li
Sellaband addict in waiting
Posts: 35
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Post by li on Feb 25, 2010 21:40:34 GMT
kompis: No idea! I can only come up with the fact that the new CEO is German and his lawyers probably too, and considering that the new documents look like a rush job, much must have gone lost in translation. I've seen even poorer translations done by certified translators especially from German to English so it wouldn't surprise me at all. I've also seen Dutch and German lawyers write contracts in poor English and pass them on to their clients.
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Post by Lucretia on Feb 25, 2010 21:52:42 GMT
FWIW My advice at the moment would be to NEITHER accept NOR decline the new T&C due to the inclusion of paragraph 8.1 in the believer T&C. If Johan (TalentCast) understood it right (I haven't read everything yet), if you neither accept nor decline, after two weeks it will be automatically accepted. That's the way I read it too. But rather take a day or two when hopefully the implications of either decision become clear, rather than rush into one just because it's the only way to get at your profile.
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Post by wyando on Feb 25, 2010 22:15:47 GMT
With so many people reading the T&C, can somebody sum up the changes? Although I've never withdrawn money from my SAB-Account, knowing that I could was always nice. I don't see a reason why we couldn't withdraw _our_ money as long it isn't tied in a reached target. Changing this clause will damage the philosophy of fanfunding/crowdfunding. Regarding fees and administration, parts will become too expensive to be bought one by one as needed (to support an artist). Wy, neither pushed one of the buttons yet on my profile.
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Post by grooveduke on Feb 25, 2010 23:07:06 GMT
I already posted in the other thread. But I am also of the opinion that you have nothing to lose by waiting a little while and see where we're at when the smoke clears. If you want to participate in the site just register a new account. I've got a bunch of money tied up in gift parts that I can't get back anyway, that I purchased to sell to believers at gigs. I'll probably log in with one of those.
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Post by WalterM on Feb 25, 2010 23:38:36 GMT
I think those T&C changes were inevitable if you wish SellaBand to survive and are in my opinion nothing more but a formality. I can certainly live with it and I'm glad SellaBand is back online.
Note that there still is revenue sharing and you can withdraw money earned through sales and revenue sharing. The only change is that you can't withdraw the money from the parts you bought. So if you bought one $ 10,- you won't be able to withdraw the $ 10,- but you can change artist. This is fair in my opinion. I wouldn't be surprised if believers withdrawing invested money back is one of the main reasons the SAB subsidiary gone bust.
Nothing wrong and if you are a true believer in music I'd accept.
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Post by Lucretia on Feb 25, 2010 23:46:19 GMT
I think those T&C changes were inevitable if you wish SellaBand to survive and are in my opinion nothing more but a formality. I can certainly live with it and I'm glad SellaBand is back online. Well Walter, if Sellaband is to survive it needs artists who can actually raise their targets. And given the changes to the T&C, whilst projects are basically open-ended the reality is artists will need to be able to meet those targets within two weeks of signing up. Not impossible - Hind certainly managed it with Phase 1, but has not managed it with phase 2. No other artist has managed it at all. None of the other 40+ projects to get funded, nor the thousands of projects who have been (or are still) on Sellaband. So what do you think the probability of an artist signing up now being able to make their target in two weeks is? That should tell you just how likely Sellaband is to be able to survive with these new conditions
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Post by WalterM on Feb 25, 2010 23:51:37 GMT
I think you're misinterpreting. The change is in 4.5 with regards to (not) withdrawing already invested money. No artist is forced to reach target in 2 weeks.
It's the believers that are concerned. First we had the right to withdraw our invested money any time. Now the period is limited to two weeks. That's all and just a formality preventing from SellaBand going bankrupt again.
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cat
Sellaband addict in waiting
Posts: 10
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Post by cat on Feb 25, 2010 23:52:41 GMT
I think those T&C changes were inevitable if you wish SellaBand to survive and are in my opinion nothing more but a formality. I can certainly live with it and I'm glad SellaBand is back online. Walter: there is no bancruptcy clause. No mention as for what will happen if the new SellaBand goes down too. I know it is very, very unlikely because since it has happened once, it will for sure not happen again (just in case: I am being sarcastic), but what if? Now it looks like in case of another bankruptcy, the believers would lose all the money. After two weeks, you cannot withdraw your money. What if you spend/have spent your last eurocent to support your favourite band, or an artist who is your close friend or family member, so you are ready to support them "a bit" more, and then the artist for whatever important reason pulls out? You can move this money to another artist but you can't ever get it back. The current Terms and Conditions are too risky in my opinion.
