Hey Lawrence if the text is too small you can resize it in your browser by holding Ctrl and hitting + or – (if you’re using Firefox or IE on a PC).

Ricarda, right now you can use the Advanced Search to look specifically for gigs in Germany. In the future I’m hoping to make it a bit easier to find gigs by location using the search tools on the main Find Gigs page.

Your “My Submissions” section is very difficult to read!

Could you change it back to the way it was?

/lc

hey!
i’m not looking for gigs in USA, Canada or England. I’m from Germany so i need to have a list with gigs only in germany!! how does this work??

As someone who spent over $1,300 on Sonicbids opportunities last year alone, you can believe I check this daily.

Since I check every day, I need to see the newest ones first.

Clicking the column head “Date Added” works well, but it shows me the OLDEST first. It would save me a click if the NEWEST came first. Just a thought. (Do I really want to see closed gigs from 2004, first?) (Mac OS does this, shows me the oldest documents first, always drives me nuts. I need to see “most recent” OFTEN, “oldest” VERY RARELY.)

For “My Submissions,” font is a little small, but works okay for me.

Overall, good job far as I can see.

I like it.

However, it seems to get to the Latest Posted Listings, used to be
1 click:

Home > FInd Gigs

Now it’s:

Home > Find Gigs > Gig Listings > Date Added (Sorts Old Top) > Date Added (Sorts New Top)

That’s a lot more clicks to find a full list of all the most recently added listings.

For people who check the box daily, the full list (not partial list, like under “Home”) of recently added listings is the very first thing they want to see, to see all the new ones available.

Waay too many clicks here. : )

For those of you that always want to see the recently added gigs first you can click the “Customize View” link, set the “Default Sort Order:” to “Date Added” and check the bubble for “Descending”.

Not liking it go back to the old way!

WHERE IS THE CUSTOMIZE VIEW LINK?

You can see “Customize View” link on the “Gig Listings” tab right below the “Select Genre” dropdown menu. Here’s a screenshot with the Customize View link circled.

Thank you for creating the “Spoken Word” category in the genre selection…. Ive booked quite a few gigs through Sonic Bids and Im sure there are other spoken word artists on here..its great to be acknowledged so I don’t have to type it in manually and *cross fingers* hope that I find something fitting. It shows that you are truly thinking about who is using your service and how to best serve them.
Thanks & Book on !

London

Hi Lou:

Cool, the Customize View thing seems to do the trick, thanks, nice option!

(For all the panicky people shouting to “go back the other way,” changes always take time to get used to, don’t they? Let’s give it a shot, eh?) : )

Nice work.

In the “My Submissions” area, something about the list is hard to read. I see that there are alternating gray-white bands to help group Name of opportunity with Submitted Song, yet going down the list my eye keeps getting confused.

Maybe the Name could be bold, or the grey area could be a bit darker? : /

It’s a nice format, there’s just something not quite creating a clear differentiation for the eye.

One thing that is not user friendly is that I like to order the gig listings in increasing date order. So I do that. Then I get to page 3 or 4 to start looking for gigs being offered on certain dates (because that’s when we’re gonna tour.) Next, I find one of interest and click on it to check it out.

Then, I want to go back to the page that I was on, with the gigs ordered the way I wanted, but it takes me all the way back to the first page, and I have to re-order them and then re-click to the page that I was on.

This is very basic programming to make this happen, and should have been implemented that way to begin with. It’s very cumbersome to use the way it is currently.

Best of all would be for it to remember that I like the gigs in increasing date order, so I didn’t have to bother with that each time.

How can I add a listing to my favorites?
The little pop ups saved me the time off having to click on a listing only to find out it’s genres weren’t for me.

I like the stats stuff that is new. But, who actually gets the $$$ we pour into this? We sit, we wait, is it all a twist of fate. Is there no cure for the blind? As time marches on, and we wait for a song, to become us. Is this all pranks with our dreams. The dream to become… not the only one, but someone, none the less……..
I often wonder, where does this $$ go, and who is letting us down? Is it the promoter or the promotertee??? I have submitted to gigs listed and been turned down because the venue was already closed……… What’s up with that?

