Bob Findlay recently entered the "Riffstar 2009 Song Of The Year Competition" and had reached the # 2 position only to discover that he had 'vanished' from the site.
Findlay was alerted by an aquaintance who was intending to vote for him in the competition but was unable to locate him. On investigation Findlay found that, not only was he 'unsearchable,' he was unable to login. No reason was has been given for this.
He sent an email to Riffstar but, at time of writing, has received no response. Findlay contacted me late last night (AEST) regarding the matter with an attached copy of the email sent to Riffstar. On investigation I too was unable to locate him on the Riffstar site. Delving further I found quite a few discrepancies relating to the competition and to Riffstar.com itself.
Findlay received an email from Riffstar, the first in a considerable time, a few days prior to the begining of the the competition alerting him to the fact that competition entry closed in a few days. Reading the details on the site last night I noted with some confusion that it is, infact, still possible to enter the competition despite the fact that it closes in seven days from time of writing.
Having received no response from Riffstar Findlay is at a loss as to his total 'disappearance.' Known for his cynicism of the music industry Findlay did say to fans on entering the competition that he had ..."weilded..." and entered. He also describes the music industry as,"...a game."
With Bob Findlays 'incident' in mind I went to Alexa Internet Incorporated for further details on Riffstar.com.
Alexa has built an unparalleled database of information about sites that includes statistics, related links and more. All of this information can be found on Alexa's Site Overview pages, Traffic Detail pages and Related Links pages. To access these pages, simply type the URL of any site into the Alexa Search box. Alexa has lists of Top Sites available by country, language or in a category. You can download a free file of the global top million sites sorted by Alexa Traffic Rank.
I discovered more 'discrepancies' from Riffstars statement. Riffstar.com was infact registered as a domain in May, 2004 and not 2003 as stated. Alexa demographics also showed 'low user confidence' in Riffstar.com. Their claim of being "...websource for America's #1 online original music..." is also at odds Alexa Traffic Analytics where it is ranked 822,129 in America. A far cry from "...#1..." Globally Riffstar is ranked 2,069,406.
Based on the brief research above, which anyone has access to, these statistics are hardly surprising. To musicians and listeners alike I would suggest a cautious approach to Riffstar if they are able to treat artists such as Bob Findlay, who has obviously brought a lot of new visitors to the site, in such a flippant manner.
So in conclusion i IndieStorm suggest, all independent musicians read the "terms and conditions" of every site joined, and to be very wary before submitting your songs, music WORK etc, as there are unscrupulous sites out there that can TAKE your art, and dispose of you with a click!
About Alexa Internet
Founded in April 1996, Alexa Internet grew out of a vision of Web navigation that is intelligent and constantly improving with the participation of its users. Along the way Alexa has developed an installed based of millions of toolbars, one of the largest Web crawls and an infrastructure to process and serve massive amounts of data.
For users of Alexa's Toolbar and web site this has resulted in products that have revolutionized Web navigation and intelligence. For developers this has resulted in a set of tools unprecedented in scope allowing whole new services to be created on the Alexa data and platform.
Research all sites you are thinking of joining, google is your friend! Also check Alexa and similar sites!!!
Thank you to Derek Harris for the authority to enter this blog entry.
