Current mood:amused

When the president of iLLUMINA Records commented on my last blog, I was stoked. I thought that maybe I was making some progress. Then, less than 5 hours later, I find it gone. Removed. Crushed, that I would have to start over to possibly get a reaction and a movement towards change. But like any good internet user, I PRINTED THAT THING OFF. twice. So here is my response to the comment. Ron's comments are in blue, mine will be in red text. Black text areas are parts of remarks that Ron initially commented on.

Wow! I guess I should start out by thanking whoever put this page up. You have become a vital member of our customer service staff. And for free to boot. In all seriousness, I want to take this opportunity to address the concerns, comments and questions that have been raised on this page/blog. And I do not intend to respond in some uptight fashion. I am a ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Boston street kid and I will be speaking directly from the heart, so hang on to your seats.

When I started both Illumina and Ground Control I had a simple goal—to prevent drunk driving fatalities and to simultaneously help local bands promote themselves in the process. Along those lines, please consider the following:

1-Illumina Records is one of the fastest growing music business companies in the world...:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

However, this does not excuse poor service to clients. There is such a thing as "too much of a good thing." The amount of your companie's clientel should not have exceeded the amount of employee power you had.

2-Illumina Records is the fastest growing compilation record company in the world.

Again, quality over quanity. It maybe growing so fast because bands are being told false info on what the company can do for them (the bands)

3-Illumina Records has signed over 1000 bands and worked with over 3800 musicians in the last ten months. www.illuminarecords.com/artists_main.php

Congrats, but how many of them get any sort of personal, one on one treatment? Which bands are still together? How many 'active bands' do you still work for? Or should i say, works for you?

4-Ground Control is the largest internet-based drunk driving prevention campaign in the world. www.preventdrunkdriving.org

This is odd becasue all of the SADD, MADD, and SLS groups have no idea who you are. The "largest internet-based drunk driving prevention campaign in the world" surely must have crossed paths with one of these groups in some way shape or form.

5-Illumina and Ground Control has sent out and/or our web pages have been viewed by or been visited by over 4 million people in the last year.

Break that down for me can you? How many web site visits? How many Myspace visits (on your main sites, not the state/city sites)? How many myspace add attempts? And how many Myspace friends? According to my calculations, you should have sent out about 3 millions myspace friends requests. Thats 100,000 per local are/state (as stated in the contract) times all 30+ CDs.

6-Every single one of our outbound and inbound pages has featured local unsigned bands. www.myspace.com/cuspmag05

These are all internal pages. Show me some advertisment that is not on a web page for Ground Control, Illumina, or any affiliates. Don't count myspaces. That is free. Dont count forums either, again free to you.

We have grown from two guys with an idea to a company that, as of today, has over 50 people working in some capacity.

Where have all the people gone that seem to "leave for personal reasons"? We have a list of over 30 employees. I am interested in seening how many of them work there still, and the real reasons why so many seem to have vansished. Are they real?

In defense of some of the folks complaining here, we have had some growing pains due to the meteoric growth of the company. But the flipside of this is we have made every effort imaginable to rectify any and all problems that we have had placed before us. And let me take this even further. If after answering the items below anyone feels that they are not satisfied, then please contact us at 978-922-5041 and we will deal with the issue at hand.

How about we (myself, the other bands, and your companies) deal with the problems at hand right here, because i am sure everyone wants to hears all the different stories they were told. Call the number only takes the poor images of your company off the internet and into sounds waves. PLEASE USE THIS SITE. UNITY=POWER

We are not a scam and to insinuate so is deplorable. A child died in my arms as a direct result of a drunk driving accident and I decided to make a difference.

I dont think that anyone here has doubted the cause. Just the operations within, and how the messages are ultimatly delivered, and how they were suppose to be delivered.

 There are articles that are easily located on our website that clearly show that I have dedicated myself to the fight against teenage drunk driving since the late 1980's. Are any of you not capable of seeing that it would be impossible for us to carry out some scam for almost twenty years?

Internet scamming and marketing schemes have only been around for about 10 or so years. And the fact that your LLC has only been around for 11 months (11/15/2006) permits me to think that you have only been doing this for about 11 months. Although you have been associated with other companies and other campaings, ILLUMINA MEDIA, LLC is a young company.

