 | | | | Thursday 13 November 2014
| | |
| HOLLYWOOD NEWS !!!! Chris Strompolos and Eric Zala had dreamed about the Flying Wing airplane since 1981, the summer the two middle schoolers saw its propellers shred the head off a German muscleman in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Thirty-three years later, they built it: a 78-foot-long, 4½-ton, gray-green beast that loomed like a frozen vulture midflight. It was the world's only full-scale replica of the Flying Wing. And now they had to blow it up. "I feel kind of sick," Strompolos sighs. "But it has to be done — and it has to be done for real."
After three decades, they were finally wrapping the longest film shoot in history.
As children in Mississippi, Chris and Eric had made a pact. They'd film a shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Chris, a chipper, chubby idea guy, would star; Eric, who at 11 was the older and steadier of the two, would direct. They bought a spiral notebook and filled it with sketches and plans. Chris titled it Raiders of the Lost Ark: Kids Version. Then he scribbled out the second half and wrote The New Version. Age would not be a factor.
"We didn't want it to look cute, we didn't want it to be 'Aw, that's adorable,' " Eric says. "We wanted it to be good."
The boys thought filming would take a summer. It took eight years.
The first summer, they storyboarded and gathered props: a jacket, a hat, a whip. The second summer, they got a camera, found a Marion, enlisted cameraman and effects wizard Jayson Lamb — a classmate hired after he MacGyvered a passable corpse from Brillo pads, caulk and brown paint — and shot the opening jungle scene and the flaming bar fight.
Just before school started, crises struck: Eric's parents announced they were getting a divorce, their Marion announced she was moving to Alaska, and Jayson realized he'd screwed up the camcorder settings and burned a tiny A into the corner of the frame.
Summer three, they started over.
When Raiders needed a monkey, they used Chris' dog, Snickers. When they needed a new Marion, they wooed a pretty girl from church to give up her summers and hang with the geeks. (Says Chris, "I thought she was cool because she smoked cigarettes. Capri Lights.") She was Chris' first kiss and they flirted until she ditched him for an extra playing a Nazi. When they needed an Egyptian tomb, they stenciled hieroglyphics in Eric's basement. When the script called for a bar fire, they poured 36 bottles of rubbing alcohol on themselves and the cellar walls and lit a match. (That move got production grounded for a year.)
Eric, who doubled as the opportunistic French archaeologist Belloq, singed his hair. Before shooting wrapped, he'd also broken an arm and been rushed to the hospital after Jayson used industrial plaster to make a mold of his face. (The ER doctors had to break him out with sledgehammers and chain saws.)
Astonishingly, Chris completed the film unscathed — a wonder, given that he did every one of Indiana Jones' stunts without Harrison Ford's innate athleticism (or four stunt doubles).
"I'm a stubby Greek guy, and he's an angular, 6-foot, 1-inch movie star," Strompolos admits today. But in front of the cameras he was a natural, his puppy fat balanced out by his strong jawline, loose grace and total commitment.
"For Chris, it was wanting to be Indiana Jones and saving the girl. For me, it was, 'OK, what would a shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark look like?' " Eric says. "Tracing the footsteps of the master — what a great learning tool."
The boys built giant test boulders from papier-mâché, chicken wire, bamboo sticks and a giant cable spool, until they figured out Fiberglas was best. They filmed scenes in alleys and dirt quarries and alligator-infested rivers, enlisted every neighborhood kid they knew as an extra, dragged Chris behind a truck, and rigged their own explosives from gunpowder Jayson bought at Mom and Pop's General Store and Gun Shop, even though he was so short he could barely reach over the counter. After a three-year letter-writing campaign, they even convinced a naval captain to loan them a battleship and submarine.
It sounds like fun, and sometimes it was. More often, it was stressful.
"I was haunted by a sense of dread," Eric recalls. " 'None of this counts if we don't finish.' "
When they edited the footage during the graveyard shift at the local news station, where Chris' mother was a news anchor, they made peace with the way that the actors had visibly skipped in age with each scene change: 13 to 17 to 16 to 14. It was as though Indy were leaping in and out of a wormhole. It would have to do.
Still, the most amazing thing about Raiders: The Adaptation isn't that the friends conceived of it. It's that they completed it.
Almost.
