Hey all.

I've been getting pretty frustrated.  For many months, SDRE hasn't had an 
official page.  This wouldn't be such a big deal.  Ansigod's sdre site 
rocked, and "In the blue" is one of the most complete and up to date fansites 
I've ever seen for ANY band.

I work for a web design firm...a small one.  We've put together multi-million 
dollar e-commerce sites in half the time it's taken artistdirect to do what 
looks like nothing. SDRE releases it's new album in 5 days, there is NO 
promotional support for this on the part of artistdirect aside to a link to 
timebomb and a piddly banner ad an 8th grader could put together in an hour.  
Frankly, I don't think they give a flying fuck about SDRE.  Their business is 
band sites...it's not like they have to do something they haven't done a 
million times already.

Like I was saying, this wouldn't be such a big deal, except...SDRE has to eat 
and feed their families.  I could be pre-ordering The Rising Tide on 
sunnydayrealestate.com right now if artistdirect gave a damn.  I could be 
replacing the LP2 fly t-shirt I wore to bare threads right now.  Most people 
vaguely know about SDRE.  They sure as hell aren't going to know about 
timebombrecordings.com or nexusx.com/sdre.  I would assume that a significant 
chunk of SDRE fans don't know about the tour, or TRT.  To put it bluntly, 
SDRE's getting stiffed out of a lot of money that they need to live and make 
music.

Normally I wouldn't post something like this to SDRE-L.  My hope is that 
SOMEBODY who can light a fire under artistdirects ass is listening here.  
Saying this to timebomb would be preaching to the choir...they already made 
their own SDRE page to pick up AD's slack.  There is no address on AD's page 
to send email to their web crew.  The only thing I can hope for is to rant 
here, and maybe SDRE's lawyers, label, fans and members can organize and do 
something.

I know how web production works.  AD's backend is already in place.  To be 
conservative, a month of requirements/documentation,  3 weeks of design 
making comps, 2 weeks of production making slices from them, and another 3 
weeks of coding markup.  QA for another 2 then switch the DNS.  4.5 weeks/
month...so 3.25 months to build this thing. SDRE signed with time bomb LAST 
YEAR!!!  When did Ansigod's sunydayrealestate.com go down...longer than 3.25 
months.  And that was probably AFTER requirements/documentation was done!

As a point, timebomb put together a pretty good sdre section.  They even have 
TRT in their store.  This is AFTER A.D. was "working" on this for a while.

I'm tired of waiting on sdre.com.  I'm tired of SCOURING the net for info 
that should be available to me at sdre.com by now.  But that's nothing 
compared to how mad I am that because artistdirect's web team is moving 
slower than a 3 toed sloth in a tarpit, that SDRE is losing out on their 
livelyhood.  Record sales don't feed a band....they see hardly any of that.  
Going bankrupt is fairly common, and could easily happen to SDRE.  It sure 
would help if artistdirect would get off of their collective asses and open 
up a revenue stream that already existed before they stepped in.  Given, 
Ansigod's e-commerce merch was still in development, but at least there used 
to exsist a means of getting SDRE stuff on that site...contributing to SDRE's 
food and rent.

So, to conclude this rant.  If anybody has ANY clout with the situation, 
please do what you can, and let me know how I and the rest of the fans can 
help you.

And as for flaming my criticism.  I work in the web application development, 
I know what's up, save your breath, I've heard all the excuses already.

whew...now I can go back to being calm
Dan T.



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