Tori, props for posting the first rhyming comment! You can find info about where money from submission fees goes in our support center at http://www.sonicbids.com/support but I’m also going to have someone from Member Relations contact you to get more info about the submission to a closed venue that you mentioned.

To follow Tori’s lead here’s a quick haiku: Thanks for the feedback / it will help us get better / keep up the comments

The changes are fine except that the up/down arrows to change the order that columns are displayed in (from the customize view page)seem to have no effect. No matter what order the column headings are placed in there seems to be no change in the actual display. What’s up with that?

Hi there. Frankly, I miss the ‘gigs at a glance’ pop up descriptions. With those I was able to actually ‘glance’ over each opportunity and quickly weed out those that didn’t meet my needs, i.e. location! Now I have to click on and open an interesting possibility to find out if it’s even in my own country.. My searches are now more time consuming and I don’t get through as many opportunities.. Maybe if the opportunitys’ LOCATION were right there in the title/description? As our new Prez would say, ‘We need more transparency..’

This is not a good setup for me. I track my submissions by the date a gig was initially listed, checking for new gigs every couple of days. With the date a gig was listed gone now, I can’t track them as easily. I like the old format better. Thanks for trying for improvements. This just isn’t such a good one.

Hey Rick, looks like you found another bug I’ve let our QA team know about it so they can take a closer look and get it fixed.

Hey butch, if you click on the Customize View link you can add a column for the gig’s location to your search results.

We’re currently a part-time band, so we don’t travel more than one or two states away for gigs. The old gig listings format allowed you to sort gigs by state. This new format sorts by City name, which is not useful. Please change the format so you can sort by state or, even better, it would REALLY HELPFUL if you added a feature where gigs could be sorted by distance from a certain zip code. We’re in Charlotte, so a gig in TN could be 3 hours away or 7 hours away. Likewise, a gig in North Carolina could be 10 minutes away or 7 hours away. Big difference and it takes extra searching and mapping to be able to figure out if it’s in our travel range.

The gig search feature needs work. I like the way you can save searches, but calling them back up is a hassle. They are just buried in too far.

Better would be to have these searches accessible from my main EPK page so I could go right to them, or at the very least more visible from the main search page.

Also, I have not found the advanced searches to be that accurate after going through the trouble of creating them. Searches for any hits on “folk, blues, roots, americana” for NM and PA were blank. Really? I highly doubt it.

Having trouble reading my day-to-day stats: when I click on March, the full calendar opens up, but now the writing on the right side of the page interferes with my ability to be allowed to see the info on the dates that overlap that area – as soon as I go to one of those dates, the whole calendar disappears – very frustrating! Can you get rid of the new info on the right side of the page? Please advise! Thanks, Jordan

Oh no,
What have you done? When I place my cursor over the name of a listed gig the little window with a brief summery doesn’t pop up. I’ll grant you that those little windows were a little unpredictable at times, but it was the quickest way to look at the gigs and see if it was in the ball park. Very disappointing.
JohnZ

Once I cleared through all the older submissions I’d made and put them in the ARCHIVE, it really seems to be a lot smoother. This way I can keep the stuff I want to have a record of but don’t need to see each time I log in. Thanks, Ben

I think you’ve taken the most user friendly site I’ve seen and messed it up a bit.

The biggest benefit of the old page was that THE NEWEST GIGS WERE LISTED FIRST. With this new system, you have to click “Date Added” TWICE to get the latest listings. And just as annoying, after viewing a gig and clicking “Back,” it reverts back to way it was, and you have to click “Date Added” twice AGAIN. You’ve made the viewing of new gigs exponentially more complicated.

I prefer it the old way because at least then i could search by most popular or newly added gigs…that function is still available but its been shortened down

I dig the new layout. But you have a cache and/or focus issue with the browser back button, at least on FF 3.0.7, Mac OS 10.