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thor
Sellaband addict in waiting
Posts: 42
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Post by thor on Feb 25, 2010 23:57:11 GMT
So if you bought one $ 10,- you won't be able to withdraw the $ 10,- but you can change artist. This is fair in my opinion. I wouldn't be surprised if believers withdrawing invested money back is one of the main reasons the SAB subsidiary gone bust. What does SAB loose if believers request refunds? The interest from the money on the escrow account? Nothing big. Even if believers withdrew money, SAB still earned the socalled "transaction fee" (or at least parts of it) when the parts were bought. In the future, they will even have earned 10% + X%. Sorry, it makes no sense to me at all, this new rule, and it surely won't help to create trust... And I agree with Catself, this part of the T&C is especially problematic for all the 1-artist-only believers. So... expect PE to fall down below $50k within the next two weeks..
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Post by mawa on Feb 26, 2010 0:00:20 GMT
Hey Walter, need some more lubricant??? Don't be too shy to ask
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Post by Lucretia on Feb 26, 2010 0:02:40 GMT
I think you're misinterpreting. The change is in 4.5 with regards to (not) withdrawing already invested money. No artist is forced to reach target in 2 weeks. It's the believers that are concerned. First we had the right to withdraw our invested money any time. Now the period is limited to two weeks. That's all and just a formality preventing from SellaBand going bankrupt again. OK let me phrase things a slightly different way as you seem to be missing the point. As a believer, why would you wait for more than two weeks for an artist to reach their target after you bought parts in them? If the artist gives in after more than two weeks you are now unable to withdraw money from the site, even if there is no other artist on there that you are interested in. Whilst the artist has no fixed time limit, the reality is that any smart believer will not wait for more than two weeks for a project to finish before requesting their money back. And given the fees involved, it might even be said that a smarter believer probably won't buy parts in the first place unless they are absolutely convinced an artist can hit their target within 2 weeks of them doing so. So the reality is, believers will not buy parts and artists will not get funded. Either that or believers that do buy parts are going to get trapped by naivety and then find they bought into a pyramid scheme that they can't get money back out of (essentially what the new T&C are) I don't think Sellaband can survive under these terms and conditions. Not unless someone has a magic wand to wave that creates a completed project every two weeks.
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Post by WalterM on Feb 26, 2010 0:03:23 GMT
In the past SellaBand has been perfectly clear that the money is in escrow. Once 50K has been reached the money is released to the artists project. I think this will still be the case with the new rule that makes the proces more stable. In the unlikely event SellaBand goes bust again the money from believers that is outstanding in non 50K artists can only be touched from escrow to release it back to the believers. This was, and as far as I understand still is the structure but it could be a good thing to ask the new owners to clarify this.
In the past SAB was misused as piggy bank. Buy parts when the dollar is low and sell when the dollar is high (or the other way around lol) and you had an easy profit because you could sell back any time. And who did take the currency risk? Indeed SellaBand.
This sounds like a normal procedure to me.
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Post by WalterM on Feb 26, 2010 0:09:00 GMT
@lu: this risk was there in the past too and how many people did it? Only believers misusing the system. Nothing changed in that repect.
I think you guys make it more than an issue than it really is and I'm happy to see more believers buying parts already the last 24 hrs. Let's get back on track and make it work instead of spreading missinformation and trying to undermine attempts to save SellaBand.
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Post by Lucretia on Feb 26, 2010 0:12:37 GMT
Actually Walter the problem of currency risk would have been negated if Sellaband operated the same way similar sites do. i.e. that no money is actually taken from believers until there is enough to reach the artist target, particularly if there is only a set amount of time for an artist to reach their budget. But this is a route the old Sellaband didn't want to go down (who knows whether the new one will - at this stage I'd consider it an improvement)
In actual fact the fees involved with both buying and selling tend to cancel out any gains from currency conversion. Unless there's a huge shift, in which case you might make something.
And I'm not sure where your misinformation quote comes from?
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cat
Sellaband addict in waiting
Posts: 10
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Post by cat on Feb 26, 2010 0:12:42 GMT
So if you bought one $ 10,- you won't be able to withdraw the $ 10,- but you can change artist. This is fair in my opinion. I wouldn't be surprised if believers withdrawing invested money back is one of the main reasons the SAB subsidiary gone bust. What does SAB loose if believers request refunds? The interest from the money on the escrow account? Nothing big. Even if believers withdrew money, SAB still earned the socalled "transaction fee" (or at least parts of it) when the parts were bought. In the future, they will even have earned 10% + X%. Sorry, it makes no sense to me at all, this new rule, and it surely won't help to create trust... It makes more sense if you ask yourself if that money is indeed still on the escrow account after the two weeks! As far as I understand, there is no clause about it, and it seems like after two weeks this money becomes part of SellaBand's assets. Dagmar wrote to TalentCast: www.talentcast.nl/showmessages.php#msg-213 that they had to make the change to comply to financial and banking regulations. We suspect this is because banks would like to have control over the believers' money in case of a second bankruptcy. Without a clear bankruptcy clause these are unacceptable conditions! And I agree with Catself, this part of the T&C is especially problematic for all the 1-artist-only believers. So... expect PE to fall down below $50k within the next two weeks.. Not only for the 1-artist-only believers but also for 1-artist-mainly believers, or even 1-artist-a-bit-more believers...
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