They couldn't get a plane.
Without one, Eric and Chris were forced to leave out Raiders of the Lost Ark's six-minute, most complicated action scene. It goes like this: Indiana Jones and Marion break out of an archaeological site called the Well of Souls, where they've been left to rot by the Nazis. Jones spots a Nazi plane — the Flying Wing — and guesses the Ark of the Covenant is aboard. He conks a mechanic and wearily boxes a second, shirtless, macho man.
Screenshot from the original Raiders of the Lost Ark airplane fight scene Screenshot from the original Raiders of the Lost Ark airplane fight scene
Meanwhile, Marion gets trapped inside the cockpit while the plane starts spinning in circles. Soldiers attack. Marion machine-guns them down, punctures a fuel truck and accidentally ignites a barrel of dynamite. As fire crawls toward the plane, Indiana Jones is knocked to the ground just before a propeller grinds up the German's head. Jones frees Marion and the two heroes sprint to safety as the Flying Wing explodes.
Even if they could have borrowed a plane, what madman would have let children blow it sky-high?
Jayson suggested they use miniatures. Eric, a literalist, refused. If Spielberg had used a real plane, so would they.
Then they realized a weakness in the script. Narratively, the Flying Wing scene was pointless. The Ark was never on the plane. Indiana Jones and Marion had murdered a dozen people for no reason at all. In fact, Raiders: The Adaptation could cut from the Well of Souls escape to Jones chasing down the Ark on horseback without missing a beat.
The young filmmakers wrapped without it. By then, the high school seniors were barely speaking, thanks to a fight over a girl and the sense that the whole thing was kind of embarrassing. They left Mississippi for college and moved on with their lives.
Eventually, Chris and Eric both wound up in L.A. Strompolos formed a rock band and lost much of his 20s to meth; Zala became a manager at a video game company. Raiders was a goof, a childhood fixation stashed away on a VHS tape, given no more importance than the Ark itself, left languishing in a warehouse at the end of the real movie. Their film remained forgotten for 25 years.
| |
| | |
| | |
| FOR WINNERS ONLY !!!
Is planning really necessary? Yes. And no.
Yes, because everything you do must have a plan. Particularly if you’re running a business. You can’t just make an investment or jump into a new project without a reason. You have to have a long-term objective in mind and a plan for achieving that objective. Smart business people always have plans. They hate surprises. They want to make sure they’ve thought through all the options. But planning only goes so far. At some point, you’re going to have to actually execute and take a chance.
Related: Taking Stock of Feelings to Make Business Decisions
Take, for example, Greg Koch, the co-founder and CEO of California-based Stone Brewing Company. Koch and his partner started the company back in 1996 and have grown it to around 900 employees. They’ve certainly benefited from the recent wave of popularity for micro breweries around the country, something that no one could have planned. A few years ago, Koch decided to expand to Europe and become among the first, if not the first, American micro breweries to do so. So he made his plans.
Koch hired a business-development person whose sole job was to find the right place for the company’s first European operations. Over a four-year period they visited, together and separately, over 130 sites in nine countries. They solicited local search firms and consultants in the process. They met with regional authorities, ate unfamiliar foods, watched bad TV and sat on airplanes for hundreds of hours.
Ultimately, the company settled on the perfect place: a historical building right smack in the center of Berlin, Germany. Koch doesn’t speak German. He’s only been to Berlin a few times. But work is already underway. People are being hired. Millions are being spent. The facility, a combination brewery and restaurant, is expected to be up and running by the end of 2015.
This is a big move for any company. And such a significant investment must have taken a lot of planning, right? Of course. But the actual decision to pull the trigger? That was nothing more than, well, a hunch.
“Analysis can be a great thing,” Koch tells me. “But in the end you have to go with your gut.”
Sure, he’s been running his micro brewery for almost two decades, but he claims he’s no beer-industry expert.
Related: Richard Branson on Envisioning Your Business's Future
“Market studies are a waste of time,” he says. “Focus groups and surveys and public opinions may be OK for some but not for my business.”
There’s no data to support whether Koch will succeed in Germany. In the end he’s taking a leap of faith. He’s relying on his instincts. He’s taking a risk. And this is what successful entrepreneurs do -- they plan and then they just execute.