If you do a search or a column sort on the main gig listings page, then click on a gig listing, then hit the Back button, you go automatically to the unsorted, default first page of gig listings. You should go back to the last page viewed. This is really annoying if you’ve (for example) chosen to show only Open Gig Listings, then sorted by Date added, then you’re on the fifth page of listings, and you click a gig…when you click the Back button on your browser you end up back at page 1 with all listings showing and the default sort.

I like that the new layout details the location on the gig. However, I like the price column of the old one. Maybe you could combine some of the new into the old. I like the old version overall better.

I like the shortcuts on the right, and adding the “Next Update” column under My Submissions is VERY helpful. As far as the gigs search, I agree with a former comment that searching within a state or within so many miles of a city would be a great tool for a band like mine. I can’t believe that there’s a pull-down menu for Genre but not one for Region.

The default for the Gig Listings is the most frustrating change, especially since none of your settings stay there if you go to another page. Why would anyone want to see closed opportunities, not to mention why make that the default? And why get rid of the *’s to indicate a new gig? For someone who checks Sonicbids every couple days, this feature was extremely helpful for quickly scanning a list. Also, the new layout doesn’t 1) mark a listing once you favorite it or 2) remove a listing once you’ve submitted to it, which were both great for quickly scanning a list. (Also, why is the Favorites’ default set to sort by name? I want to look at my list of Favorites and see when the next deadline is, which is the way I’ve always had my favorites set up!) Because of all these changes, I’m now required to complete a multi-step process where I click on “Only show open gigs”, refresh my search, click to sort by “Date Added” (twice) just to see all the new gigs, skim past anything I’ve already favorited or submitted to, and then re-sort if I want to see when the next deadline is. And the “Customize View” doesn’t let you fix most of these problems. I agree with a lot of previous comments that there needs to be a way of stopping a page from defaulting whenever you visit another page.

I liked it better before you improved it. I need to see the most recently posted listings first.I need to get details by passing over the listing – the way it is now I have to click on the listing and wait for it to load in order to find out if I’m even remotely interested. How about this – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

The website is often abysmally slow.

When searching and filtering gigs…

Why must I, as an American, have to scroll past many many nations, including Togo, when telling a website that knows I am an American where I reside? It’s nonsensical.

While the ability to search for gigs by state is helpful, being able to express a travel radius from an area would be more helpful.

When emailing me: don’t do it more than once a day. You tend to do this with some lame apology in the second email. Don’t do it, and there will be nothing to apologize for.

I liked it when the cost was displayed on the initial screen. It saves a step if something is too expensive for my tastes. Can that be added?

It would be nice to also have the price too…
other than that I love it ;0)

There needs to be a search by city.

Sonicbids is far and away the best site for artists to use. It is the most user friendly, easiest to navigate, has the most options and the easiest retrieval systems. Sonicbids spoils/negates any desire to use any other site.
Thanks!

I tried the new search engine, and it is very fast in returning all the “not found” responses. There is apparently no gigs available in the areas I was inquiring, or perhaps a bit less user friendly than what was previously in place. I quit searching after 10 failed attempts that resulted in nothing at all.

The update/changes make the site twenty times slower than it used to be, and for me it is harder to use–harder to visually scan quickly on the Promoter Drop Box (or whatever it’s called now) for new, ending, and popular listings. It is NOT “easier to scan.” It was much easier to look at before. Things are not visually distinguished any more. I liked having the dates. None of the new doodads are things I care about (blog buzz etc). Sometimes when I go to a gig page to enter or apply, it doesnt offer that option even though the date is not past. Sometimes it asks me to log in even when I’m logged in.

change for change’s sake “just because it was time for a change” is really stupid. “We dont want to bore you?” ! I don’t come here to be entertained. I come here to enter songwriting competitions and submit for gigs. That worked great before. It doesn’t now. So, your objective failed. This is a site to do business. Your job is to help us do our business, not give us “fresh designs” to look at.