 Do you see the pages on all our sites that feature the names and faces of American children who have died due to drunk driving? Do you think that their loved ones would allow this to occur if this was a scam? It is clear to anyone that looks at our sites that many, many bands have achieved great success due to our association. Please consider this. www.illuminarecords.com/dedications.php
www.illuminarecords.com/press.php

Wow!, 16 out of 1000 bands had reported press coverage. That is 1.6%. Also note that these are town papers that I have never heard of. Not saying its not cool to be in them, but the kid who won the pie eating contest at the county fair gets into those same papers.

1-We have had multiple bands appear on multiple records.
Phil Ayoub, Lost Kauze and Fusion Mob, to name a few…

So... if they were happy with the situation, why change. I dont doubt that you do some work. Look at Margot McDonald. She is everywhere on your sites. She is making out like a bandit on this whole thing. But kudos to her, she is a very talented artist.

2-We have had hundreds of bands call us to say that they received local airplay.

Local music scenes vary all across the US. My band gets local airplay. Go US! I would never in a million years give that credit to you guys. Local bands get local airplay from playing shows in the area, and leaving people wanting more. Not by a compilation disc scrolling across a local radio station's music director's desk, so there is no way to prove that airplay is directly linked to being in Ground Control. And there is no way to prove that you have sent the press kits to the stations you say you have. Oh wait there is, I could contact them and see if the program director, music director, or any other staffer that handles new media has gotten it. Oh I did. And a certain program manager contacted me this morning and said he had never heard of the disc, never heard of the company, and never saw the epk.

3- We have had hundreds of bands call us to say that they received local press.
http://www.illuminarecords.com/news/

Again, I have googled and searched and found no archives of bands in papers, magizines, or websites for something other than your internal productions, or for their own website pages. I sure there are some out there, such as the link under the "press" page, but again, a business minded band can get in small media papers, without paying 300-800 dollars.

4- We have had hundreds of bands call us to say that they received slots on bigger and better shows. Such as Trailer Choir who recently opened for Toby Keith.

Who is to say they wouldn't have gotten those slots without you guys? Also, did you book these slots? Or did the band do all of the soliciting, booking and promotion for those shows themselves? When I called illumina to get help booking, I saw told all they could do was make flyers (which still cost loads of money to print) and a few contacts that were surely (&easily) copied off of the internet on a page I found days before.

5-We have had bands appear on television.
http://www.illuminarecords.com/press_main.php

With a 1000 bands on you record label, it would be hard for at least one of your bands not to get on TV. My band has been on the TV many a time, and none had nothing to do with Ground Control. I am sure you didn't call a TV station and say "put so and so on the TV, thanks." 

6-We have quotes from music business heavyweights as well as DJs, magazines,and newspapers all praising our efforts. http://www.illuminarecords.com/media_quotes.php

Who wouldn't back an anti-drunk diving campaign? The message is a good thing, there is no doubt about that. That's what these people are commenting on and endorsing. They are not endorsing how the clients and members of the LLC were misled by employees on the phone, by email, or neglected, and most of all they probably assume, as I did, that you are a non-profit company. This is not the case. Do you think that you would have endorsements if everyone that assumed you were a non profit, knew that you in fact a profit company? Would you have that many positive testimonials from your own bands, had they had time to see how your company is really run? No, you get our "We love iLLUMINA statements way way before anyone has a bad experience.

7-The bands that work at it sell their CDs easily.
Just ask Helicon from Detroit, who called us asking for more CDs after selling all 50 of their initial batch in UNDER 3 HOURS.

Again, KUDOS to Helicon! I am glad that you could manage to do that. The truth of the matter is, I could care less about the CDs. They showed up at my house in the same box that everyone else's did. I used them as a promo tool to sell more t-shirts. The CDs looked nice (beside the typos I have heard about) and compilations are a good thing to be able to sell both for a band, and all the bands on the disc. However, selling a CD at $12 is not marketable. In a store, a compilation with all national touring acts will cost you between 4 and 9 dollars. These contain from 10 to 45 songs, some even having double disks, or DVDs in the package. The CDs you guys made, in MOST markets was simply unmarketable.

Look, I could put up a sister site and have all the bands that have love us tell everyone how great we are, but I will instead use this page as an unheralded opportunity to build customer service. I cannot thank you enough for this and I encourage you to contact me immediately to discuss a position with us. You have amazing customer service qualities and perhaps you could use them to assist Illumina in better serving our bands and acts. Now I will address some of these issues. http://www.illuminarecords.com/A&R/testimonials.php

Thanks for the offer, but I tend to use my skills wisely.

