One thing we’re hearing consistently from our members is that they’d like to know which bands are being selected for specific gigs. Who’s having success? Which gigs are they going after? How are they presenting themselves? How many/which Sonicbids bands did a promoter end up booking when all’s said and done? Every gig booked can be a learning opportunity for other bands on the site. Good news – we’ve been working on a new site area called “It Works” that shares this information: band-by-band and gig-by-gig. It’s in Beta, which means we’re still making some tweaks based on usability and feedback from all of you.  Check it out here:

http://www.sonicbids.com/itworks

Here’s how “It Works”…works

When an artist is selected for a gig through the Submission Tracker or manually adds a date they booked using their EPK to their Sonicbids calendar, this information will now appear on their “artist profile.” Here’s an artist example: http://www.sonicbids.com/profile/gretchenwitt. Promoters will also have a profile which will display all of their gig listings and who was selected for what. (Promoter example: http://www.sonicbids.com/Profile/summerfest) By sharing this information, we hope to open a window on how Sonicbids is working, with a timeline going all the way back to the beginning of the company – 120,000 booked gigs ago.

Other “It Works” features are coming; we’ll post more about them in the coming weeks. Take a look at it here and be sure to tell us what you think, and what you’d like to see in the next release by commenting here.

Thank you for your continued feedback and support – it’s helping us build a better Sonicbids. And stay tuned for more enhancements to both gig listings and “It Works” over the next few weeks. We’ve got some cool things coming, so bookmark the Builder’s Blog and check back often!

As promised we’ve built upon the new look for gig listings by adding the ability for any logged in user to upload photos.  For example, if you’ve played CMJ before you can now head over to the gig listing for CMJ 2009 and add photos of your band’s performance.

You’ll also notice a new rating on each gig listing called the “Pick-O-Meter.”  This will display the “pickiness” of each promoter.  Promoters that are pickier about who they select will have a higher rating on the pick-o-meter.

How we determine the Pick-O-Meter rating for a listing.

We calculate a pick-o-meter rating for a listing based on that event’s past activity (which is why some events don’t have a pick-o-meter rating).  Lets say a promoter opens a listing each year for a festival.  To calculate the pick-o-meter rating for this year’s festival, we’ll look at the number of selections the promoter made for the festival last year and divide it by the total number of submissions they received.  This will tell us the percentage of submissions that were selected.  We take that percentage and rank it against every other gig listing in the same category (gig categories are: Live Gigs, Competitions/Contests, A&R/Publicity/Licensing).  Their ranking against other gigs in their category is what determines their pick-o-meter rating.  So gigs that select a lower percentage of their submissions compared to other gigs of the same type will have a higher pick-o-meter rating and vice versa.

We’re not done improving gig listings just yet.  Take this quick survey to let us know what additional information you’d like to see about gigs before submitting.

There’s still more to come over the next few weeks so stay tuned.

Hey all,

If you poked around the Promoter Drop Box at all today you probably noticed some changes to the way gig listings look.

First we updated the “Gig Listing At A Glance” section to include a bit more info.  You used to have to scroll to the bottom of the page to see stuff like Compensation and Artist Attendance, but all of that is now right at the top.

We also brought the Submission Tracker Date up to the top of the page so you can take that into consideration before submitting. Listings that aren’t using Submission Tracker will have a different icon to make them easy to spot.

You can see the real thing here.

This is just the first in a number of cool new things we’re going to be rolling out over the next few weeks.  Inclucing more improvements to the Gig Listings to allow for community interaction, an easy way to see who’s having success on Sonicbids, and a couple other things I don’t want to hint at yet, but trust me you’ll like them.

Rock on,

Lou

PS – Thanks to all the artists that answered Panos’ survey.  It provided us with a lot of good information about what artists are looking for from Sonicbids which we’ll be using to guide our decisions about the new features coming round the bend.

Hey all,

You’ve been hearing a lot from Lou about the changes to the Status Manager tool. Well, we’ve got some big news. We launched the changes to the Status Manager and they are huge- so big, in fact, that we’ve renamed it “Submission Tracker”.The new approach gives more information and control to artists while making it easier for promoters to review submissions. Here’s a quick overview of the changes:

ARTISTS – You asked, we listened

• More control of your submission – From this day forward, if a promoter doesn’t get back to you by the posted respond date, you have a 15-day window during which you can withdraw your submission and get the fee back as site credit to use towards another submission.

• Transparency – Submission Tracker will show the exact date on which the promoter reviewed your submission.

• Direct contact – When a promoter contacts you, you can now communicate directly with them using Sonicbids.

• You can read more in our artist FAQs

PROMOTERS

• Payment Changes/More Control – You can now easily extend your notification deadline with one click.  This will be especially helpful for now artists will be able to withdraw submissions if not reviewed by the notification date you choose.  But not to worry – you will receive plenty of reminders about the submissions you have yet to review.

• Review Submissions In Style – Re-designed EPK Inbox and Viewer.

• Automatic Notifications – Reach out only to the artists you’re interested in. The rest will be notified automatically.

• More Transparency – Artists will be able to see the date you reviewed their submission so they know they got a fair shot at your gig.

• You can read more in our promoter FAQs

Some things to know about the transition from Status Manager to Submission Tracker:
- Submissions that were reviewed before October 9, 2008 will not show artists the date they were reviewed.
- Submissions that were set to “Standby” will be converted to the new status “On File.”  The promoter’s message will remain intact.
- Submissions that were overdue for a status update on October 9, 2008 will be set to “On File.”
- Submissions that are made on or after October 9, 2008 will have (3) review options: Selected, Interested and Not Selected.  Submissions set to Interested will be resolved to Selected or Not Selected by a specific date set by the promoter.

We’re pretty excited about Submission Tracker, because it’ll help make the Sonicbids community better for both artists and promoters.

Always remember you can always contact our support team with any questions.

What’s next? A whole new look to the Sonicbids Gig Listings (and a lot more goodies)..  stay tuned for more updates coming soon!

After improving parts of the Submission Tracker’s design based on member feedback our Engineering team cranked out the code and we are now in the process of bug testing.  We conducted an internal beta test of the Submission Tracker yesterday and I’m diving through all the feedback right now to prioritize bug fixes, feature tweaks, copy changes, etc.  so our Engineers can start working on them first thing Monday.

Here’s a sneak peak at the newly redesigned EPK Inbox that promoters use to review submissions:

EPK Inbox

Our Founder and CEO Panos Panay recently attended Bumbershoot in Seattle.  You can read about his expierences there on his blog here.  During his time in Seattle he had dinner with several Sonicbids members and got some great feedback from them about the Submission Tracker.  I’m currently in the process of tweaking some of the Submission Tracker features based on their feedback.  I’ll post again when we’re ready to announce more details.

Hey all,

Sorry for not posting an update sooner, we’ve begun testing a lot of these new features which means I’ve been busy working with our QA team to track down bugs and getting feedback on how things work from members and staff.

I did have time during testing to grab a screen shot of the new EPK Viewer.  The EPK Viewer is designed to let promoters review an EPK alongside the aritst’s submission form.

Hope everyone has a great Labor Day weekend.  I’ll check in again next week with more info on how the Submission Tracker is coming along.