answering machine.

We work with the rest of the Member Relations team to make sure all of the questions that come to us at Sonicbids.com/support are answered within 24 hours.  If you’re a band, we pick up the phone and offer suggestions on how to put together your EPK.  If you’re a promoter, we assist you with your gig listing to find the right bands.  We interview industry professionals and write educational articles for the Lounge. And we now blog and give you insight to the wonderful world of Sonicbids.

We aren’t the only ones answering questions.  We have a small team including Mike and Brandon, who we love working with. (Mike really loves working with us too):

You can follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/sonicbidstess and www.twitter.com/sonicbidstony where we tweet regular updates on what we’re up to. You can also find us around the Sonicbids Lounge and maybe even in the outside world. (We’ll both be stopping by Boston’s Rock~n~Roll Social on Tuesday 8/12 at the Model Café to meet community members in-person.)

That’s all for now; you’ll be hearing much more from us soon.

Love,

Tony & Tess