After months of silence from most of the projects I backed, suddenly several of them are shipping out rewards, in time for Christmas. I got my cool Pogo bunny USB stick and T-shirt just the other day, the T-shirt, CD and poster from Haley Harris and Ben Nippes, and woke this morning to a shipping notice from the pack light peeps.
We could soon break 50% on the percentage of projects actually seen through to completion =)
You’d think the people who work at Real Networks would treat the only division that actually has a future, Rhapsody, with a little respect. They are the only part of the company that has any sort of potential for revenue and profit these days. And yet they managed to release an update that completely breaks the Rhapsody client. That means they literally didn’t do a single smoke test on the product before release. Talk about a massive display of incompetence. If I worked in QA at Real networks, I’d be polishing my resume, because I would know I deserve to be fired. I mean for crimmeny’s sake, you just days ago announced your big acquisition and transition for all the Napster people, and you break your own product during that critical getting-to-know-the-new-guys phase. You might as well have poured all the money you spent on the Best Buy customers down the drain for all the goodwill you’ve wasted.
Another one of the kickstarter projects has gotten their cover song done.
Out of the 7 musical projects I’ve sponsored on Kickstarter so far, only one has delivered everything they were supposed to, and recorded their cover song. One is in jail, awaiting deportation, so who knows where that project is going. Another responded to my first email and says they’ll have my stuff in a month or two. One responded within hours of my posting something to the project page, having never responded to emails, and sent me a picture of the package about to go into the mail this morning. A third, though not responding directly to my query, has posted another update which, while setting the stage for more disappointment (the artist apparently never had plans to follow through on the physical discs unless he got a regular label to sponsor him, grar), claims that someday he will. One artist has made no response at all, and seems to be actively ignoring kickstarter now, since she is posting to her facebook and website.
The 3 projects that are for physical goods seem to be progressing more reliably, if status updates are to be believed, though one is getting into the danger zone of non-communication (2 weeks since “shipping soon!”).
The software project isn’t saying much, but their expected lead time is a bit longer.
In the end, we shall see. I certainly won’t be sponsoring anything more, until Kickstarter come up with some way of escrowing the funds to ensure people get what they paid for.
It’s a sad sad world, when “Good news, Pogo is being prepared for deportation” really is good news.
Amazing video-music artist Pogo is sitting in an American jail, thanks to an incompetent booking agent for his U.S. tour.
bummer
Due to some shenanigans oh so typical in the music biz, it looks like Pogo is stuck in some sort of immigration mess, and the rest of the tour has been canceled. Sucks, but could be worse. I really wish he’d finish the remix project already though.
I think the album title caught my eye in a is-this-an-album-of-elvis-costello-covers-i-see sort of way, and on Rhapsody, all the music is ‘free’, so download I did, without bothering to look beyond the track titles enough to see they weren’t Elvis songs. Turns out to be a fairly decent rock album, very peppy and energetic, without a single song skipped so far, and every one a toe-tapper even on first listen.
Recommended – Costello Music
I was listening to Crazy Train on Rhapsody (Ozzy should thank Charlie Sheen for the choice of roast theme music), and noticed that out of almost 200 different versions, Ozzy had 20, while Dee Snider of Twisted Sister fame had 43. More amusing still, many of those are workout-techno covers that give Dee Snider ‘originally by’ credit instead of Ozzy.
No, this is not a link to some sort of gay porn site. Rather, it’s a how-did-I-miss-this-one link to a disney-sponsored cover album of the Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack, The Jack 2 Pack
