General Music Chat

this is really blowing my mind. i searched Google for a band that i used to see around my hometown, and the only result i found was their profile with bandmix. i'd like to get ahold of their album, so, lured in by the "contact this band" button, i went through the hassle of creating an account. just so i could send this band a message asking about their album.
i didn't intend to ever sign in to this stupid site again so i didn't really pay close attention to my username or password, so once signed up, i needed to find this band's page using bandmix's search function rather than The Google. this turned out to be incredibly hard, since apparently the search just doesn't work at all. Maybe it requires an exact text match or something. I tried searching "all categories", with the ZIP code from the band's page, and I tried searching by both band name (as listed on their bandmix page) and their member # (as listed on their bandmix page). none of these worked but thankfully there was an option to just show all the bands in that area code, which allowed me to actually find their page. ahhh, finally. so i clicked on the "contact this band" button, and, no. of course, i need to be a premium member to send a single message to one band. so um, thanks for granting me the free membership to your awesome site, which apparently just allows me unlimited access to one of the most impressively poorly designed web interfaces and internal search engines in existence! oh, and let's not leave out the wonderful selection of tasteless and annoying ads. great job guys keep up the good work!

Things is what they is. Smile.... Bandmix is one of the few OPEN forums left.

Um . . . so if a website does not meet the narrow parameters of one individuals needs it is of no value ?

OK . . .

Try this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAUNlO6-rlk

Wah wah wah. Chances are, if the band doesn't have any contact info in their profile, they are long gone.

I like tons of shrooms on my pizza! I HATE sardines!

Whew...Stephan - we all blanch in the face of your informed critique.

Now piss off.

Talbot

After reading the first post; if you look beyond the frustration and criticism, I think the point is this site could be so much more if some communication was allowed. This isn’t the first person surprised about having to pay to send a message.

It appears that a gazillion people register on the site; indicate what they do or what they are looking for, and then think other members can contact them. They may not realize for a while (if ever) that you can’t do that unless you pay. Or they do find out it costs money to communicate, and just disappear. Also, they didn’t join to use the forums (look at the pages and pages of “0” posts in the member index), so they drift away and may not come back. No communication ever takes place. The “active” members appear to be less than 1% of registered members. [As I write this, the site has over a half-million registered users, and 3 are online.]

I am trying to be constructive in the things I say here, because I have seen comments from members who have had great experiences meeting folks and putting bands or collabs together. This is fantastic, but maybe it could even be better. There is so much talent here to be tapped, or just discovered and enjoyed, but easier communication would sure help.

Considering other kinds of no-cost sites, and ones that allow messaging between members, I think if messages were allowed here, the increase in traffic alone would more than pay the bills through advertising and products that could be sold. Maybe they could try allowing 5 messages per week, or something like that, and see what happens.

Also, if the site showed which members are “Premium”, you would know who could and could not communicate.

Regarding member activity, I have seen “Active over 1 month ago”, but haven’t seen anything longer than that. So it looks like this may also apply to 1 year, 5 years, etc. If they don’t deactivate members after a reasonable period of time (or list them as inactive), it is misleading to other members who might want to communicate.

Just some thoughts, but I am very new here. I’ll leave it to the “veterans” for more experienced input.

For one thing it isn't a "stupid site". URL pages don't think. On another level Bandmix is only one of a very few musicians sites that have remained active.

Many musician sites have last posts days, weeks or months ago.

Evidently someone is doing something right at Bandmix. If it ain't broke don't fix it. Any site can't be everything for everyone. You have to find workarounds for everything digital sooner or later.

Um . . . so if a website does not meet the narrow parameters of one individuals needs it is of no value ?

OK . . .

Try this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAUNlO6-rlk

Win!

After reading the first post; if you look beyond the frustration and criticism, I think the point is this site could be so much more if some communication was allowed. This isn’t the first person surprised about having to pay to send a message.

It appears that a gazillion people register on the site; indicate what they do or what they are looking for, and then think other members can contact them. They may not realize for a while (if ever) that you can’t do that unless you pay. Or they do find out it costs money to communicate, and just disappear. Also, they didn’t join to use the forums (look at the pages and pages of “0” posts in the member index), so they drift away and may not come back. No communication ever takes place. The “active” members appear to be less than 1% of registered members. [As I write this, the site has over a half-million registered users, and 3 are online.]

I am trying to be constructive in the things I say here, because I have seen comments from members who have had great experiences meeting folks and putting bands or collabs together. This is fantastic, but maybe it could even be better. There is so much talent here to be tapped, or just discovered and enjoyed, but easier communication would sure help.