Here is the part when he breaks down the comments left on my page by other bands involved with Ground Control:

OK here is what we are telling people, if you have the money do it; it's a good cause! FYI you can write it off on your taxes (we did) we are a Ministry however not just a band so we are a 501 C3 non-profit organization. We did not get anything out of it other than the CD's but that's all we expected to get. We've not see the promotion blitz they said, (Although they did contact our local paper which was pretty cool!)

Okay, let's start here. These guys are a personal favorite of mine, as I loved one of their tunes. When asked whether or not to participate, they say yes. Then they say they didn't receive anything but that we contacted their local paper. I really don't know what these folks are saying or whether they love us or hate us.

Ron, address the issue here please. Where was the "promotional blitz" that this band did not receive?

CUSP? What? CUSP Who? Not seen anything from them? Bottom line if you have the money and believe in the cause as we do, go for it! If you don't have the cash to spare then don't bother it's not going to be a huge promotion tool for your group!

Hope this helps!
RuwA'
Not just a band it's Ministry

This kills me! Every single band that we have worked with has been given the opportunity to be involved with Cusp. We are getting ready to publish the second issue and the first issue has been viewed by over one hundred and twenty thousand people. And those are dedicated visits to the site. When Illumina contacted all our acts regarding the first issue, we sent out over one thousand emails. This was something that all these folks paid for and all we wanted was info to help publicize their music and bands. Guess how many answered us and provided us with info? Eighty four! Anyone that cannot find Cusp is simply not looking. There is a direct link to Cusp on over 100 web based pages.

So they didn't do CUSP? It is all internal anyways. Has anyone outside of the ILLUMINA MEDIA, LLC ever heard of CUSP before the bands told them about it? Has the LLC done anything to advertise CUSP outside of their own websites? About the first issue, was it really viewed by 120,000 different people? How can you track a "dedicated visit?" And as far as sending out 1,000 informing people about CUSP, don't you have 1000 BANDS/employees? That seems like a 'no brainer'. And all of the links for CUSP on these 100 web pages could be the "…100 plus myspace pages…" that you own and run internally? So unless someone stumbles across a band that had a link up for a Ground Control site link on theirs myspace, then clicked on it, and found a CUSP link on that next page and clicked it, it would be rather difficult to find CUSP's site?

Very good comments! I agree that we all need to be mature about it. Some blogs are going to be posted with some facts you might want to read. These facts are coming strait from ILLUMINA. So please keep coming to this myspace and look for the new blogs. You will want to read them! Thanks for all the help and I hope something great can come of this!


Here is the reality. We got scammed. There are so many of these things out there. In the end it just comes to being are own fault because we bought into it. Tonight at our show we're going to sell the c.d. for $1-$2. Trying to get a lil bit back. We got really mad and angry about it but you just have to have a mature attitude about it, go against our human nature and take take the blame. We got ourselves into it and the only way to get out is to move on.
God Bless
Last Chance

I must have missed something here. This band received their CDs, and now that they cannot sell them they are claiming they got scammed. Every single day we receive over a dozen requests from bands for more discs. Some weeks it totals over a hundred requests for additional CDs. I don't want to sound cold, but if you are in a band and you cannot sell 8 to 10 discs to promote your band being involved with the largest internet drunk driving campaign in history, it is time to re-evaluate your career choices.

Although many of the bands feel the discs were not up to par I think that the disc showing up was a milestone in itself. What else have they done that they told bands they were going do? Although, I have heard from some bands that the tracks on the disc were going to be remixed, and in some cases re-recorded. None of that happened to my knowledge.

they haven't done shit for us at all. We were put on two discs for the price of one and both discs sucked!! we were the only metal band put on a cd of shitty pussy pop rock shit.. no one wants the disc and neither do we!

7means8

I love this band. What a wonderful way to promote your local scene, by calling them all pussies! I am glad that this person happened to mention the word "ROCK". At no time and in nothing ever written by Illumina, do we guarantee that the performers will in fact enjoy the other bands on the CDs. By nature, a compilation CD has one or more linking elements. In our case we have three.

1-The CD and all of the discs participants are fighting drunk driving.

2-The CD is Genre Specific. IE: Rock, Country, or Hip Hop.

3-The CD is Geographically Specific.

However, I have to agree with the band on one point. A CD like yours for them is a bit unmarketable, even as a compilation. The genres on compilations are usually fairly similar. Ron, can you sit there and tell me rock, country, and hip hop are genre specific? The world of rock and roll is gone Ron. Hardcore, pop, surf, metal, death metal, screamo, emo, dance, soft, classic, folk, ect… the list goes on. These are today's genres. Want to sell more discs? You should section off the bands by DETAILED genres, rather than by their location.