Koch knows he could be wrong. He’s made plenty of mistakes in the past. But luckily, nothing too large. He’s taking a big risk on the Berlin location, but he’s not betting the farm. No smart business owner would do that.
“Planning is important," he says. "But in the end, it’s tenacity, force of will, intelligence and a little bit of luck that makes the difference.”
He’s right. Planning is important. But some business owners can never seem to get past the planning stage. They analyze. They research. They pore over the numbers. They hem. They haw. They try to consider all the angles, all the potential problems. And, in many cases, this just becomes counter-productive.
People who grow their companies are taking risks all the time. They’re thinking, they’re getting data where they can, they’re analyzing -- but in the end they execute. And they know they’re doing so without all the information they need. But that’s OK. In the end it’s instinct. It’s a feeling. It’s a gamble. And no amount of planning will make up for that.
| |
| | |
| | |
| Money for start ups !!
Todd Spangler
NY Digital Editor
@xpangler
Scopely, a mobile-gaming network, has raised $35 million in Series A financing led by Evolution Media Partners and Highland Capital Partners as the startup eyes expanding deals with Hollywood players.
Evolution Media Partners is a joint venture of TPG Growth, Participant Media and Evolution Media Capital (formed in partnership with CAA). Also participating in the round were Take-Two Interactive Software (publisher of “Grand Theft Auto” videogame franchise); Knoll Ventures, run by former AT&T CEO David Dorman, and existing investors Greycroft, The Chernin Group and Sands Capital Ventures. The funding brings Scopely, which has about 100 employees, to $43.5 million raised to date.
“We want to power the HBO of mobile and interactive entertainment,” said Scopely co-founder and CEO Walter Driver (pictured, above). With the Evolution Media and Highland backing, Driver hopes to “build bridges with intellectual-property holders and celebrities” to expand Scopely’s slate of games.
Other companies in the mobile gaming space include King Digital Entertainment (“Candy Crush”), Rovio (“Angry Birds”), Glu Mobile (“Kim Kardashian: Hollywood”), Electronic Arts and Zynga.
But Driver said Scopely’s model is different: The company develops games with both its internal studio and third-party game developers, and offers partners a range of services including distribution, player growth and retention, live operations and monetization. Six of Scopely’s games — including its first release, Mini Golf MatchUp — have hit the top five most-downloaded free iPhone apps in Apple’s iTunes App Store rankings and the company has more than 35 million players.
“For game developers, having access to that network and global distribution is very valuable,” Driver said.
With the funding, Rick Hess, co-founder and co-managing partner of EMC and Evolution Media Partners, Highland’s Andy Hunt (co-founder of Warby Parker) will join Scopely’s board. They’ll join Driver and Scopely co-founder and chief strategy officer Eytan Elbaz.
“Scopely is in a unique position to emerge as a leading network for touchscreen entertainment,” Hess said in a statement. “As we look at the new media space, Scopely stands out with its stellar team, successful games and ability to bring hot entertainment franchises to mobile.”
Scopely, based in Culver City, Calif., was founded in 2011. Scopely’s games are free to download; users can buy in-app currency and the startup also sells advertising.
The company’s recent executive hires include: COO Javier Ferreira (previously Disney Interactive’s SVP of worldwide publishing); chief revenue officer Tim O’Brien (former head of biz dev for Disney Interactive); Randy Sazaki, VP of engineering (previously with from Burstly and JibJab); and JC Bornaghi, VP of production and operations (from EA).
| |
| | |
| | |
| CHECK THIS OUT !!!! Wednesday, November 12, 2014 12:44PM
WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. (KABC) --
The former Tower Records building in West Hollywood is getting a second life in the music business.
Along the Sunset Strip, it's an iconic location with a legendary history.
For decades, the Tower Records building was a key location in the strip's vibrant music scene. But the songs went silent when Tower Records filed for bankruptcy in 2006.
Now, this well-known location is getting re-tuned, thanks to a music industry giant.
Gibson Brands has signed a 15-year lease on the building and is investing at least $1 million to renovate the site.
"Real privilege to be part of this legendary site, right in the middle of where music lives," said Henry Juszkiewicz, CEO of Gibson Brands.
The site will be reinvented as a showcase for Gibson's products as well as a live music location - all in keeping with the building's musical legacy.