If it were up to me, I’d bring the old site back in a heartbeat. It was faster, familiar, and easier to use.

if you are really listening about features, GIVE US A WAY TO CLEAN UP/DELETE SONGS FROM OUR LIST OF PREVIOUS ADMISSIONS. Some of us have many versions over a period of time as we are recording. When we’re done, we dont need 14 versions of that song in the dropdown when we go to submit. That should be under OUR control to determine what’s the in the pool of submittable songs. there is NO reason we should be barred from access to that.

The type is MUCH smaller and harder to read. The old “Promoter Drop Box” with its sections and columns and largee type was much easier to read and gave much more information. The type is so much smaller yet full names of gigs wrap and sometimes are trailed off with an ellipsis… it makes no sense. And the “add to Google buzz” or whatever buttons everywhere are like clutter.

I used to enjoy checking for new gigs every day. Now I never even go to the site I avoid it because it’s so annoying and hard to look at.

You REALLY need to bring back the Gig-At-A-Glance pop-ups, and the back button REALLY needs to go back to exactly where a person was on the previous screen, not back to the beginning of Find Gigs. Sorting by location is pretty frustrating when so many gigs don’t have location filled in so that the searcher has to read the details to find out if it’s happening where we’re touring.

feedback:
- I find the sonicbids UI very clunky e.g. constantly having to wait for full page loads
– I’d rather see sections load individually
- why can’t I search for gigs in Europe rather than by country?
- how do I make the fact known that I’m looking for gigs to the organizers I’d like to reach?
- I’m not sure how useful your site is — especially for 5.95/month

Hi folks,

Overall I think this will be a very useful approach.

However, having the gigs page default to include closed opportunities strikes me as time-wasting. I think it could safely be said that most of us are primarily concerned about what IS and what WILL happen, rather than what HAS happened. Perhaps an “include closed opportunities” button instead?

Another item; The advanced search looks very good indeed, but it might be even more useful if one were able to store a template of a search rather than a specific search. For example, I used it to search a specific region, time frame, and gig-type, and then saved that search as a “Region-specific-live-gig”. Trouble was, I couldn’t call up the search and simply change the time frame or region and re-search with the new criteria. It was necessary to start over again from scratch and do the entire time-consuming selection process again for each tour.

As I said, I like this new approach, and I think that with some further refinement it will make a difficult part of maintaining an indie career much easier.

Thanks,

James Hurley

Hi,
We like the “Find Gigs Feature”, but we have one suggestion:
When we are in our account, and weclick the “Find Gigs” link rather than using the search form right on the account page, the results not only show open gig listings, but also closed listings that date all the way back to 2004!
Could Sonicbids somehow delete listings after they close, so that the number of results shown isn’t deceiving?
Thanks for all your hard work, and have a great week!

Andy and Miranda – In Him

I agree with Mike from March 19th that I need an item to be marked as a favourite if I’ve already marked it as such. It would also be helpful to be able to mark something as seen, or not interested so I don’t keep re-reading things every few days.

it’d be great if search results listed price (as others have noted) as well as some kind of indication of my submission history. e.g., symbols pending submissions, rejected in the past, etc.

As a new member, I’m loving Sonic Bids, but there’s one thing that’s rankling me: Promoters should be honest and specific about the fee. Given my recording and touring history, I don’t want to pay $10 to submit a EPK to a promoter who says merely “fee paid” and then find out it’s $50. That’s not acceptable. I just got a gig that listed the pay as $50-$100, only to find out that the $100 maximum is fictitious. Stricter guidelines should be conveyed to promoters. They should be accurate and accountable so that WE can screen THEM.

