We’re continuing to improve on the new “Find Gigs” section and, today, we introduced a few changes based on your feedback:

• We hear all the time that you want us to tell you about more gigs that are relevant to you. So we’re asking you to help us and making it easy for you to do that. Now you can give a gig listing a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” from right within the ”Find Gigs” section. Gig listings that you give a “thumbs up” to will be added to your “Favorites” section, and we’ll send you a friendly reminder when the deadline is coming up. This will save you some  time and a whole lot of mental energy trying to remember all of that. Oh, and you can manage these reminders from within the “Favorites” section of your account.

• Some of you were confused by the dates of the gig listings, so we fixed that too. Now, when you sort your results by most recent date, you should see the most recent date first. Remember you can save your search if you go into the “Advanced Search” area. We also heard that “Date” and “Date Added” were confusing labels- you’ll notice we are now calling “Date” “Event Date” to help clear things up.

• Last thing, there was an issue with the Stats page for Internet Explorer users when we released plug-ins a couple of weeks ago for – we fixed that…sorry about that!

Enjoy and keep the feedback coming!

We got a ton of great feedback over the past week after launching Last.fm, Twitter and Google plugins and the new Find Gigs section.

And we’ve been doing more than just reading your feedback. We’ve been working on making tweaks to both the Plugins and the Find Gigs section based on what you’ve said. Here’s what we released today:
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Ever wonder what people are saying about your band or who’s listening to your music (um, of course you do!)?  Promoters do too, and will often search for bands online to check out their buzz.  Well, we just made it a little easier for artists and promoters to track buzz all in one place – on Sonicbids – by integrating Last.fm listens and GoogleBlog and Twitter search results into artist and promoter accounts.

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We’re excited to tell you about the changes we made to improve your experience searching for gigs on Sonicbids.  We’ve heard a lot of feedback over the past few months, and, yes, we really listen! Below are some of the highlights based on that feedback: (more…)

Just a quick note about a tiny feature we added recently.  If you haven’t noticed, you can now check a box called “Remember me” when logging into your account to stay logged into Sonicbids for the next 2 weeks.

Admittedly not the most exciting feature, but hopefully it will make accessing your account on a regular basis a bit easier.

Stay tuned for some much cooler updates coming soon.

We recently gave the My Submissions area where artists keep track of their past submissions a bit of a facelift and a few new features.

• Incomplete Submissions are displayed in their own tab on the My Account page.
• The My Submissions tab now displays the 5 most recently updated submissions along with their status. If the status is “Submitted” or “Interested” you’ll also be able to see the date the promoter has agreed to send the next update

Clicking “View all complete submissions” from the My Submissions tab on the My Account page will take you to the new My Submissions page.

• There are also quick links to Rate or Review each submission (only selected artists can rate gigs, all others can review).
• You can now Archive Submissions that you don’t want to have in the list anymore by clicking the “Archive” link in the “Actions” column
• A new link to Get Receipts for all of your purchases on Sonicbids should help make your taxes a bit easier. (Quick Tax Tip: If you’re declaring income from your music on your tax return you can write off your Sonicbids submission and membership fees as a business expense.)

Starting today artist members will be able to rate and review gig listings. Here’s how it works:

· Only artists that submit to gigs are able to leave reviews on gig listings.

· Only artists that were selected are able to rate gig listings.

o Artists can assign a 1-5 star rating based on their overall experience with the gig.

o Artists will also be asked some questions about the gig which will help to identify it’s strengths and areas for improvement. (example below)

o Lastly, we’ll ask selected artists to let us know if they made any money on the gig. This part isn’t displayed publicly, but will help us get a better sense of what kinds of gigs are generating money for our artists (so we can find more of them).

All ratings and reviews are aggregated from past listings so when you look at a gig we’ve worked with before, you’ll see ratings and reviews from artists that have played it in the past. Each review includes the artist’s name, a link to their profile and EPK, the name of the gig they’re commenting on, and if they were selected for it or just submitted. Selected artists will also have the star rating they gave the listing posted with their review:

Artists can get started now by going to their “My Submissions” tab and clicking on the gig’s name to get to view it’s listing. From there click the “Rate/Review this Gig” link and follow the instructions.

As always, let us know what you think of the new review/rating system by commenting here.

Look forward to your thoughts.

Lou