Banned Forever from the Ultimate Guitar Forum! Forever! OOOooo!

So I've been spreading the word about the pretty good gig podcast, interviews and conversations with musical people. The two most recent podcasts feature Tim Berens and Doug Jones - two really great guitarists with plenty of information to share with other guitarists. So I decided to post on the Ultimate Guitar Forum. The rules said no URLs so I did not put any in the post. I got the following email:

Hello Bill Kahler,

We're sorry to inform you that your account has been banned forever by Carmel. In the current case, you've significantly broke Ultimate-Guitar.Com website rules. In fact, here is the reason you've been banned for: advertising account.

Additionally, you can not post comments and rate songs on Ultimate-Guitar'com members profiles during the period of you ban.

Sincerely,
UG Team

Wow, strong eh? Seems to me the very reason for having a forum is to spread information and help members connect to resources like hmmm. . . podcasts that have educational info etc. I was not exactly advertising - the podcast is free. I am trying to connect with musicians and offer and educational, informative and entertaining musical podcast! I guess sending messages out like the one I received makes the Ultimate Guitar Forum moderators feel special and elite! Banned forever! How will I ever get any sleep now?

Then I decide to write an email back:

Wow you guys are strung pretty tight! Sorry for trespassing on your elitist organization. I merely wanted to let folks know of a very interesting, entertaining and professionally done podcast that has much educational info and many of the episodes are guitar related with world class musicians! It's free. I was not trying to use your precious forums for my own personal gain, I only (wrongly) thought that your forum might have in its mission statement something about expanding guitar knowledge and connections with other musicians.

Bill Kahler

and got this reply: ( I love the "people like you" phrase.)

Dear Bill,

Our website runs on advertisers that pay in order to get their websites on our pages.

If people like you register to gain FREE advertisements, for gain or no gain, we will lose our paid advertisements that keep the website running.

Carmel

Forum Administrator

Ultimate-Guitar.com

response to previous post

Tess from Sonicbids left this comment and for some reason it never showed up so I pasted this from the email:

Tess has left a new comment on your post "Sonicbids, Taxi - worth the money? Scams?":

Hi Bill, Tess here - I'm the Community Manager at Sonicbids. Wanted to post a note here for you and address a couple of your concerns.

Your comments on the venues/submission fees are ones we’ve heard before – so we’ve taken a lot of the feedback we’ve gotten and we are actually getting rid of submission fees for most of the venues and more accessible promoters you mention. The $2-10 fees you see for gigs like that were instituted as filters originally to prevent spam, but now we're shifting gears and turning them to No Cost listings and are currently in the works of developing the right kind of filters for these. As we do this, we already have over 150 No Cost Listings on Sonicbids. You can read some comments from Panos (our CEO/founder) on his blog about this initiative: http://panosbrew.sonicbids.com/no-cost-gig-listings/

Also, sorry if you felt blindsided by your recent membership charge. Our membership plans are just like a gym membership where you set it up and it auto-renews you when your period is up. If you want, I can take care of that for you. Just send me an email. (tess at sonicbids dot com)

Thanks – hope this helps!
Tess

Nice note. Still, you pay a membership, submit to a gig that only pays in tips, and you could just call them on the phone. For that matter why even go through the trouble of a free gig unless you think you can sell some product and make some tips. And, you can call some of those places on the phone yourself. It just doesn't seem like the kind of gig that most folks need help getting.

I find it interesting the way she compares the auto renewal to a gym membership. Health clubs are notorious for their automatic renewal of fees and make it very difficult to cancel at times. Their main interest is signing new members, just like Taxi and Sonicbids.

Additionally Sonicbids claims to have Nashville connections but in reality music submitted to Nashville publishers is never done in person. It goes into a drop box and then into the trash. Same thing for Taxi. Nashville publishers really have no interest in checking out outside submissions. They have writers on staff that they pay to write songs, usually on a draw. The only way they get this money back is if they get cuts on songs those writers.

I'm not saying either service is a scam or anything of the sort but I have plenty of musician friends with simlar stories and who eventually dropped memberships.

Sonicbids, Taxi - worth the money? Scams?

A couple things bother me about Sonicbids.The membership renewal without prior notification is the main reason I dropped them. I realize there is the "fine print on the contract" and so on but the first notice I had of renewal was on my credit card statement and I did not appreciate feeling like the fee was "sneaked past me."

Secondly, many of the venues you have to pay to submit to are a total waste of time. I have played many of the places listed and it was easy to book dates there with a phone call. Paying to submit to a place that does not pay anything makes no sense to me. Who makes money on these listings? The venue and Sonic Bids.

Might be too strong to call it a scam. . . might not. It is obvious that there is a bigger advantage to Sonicbids and many of the venues than there is for a musician or performer.

In some ways this is similar to Taxi, whose main goal is to sign up members, not to do the thing they sell. If you talk to publishers in Nashville about Taxi, they will tell you they have writers on staff and thousands of the worlds best writers at their fingertips. Why would they spend time going through Taxi submissions?