"We're hoping that it brings back what originally Tower Records was - live events, live music," said Jerome Cleary, a preservationist. "Gibson is a really good match because of the musical instruments, because of the company. I think they're really savvy business owners to want to do this."
Local musician Mauricio Prado said he hopes the move will help the flailing music industry - particularly in the live music genre.
Gibson says it plans to preserve the building's look but give it a high-tech sound check.
"I think it's very important to maintain the history of Tower and what it represented to Los Angeles and the global community," said Juszkiewicz.
Plans for the property are just in the beginning stages. Gibson said there will be a lengthy renovation, but by this time next year, the company should be close to unveiling the building's second run in the music business along the strip.
| |
| | |
Sunday 09 November 2014
| | |
| Why musicians say no to Spofify Dublin (CNN) -- Album sales are at an all-time low in the United States. Vinyl sales are at their highest for 15 years. Everybody says streaming is the future, yet major artists are pulling out of streaming services. And in tech-oriented Japan, CDs still account for 85% of album sales. The current state of the music industry is anyone's guess.
Spotify
Technology is transforming the way music is created, shared and enjoyed, and where we will go from here is hard to predict. The latest shock to the system is Taylor Swift's decision to break up with Spotify, the popular music streaming service that has 40 million active users -- one quarter of which are paying subscribers.
With the release of her latest album, entitled "1989," Swift -- arguably music's most popular artist at the moment -- requested that all her back catalog be removed from the service. The move, which would be risky for most other artists, helped boost sales of the album to 1.3 million units in its debut week, the best performance in the industry since 2002. With no legal option other than buying, fans obliged.
Music making is for everyone. Technology has made it cheaper, accessible and more powerful.
Eric Wahlforss, Soundcloud
Spotify says that over 70% of its revenues go to artists, but just between $0.006 and $0.0084 is paid for each play, depending on the artist. Others before Swift have pulled out: Thom Yorke famously described the service as "the last desperate fart of a dying corpse," and his solo works are not available for streaming. Other no-shows include The Beatles, who have an exclusive deal with Apple.
Read: Never cook again -- now you can print your own pizza
And yet, Spotify is now earning some artists more money than iTunes in Europe, as was revealed at the Web Summit technology conference in Dublin by Willard Ahdritz, CEO and founder of Kobalt, a company that represents thousands of musicians. That means that streaming is becoming, in some instances, more profitable than album sales.
Predicting the hits
Elsewhere in the digital world, social media is becoming a dominant contributing factor to the popularity of an artist, and it's also generating a huge amount of data that can be a powerful tool for trend analysis. Public social data is like a crystal ball that can help the music industry predict who's going to become the next big thing.
A company called Next Big Sound specializes in precisely these types of predictions. By tracking streams and collecting data from the Internet -- new Twitter followers, Facebook likes and Wikipedia page views -- the company says it can estimate the likelihood of an artist making it into the Billboard Top 200, which charts album releases, over a year before it happens.
App captures soundtrack to your life
Digital video transforms skateboarding
Hello, smart home?
Making the charts is not easy. Speaking at the Web Summit, Alex White of Next Big Sound pointed out that in the last year, only 961 artists made the Billboard Top 200, and just 204 of those were entering it for the first time. The Billboard Top 100, which tracks singles rather than albums, is an even more exclusive club: out of 249 artists appearing, just 43 were debuting.
Despite the charts favoring established artists, it's never been so easy to make, share and discover new music. "At the end of the 90s you needed a full blown musical studio to make real music," said Eric Wahlforss, co-founder of streaming service Soundcloud, "now all you need is a laptop. Even an iPad can be enough. Music making is for everyone. Technology has made it cheaper, accessible and more powerful."
Read: Creepy toy lets babies post on Facebook
Soundcloud was launched in 2007 and allows users to upload their music and embed it anywhere, offering a powerful tool for discovery. It has evolved significantly over the years, skewing its balance in favor of listeners and introducing algorithms that spot protected material. "We care a lot about copyrights and we have automatic filters that can block content on behalf of copyright holders," said Wahlforss. "We want to go to a billion monthly listeners, and welcoming major labels is a key point of the journey there."