Considering other kinds of no-cost sites, and ones that allow messaging between members, I think if messages were allowed here, the increase in traffic alone would more than pay the bills through advertising and products that could be sold. Maybe they could try allowing 5 messages per week, or something like that, and see what happens.

Also, if the site showed which members are “Premium”, you would know who could and could not communicate.

Regarding member activity, I have seen “Active over 1 month ago”, but haven’t seen anything longer than that. So it looks like this may also apply to 1 year, 5 years, etc. If they don’t deactivate members after a reasonable period of time (or list them as inactive), it is misleading to other members who might want to communicate.

Just some thoughts, but I am very new here. I’ll leave it to the “veterans” for more experienced input.

Agree with you man. The sheer size of this site and membership, it is startling how inactive it is.

For one thing it isn't a "stupid site". URL pages don't think. On another level Bandmix is only one of a very few musicians sites that have remained active.

Many musician sites have last posts days, weeks or months ago.

huh? Some of you saying this is one of the few musician sites that have remained active need to get out more.

talkbass.com : My last visit prior to today was Saturday night. There are 5,745 new posts since my last visit Saturday. Over 13 million posts.
Threads: 887,875, Posts: 13,483,232, Members: 226,162


marshallforum.com: Threads: 54,135, Posts: 911,759, Members: 35,074 Every forum is active as of yesterday. Plenty of threads and posts. You could spend almost the entire day on this site talking.

the gear page: over 9 million threads. Threads: 491,521, Posts: 9,342,012, Members: 120,712
every forum active as of yesterday.

There are several more but i'm not going to log into every single one of them and post the stats as I think I made my point. This site has very little activity when it should be thriving. A few subtle changes and I believe it would thrive.

It has a lot of activity, just not in the forums.

People seem to think that others will find them via osmosis. lol

What this site really is, is a Wild West forum cleverly disguised as a music site.

Don't break the oath.
And if you invite it in, you may not quit.

After reading the first post; if you look beyond the frustration and criticism, I think the point is this site could be so much more if some communication was allowed. This isn’t the first person surprised about having to pay to send a message.

It appears that a gazillion people register on the site; indicate what they do or what they are looking for, and then think other members can contact them. They may not realize for a while (if ever) that you can’t do that unless you pay. Or they do find out it costs money to communicate, and just disappear. Also, they didn’t join to use the forums (look at the pages and pages of “0” posts in the member index), so they drift away and may not come back. No communication ever takes place. The “active” members appear to be less than 1% of registered members. [As I write this, the site has over a half-million registered users, and 3 are online.]

I am trying to be constructive in the things I say here, because I have seen comments from members who have had great experiences meeting folks and putting bands or collabs together. This is fantastic, but maybe it could even be better. There is so much talent here to be tapped, or just discovered and enjoyed, but easier communication would sure help.

Considering other kinds of no-cost sites, and ones that allow messaging between members, I think if messages were allowed here, the increase in traffic alone would more than pay the bills through advertising and products that could be sold. Maybe they could try allowing 5 messages per week, or something like that, and see what happens.

Also, if the site showed which members are “Premium”, you would know who could and could not communicate.

Regarding member activity, I have seen “Active over 1 month ago”, but haven’t seen anything longer than that. So it looks like this may also apply to 1 year, 5 years, etc. If they don’t deactivate members after a reasonable period of time (or list them as inactive), it is misleading to other members who might want to communicate.

Just some thoughts, but I am very new here. I’ll leave it to the “veterans” for more experienced input.

Agree with you man. The sheer size of this site and membership, it is startling how inactive it is.

For one thing it isn't a "stupid site". URL pages don't think. On another level Bandmix is only one of a very few musicians sites that have remained active.

Many musician sites have last posts days, weeks or months ago.

huh? Some of you saying this is one of the few musician sites that have remained active need to get out more.

talkbass.com : My last visit prior to today was Saturday night. There are 5,745 new posts since my last visit Saturday. Over 13 million posts.
Threads: 887,875, Posts: 13,483,232, Members: 226,162


marshallforum.com: Threads: 54,135, Posts: 911,759, Members: 35,074 Every forum is active as of yesterday. Plenty of threads and posts. You could spend almost the entire day on this site talking.

the gear page: over 9 million threads. Threads: 491,521, Posts: 9,342,012, Members: 120,712
every forum active as of yesterday.

There are several more but i'm not going to log into every single one of them and post the stats as I think I made my point. This site has very little activity when it should be thriving. A few subtle changes and I believe it would thrive.

I'm surprised that you didn't list EBay and Craigslist.

It has a lot of activity, just not in the forums.

People seem to think that others will find them via osmosis. lol

So you are saying there are a lot of paying members messaging to each other?

There isnt much going on here
If they banned politics there would be close to zero activity in the forum
The gear page is pretty cool BTW