MusicFestNW Charges Bands

There seems to be something fishy going on with this year’s MusicFestNW. The annual Willamette Week sponsored music festival has decided to outsource its artist selection board to a corporation called Sonicbids. I went to Sonicbids website and discovered that they are a band promotion company based out of Boston, MA. Basically, they will set up an online profile (similar to MySpace) for your band and even you gigs…for a small fee of course. This all sounds fine, but what does this company have to to with Portland’s MusicFestNW?

So far, I am yet to hear any explanation from WW as to why they chose to forgo their usual (free and locally run) selection process for an expensive out of state one. In a festival with only a tiny number of slots available for “wild card” bands, the company has already collected $30, 450 from over 670 bands. I wonder, does Sonicbids have any intentions of stopping the flow of money when the band slots are filled? Maybe it’s just me, but these seem like questions bands should be asking before submitting their application to this year’s MFNW.

What do you all think? We would love to hear your thoughts…

** NOTE ** A Business Development Representative from Sonicbids recently contacted us to clarify some of the points I made in my post. I’m posting what he sent below. It turns out the fee is $12.95 to apply. I read the $45 fee on several other blogs and, unfortunately, took their word on that. Anyhow, I’ve removed that part now and I apologize to our readers for that error.

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• Sonicbids is never involved with the band selection process. We’re a submission platform that Willamette Week, the festival’s organizer, uses to review bands and make its locally-informed picks.

• MusicFestNW has used Sonicbids over the last three years to bring over 100 emerging artists to perform at the festival. All of the selected bands are paid.

• Submission fees are not the creation of Sonicbids or MusicFestNW. Festivals use their fees to promote, to compensate artists and often to add additional performance slots.

• The submission fee for MusicFestNW was not $45, as mentioned in your post. It was $10 for existing Sonicbids members or $12.95 for new artist members.