The service, which currently boasts 175 million monthly listeners, has just announced a licensing deal with Warner Music, and is introducing a paid subscription model next year. "If you have those numbers, naturally you want to generate revenue, and that's what we're focusing on at the moment," said Wahlforss.
A matter of taste
Even though music discovery has evolved rapidly in recent years, there is still no consensus on which technology is the best to analyze someone's musical taste. According to Kevin Lee, who was among the founders of the Beats headphones brand, we might need to start from scratch. "Even with all this music, at any given time I still only have about five to 10 songs that I love and listen to, but I have to believe there may be 100 that would really touch me in the same way," he said. "I feel we need a new technology that can figure that out."
This is an experimental and exciting period. So, let's experiment and see what works.
Bono, U2
Lee now heads Sol Republic, a rising brand of audio products, and thinks that in the future we'll have headphones capable of analyzing a user's emotional response to a song, and then suggesting something similar. "It takes three seconds for you to know whether you like a song or not. There's something about our ears and our body and our mind that figures that out so quickly, and we need to find a technology that can do that for us," he said.
Apple bought Beats earlier this year for $3 billion, in a strong statement about the significance of headphones in this industry: because we listen to so much music through our phones, hidden away in our pockets, it's what's on our heads that counts. But Lee thinks that headphones have become too ubiquitous. "I hope people will discover this thing called the speaker," he said. "Right now you need a large, expensive speaker to get good sound, but we had the same problem with headphones and we solved that. I'm confident that we'll manage to shrink speakers in size without compromising sound quality: when we figure that out, people will change the way they listen to music at home."
One thing, however, does seem likely: "Streaming is the way of the future," said Soundcloud's Eric Wahlforss.
At the end of the Web Summit, sharing the stage with the final panelists, U2's Bono joined the discussion, defending Spotify's royalty model, and arguing that streaming is, indeed, what lies ahead, even amid the many uncertainties. "The remunerative bit still has to be figured out," he said. "This is an experimental and exciting period. So, let's experiment and see what works."
Read more: Never cook again -- now you can print your own pizza
Read: Creepy toy lets babies post on Facebook
| |
| | |
| | |
| GIVING IT BACK
The RSR TRiP Radio Uploader is a place where musicians can upload their music and photo's and get your music played on the radio station on the internet for FREE! We also offer career consulting and facilities for every musician from recording facilities to rehersal studio's. We offer also offer professional engineering and recording on many levels. We have the ability to take a project from the ground up. The "RSR TRiP Radio Uploader" is the perfect place to host your music and photo's You can upload one song for now. If you require uploading more songs you can contact us. In the near future we will have Premiun Hosting accounts. Premium Accounts offer More space for song's and photo's. If you would like custom page's you can contact us about setting up your site with me and I will discuss possibilities for your site. We are planning on offereing different levels of accounts depending on the hosting space that you will need. The rates we plan on offereing will be comparable to many other services but we believe we can offer better service at a cheaper rate.
Stay Tuned!
| |
| | |
| | |
| foundation work . Foundation work is who WE are today. Team Slinger feels a strong sense of responsibility to help make our world a better place! The things we do below are to ALLOW us the privilege of giving back to our world through our advocacy of many charitable organizations in the United States and throughout the world. This company has been set up BY musicians for musicians and film artists. We are founded on the premise that we have been blessed and have a moral responsibility to give back to our world. Our goal is to alleviate pain and suffering & encourage organ donation, aid with disaster relief and be our brother’s keeper. Our mission is to save the world and we would like you to be a part of our mission. Our primary endeavor is to draw musicians and film artists to our site so that they can participate in their own success, but our secondary motive is to encourage these same artists to give back to their worlds through advocacy of charitable causes. We have an army of artists from all aspects of the entertainment field working to promote their vision to help change the world .Our network speaks for itself, they are the finest the entertainment Industry has to offer.
How Will You Make A Difference ?
| |
| | |
| | |
| MYSPACE FALLS !!!  
Cover Story
The Rise and Inglorious Fall of Myspace
By Felix Gillette June 22, 2011
In 2006, Jeremy Jackson—the buff, bronzed former Baywatch child star—couldn't imagine a world without Myspace. He was a single, underemployed actor in Los Angeles, an exhibitionist in need of an audience, and Myspace filled almost every need. He spent hours every day on the edgy social network, which was known as a pop music hub where artists such as Lily Allen and My Chemical Romance helped launch their careers. Jackson had more than a thousand "friends." He sold trucker hats and flirted with women. His profile page was decorated with Trojan Magnum XL condoms. He was the poster child for the Myspace lifestyle.