I apologize for re-iterating this feedback, but for a promoter to say that a fee is “negotiated at the time of booking” is so bogus. If they’re in this business, it should be easy to say what they pay. I’m in this business and I know what I charge. That’s the gig, right? How would they like it if the soniq bids artists said they’d negotiate the submission fee at the time of booking? I don’t believe it would be a difficult point to enforce. In the template where the promoter fills in fee, just state “only specific and credible amounts”. I know that as the artist we can contact the promoter and ask about the fee, but why should we? It’s that kind of administrative hassle that turns us off about the old way of booking and leads artists to submit EPKs. This is really starting to annoy me.

How about a listing for venues/events which are looking for opening acts?

I liked the old way better where we could sort by price. Some submissions are $2 and some are $35, and it’s too time consuming to have to click through each one.

why do list pages of events and listings that are closed ???

I think it should be required for promoters to include whether or not their gig is pay-to-play or requires the band to do ticket sales. I don’t want to have to pay a submission fee, then pay to play on top of that. If I have to pay the promoter to play, I most likely would not want that gig, unless it’s opening for some huge band.
Promoters who do not include that information are being deceptive.

Hi,

It looks like your advanced search function is not working. I tried to search by state for gigs in various states (e.g. “North Carolina”), and the search came up with no gigs in any of the states selected, even though gigs in North Carolina (and other states I searched for) are shown on the regular gigs page.

Another problem that is extremely frustrating is that when searching for gigs in the regular listings, clicking on a gig makes the entire list automatically move back to the first page of the list, which makes it very difficult to search through the pages while also being able to click on the gigs one finds interesting.

I have had some good luck with gigs from sonicbids in the past, but times are tight and the lack of ease with search features as of late is making me question whether to renew or not when it comes up this fall/winter.

Hi,

it would be great if the Find Gigs allowed to select several countries at a time, or a region, like “Europe”.

we are a small european label and the amounts of gigs in the US are not really useful for us, as long as we don’t plan a proper US tour (who knows, in 10 years maybe…), and they make it hard to find gigs over here.

I keep getting listings for everything under the sun even though I have stated quite specifically what is useful for us ie world, jazz, folk, and classical. And there are very few truly useful gigs listed in these categories.
Also I think sonicbids should have a separate category for presenters who are not willing to pay professional fees so we can opt out of hearing about it.
Sonicbids should be in business of protecting artists and there are way too many presenters who want something for virtually nothing. (You can die from exposure).
Also it should be very clear if they are truly considering international artists or not, because crossing borders (especially into protectionist U.S.A.) takes time and money and we are wasting money on submissions if they don’t state outright if they have a budget and commitment for that.
Sonicbids should not allow presenters to have unrealistic timelines for telling an artist if they are interested in booking – Artists have to plan ahead as do presenters, at least six months ahead, so when I see dates only a month ahead of events I have to think they are just collecting money for submissions and have no real intent to book through sonicbids.

Hey you need to simplify the find gig part. And when i try and search for gigs in the UK you cant specify what county you want to be in. It should literally be where and when and then it should give you a list of venues come up after.

Cheers!
Minty

You need to add “surf” as a genre. There is a multitude of bands in this category that cross genres as well. Thanks be,
SD

I’d like to be able to search by a section of the country, i.e. “West”, “Northwest”,”eastern seaboard”, etc.

Also, what the heck happened to my “favorites”? Seems with the new and improved website, my faves that I saved got wiped out.

Over all this is great, you folks are really striving to help the independent artist. In regards to myself as for the bookings most of your promoters though certainly not disclosing the fact are a bit bias in regards to age.There is an old saying in the music business “The Older the fiddle the sweeter the music” A lot of truth in this in most cases while there are exceptions to the rule.One can ask “Why practice?” and it is a simple answer to get better at your craft. I submit then if a promoter is marketing something besides the music take the less experience and younger artist or band on the other hand if it is about the music he might want to consider more experience.

I LOVE IT…it is GREAT…So easy for me to use…

we should be able to search by location or so many miles from zip code

UPDATE: We’ve made improvements to Find Gigs based on your feedback! Read more here.

NOTE:If you need help with your account, go to http://sonicbids.com/support and our Member Relations team will give you a hand.