But things changed.
"I tried to cling to Myspace for a long time, hoping that someone there would come up with some idea to keep it alive," says Jackson, 30. "But my assistants and business partners finally beat it into my head that it was a dead horse. It's done. It's a joke. If you do stuff on Myspace, you just look sad."
Podcast: Behind the Story
Jackson still hustles for attention on the lower rungs of fame—he currently stars in season five of Celebrity Rehab, in which he battles his addiction to growth hormones for cable television viewers. But he now does his digital communing on Facebook and Twitter. He hasn't checked his Myspace page since 2009.
At its December 2008 peak, Myspace attracted 75.9 million monthly unique visitors in the U.S., according to ComScore (SCOR). By May of this year that number had dropped to 34.8 million. Over the past two years, Myspace has lost, on average, more than a million U.S. users a month. Because Myspace makes nearly all its money from advertising, the exodus has a direct correlation to its revenue. In 2009 the site brought in $470 million in advertising dollars, according to EMarketer. In 2011, it's projected to generate $184 million.
In February, News Corp. (NWS), which bought Myspace and its parent company, Intermix, in 2005 for $580 million, started officially looking for a potential buyer at an asking price of $100 million, according to a person familiar with the sale process. Yet even in the midst of a frenzy for social media that has seen LinkedIn (LNKD) valued at $6.4 billion and Groupon rebuff a $6 billion takeover offer from Google (GOOG), barely anyone wants to buy Myspace. On June 9 the News Corp.-owned tech blog AllThingsD.com reported that a group of investors led by Activision Blizzard (ATVI) chief Robert Kotick was closing in on a deal. "Getting people to come back to something that in their minds has become less useful is an incredible challenge on the Web—just ask AOL," says Richard Greenfield, an analyst with BTIG. "Myspace has become an eyesore for News Corp."
It's an eyesore for users, too. Many Myspace pages appear to be host bodies for the worst kinds of advertising parasites. On the upper right-hand corner of the page for Zaiko Langa Langa, an African band Googled at random, a photo of a blonde in a tight T-shirt appears, asking, "Want a Girlfriend? View Hundreds of Pics HERE!" (It's an ad for a dating site called True.) Farther down, someone has posted footage of nearly naked jiggling buttocks. There hasn't been an update from the musicians in weeks.
Mismanagement, a flawed merger, and countless strategic blunders have accelerated Myspace's fall from being one of the most popular websites on earth—one that promised to redefine music, politics, dating, and pop culture—to an afterthought. But Myspace's fate may not be an anomaly. It turns out that fast-moving technology, fickle user behavior, and swirling public perception are an extremely volatile mix. Add in the sense of arrogance that comes when hundreds of millions of people around the world are living on your platform, and social networks appear to be a very peculiar business—one in which companies might serially rise, fall, and disappear.
Danah Boyd, a senior researcher who studies social networks at Microsoft Research (MSFT), attributes their instability to the way users can bind themselves by race and class, taste and aesthetics. Influential peers pull others in on the climb up—and signal to flee when it's time to get out. "The thing about user adoption and user departure is that it's not a steady flow," says Boyd. "Think of it as, you're knitting a beautiful scarf, and you're knitting and knitting, and you get a bigger and bigger scarf. Then someone pulls a loose thread at the bottom. And it all unravels."
In 2007, News Corp.'s belief in Myspace was best represented by architecture. The company was considering a redevelopment plan that would have moved its headquarters to the far west side of Manhattan. Sketches from the time show an alternate vision of the company's future anchored, front and center, by a gleaming Myspace pavilion. The other elements of Murdoch's old-media empire—the Wall Street Journal and New York Post newspapers, the Fox News television network—would be scattered around the company's new beating heart.
| |
| | |
| | |
| REVERBNATION RIP OFFS !!! PLEASE HELP US TO GET FACEBOOK TO TEAR DOWN THIS APP FROM MUSICIANS PAGES AS BAND PROFILE!!!!
THEY ARE SCAMMERS!!! Post here if you went thru similar experiences>> WARNING!
FRAUDULENT PRACTICES FROM REVERBNATION / (Band Profile for musicians) TOWARD ARTISTS AND FANS.
I want to share with the music community what some bands including myself and Fans have been victims of: Scamy and fraudulent practices from reverbnation.
THEY KEPT CHARGING THE CREDIT CARD POSTED ON THE BAND's ACCOUNT WITHOUT OUR AUTHORIZATION.
WHEN WE ASKED FOR THE MONEY BACK, THEY ANSWERED "WILL KEEP OUR MONEY AS A CREDIT FOR FUTURE CAMPAIGNS." ??? THAT REALLY PISSED US OFF CAUSE WE DON"T ROLL ON GOLD. NOT TO MENTION THE OVERDRAFT FEES GENERATED ON THE BANK ACCOUNT.
OUR BANK HAD TO DISPUTE CHARGES TO GET THE MONEY BACK.
REVERBNATION then got pissed off and block us out from being able to log on our band account. The thing was that songs were still for sale there and we had no way keep track of sales and EVEN GET PAID.
FANS WOULD ALSO PAY FOR SONGS BUT COULD NEVER DOWNLOAD THE SONGS.
Fans contacted Reverbnation but they ignored them. Who is going to keep fighting for a $1 or $2 songs... not worthy your time. The band (us) felt bad. We individually emailed songs to the people who contacted us.
PLEASE BOYCOTT THESE CROOKS AND DO YOURSELF A FAVOR AND SAVE YOURSELF SOME HEADACHES. STAY AWAY FROM THEM AND DON'T DO ANY CREDIT CARD TRANSACTION WITH THEM.
| |
| | |
| | |
| HBO Tech HBO
HBO thinks it can grab 5 million cord-cutters with new service
by
TIME
@TIME
November 6, 2014, 8:48 AM EST
E-mail
Tweet
Facebook
Google Plus
Linkedin
But the company doesn’t think it will upset pay-TV model
This post is in partnership with Time. The article below was originally published at Time.com
By Victor Luckerson, TIME
HBO has made its expectations for its upcoming streaming service a bit more clear. In a quarterly earnings call for parent company Time Warner ( TWX -0.47% ) , HBO CEO Richard Plepler said that the premium cable network is looking to pull in between 4 and 5 million new customers who don’t currently subscribe to cable with its new online-only offering. In October Plepler estimated that there are 10 million broadband-only households in the U.S., a cohort he called “low-hanging fruit” that could easily be persuaded to buy HBO.
By allowing people who don’t pay for cable to access its content, HBO is engaging in a high wire act that has never been attempted before in the pay-TV industry. The company wants cord-cutters to buy its service, but it doesn’t want the people who already pay for cable to dump their subscriptions in favor of an HBO-only product. That would upset the pay-TV distributors, who currently handle customer service for HBO and often lower the subscription cost to entice new subscribers.
Plepler believes the doomsday scenario where HBO inadvertently hastens the collapse of the cable bundle won’t happen. In fact, he said the company actually sees greater potential upside in convincing more cable subscribers to add HBO to their current plans. HBO wants to add 10 to 15 million such subscribers in the coming years. “This is not binary. It’s not one or the other,” he said. “I see nothing but upside for us, nothing but upside for the consumer, nothing but upside for the distributor.”
Others in the industry are not so sure. After HBO announced its intention to launch a stand-alone service, NBCUniversal Chief Executive Steve Burke said, “It’s going to be a challenge for them to not cannibalize what is already a really, really good business.” (NBC is a division of Comcast ( CMCSA -0.42% ) , the country’s largest cable provider.) Plepler said HBO continues to have a strong relationship with Comcast and intends to work closely with broadband providers to launch the new service.
Even without the cord-cutters, HBO is bringing in a lot of money. The network generated $1.3 billion in revenue during the third quarter, a 10% increase over the same period a year ago. Operating income declined 4% to $380 million. Time Warner as a whole saw revenue rise 3% to $6.2 billion for the quarter, beating Wall Street analysts’ expectations. Adjusted earnings were $1.22 per share, also beating projections.
| |
| | |
|
News Categories
|
|
| |
|
Welcome
|
|
|
New Forum Posts
|
|
|
Date / Time
|
|
| | |