Hey,
Sorry to throw a wrench in everybody's discussion:

We paid $500.00 for 50 cds. We haven't sold 1. That's ok though, we didn't expect to sell them. We just wanted to be part of a compilation album with other unsigned musicians. It was more for us than anything else. Sure we hoped that using the Prevention of Drunk Driving was on the up, maybe it is maybe it's not.

Can anyone actually look at our website, our 100 plus myspace pages, the hundreds of drunk driving prevention posters on the pages and ask if we are not on the up and up? Can you look at all the above and actually ask yourself if we are not promoting drunk driving awareness? Also, while the author of this response is being extremely fair, please note the fact that he hasn't sold a single disc. If he is trying, then I find it impossible that a single disc hasn't been sold.

I can say you are not doing heck of a lot to promote against drunk driving. I'd say the bands are doing that. Want to make a difference? Organize shows for these bands to play at, and let their voices be heard. This is how you can get your message out. The only thing that the public hears about your companies, is what they find on your myspaces/web pages. Any other advertising I have seen/heard has been from bands involved with you.

The thing that has been constructive is the fact that Bands are coming together. I have heard about more local talent all over the US than I would have heard on my own. There is some excellent talent out there.

Eureka! At last someone gets it…lol. This is one of our goals to create a huge community of local bands across the country. And it is working. We have dozens of bands that have contacted us to tell us of joint ventures between bands.

Consider this the biggest uniting of bands you have created. The only way bands could get things done, was to team up and do all the work themselves. I know this, because I did just that. Illumina was little, to no help other than the consistent offer to make flyers. Anyone with simple Photoshop skills could do this in about 5-10 minutes.


the fact that local bands actually have a national voice even if Illumina is legit or not. We just didn't get our hopes up with them. Regardless, we would do it again because we never would have heard of any of your bands if it wasn't for them.

Thank you to whoever wrote this. Even if you did question our legitimacy, you were fair and open-minded about it.

I am sorry, but other bands are normally are not fans of other bands in the sense that they will go out and see them, or buy their merch. Not to sound shallow, but music is a business, and in this business venture we were misled into thinking  it was packaged deal as a public-promotional tool. Not a networking scheme for bands to unite with other bands across the nation that they will most likely never see, or play with. Sorry, but it is the truth.


Keep your money. you will not make it back. no one wants to buy a compilation album and besides being "nice" or "friendly" people, i don't look to favorably on this organization.
ah what i could do with that 600 bucks right now...

punks

Ben Bradshaw

Well, at least Ben called us "nice" and "friendly" before he referred to us as "punks". I have to disagree with his assessment that "no one" wants to purchase compillation albums. Hundreds of millions of compilation records are sold every year. The question that Ben should be asking himself is why "no one" wants to buy any from him? I have hundreds of bands contacting me asking for more discs to sell. So I will suggest to Ben to look in the mirror.

"Hundreds of millions of compilation records are sold every year." There are about 301,139,947 people in the US today. If you have sold "hundreds of millions" I think that more people in the US would know about the disc, and the company. "Hundreds of millions" is a bold statement. Also note you keep no track of actual sale, but just what you sell to the bands. Do you consider this a "sale?" On the last years compilations, there were about 600 bands (est. @ 20x30=600). If each band had 50 discs, that would be 30,000. To sell 100,000,000  each band would have to sell 166,666 disc apiece. I haven't pulled my share on that. And neither did Ben. Infact, if Helicon kept at 50 Cds per every 3 hours, it would take them 416 days to sell 166,666 discs. Hmm…that's over a year. How many are you selling at the LLC, because it's not adding up out here on the streets. And that is FOR 100,000,000 CDs, not "hundreds of millions" as you have claimed to sell.

This is great! We really hope that the money went to drunk driving. Should we call Dateline?!?!

Incarnations of Ed

Please contact Dateline. That would be the best thing to EVER happen to us!

Yeah, I'm sure you would like us bands to help promote you for profit anti-drunk driving campaign some more.

i'm glad this discussion has become more widespread. i've kind of stopped paying attention to all illumina records business because THEY DO NOT HELP US ANYMORE. i have not gotten one email from them (save the occasional "we've updated our site!" baloney) concerning new opportunities for the bands in a long long time...it's interesting to see that this still seems to be the case with other projects since the NYC one.

-brandon/bushwhack

Ridiculous is my only response to this one. We routinely send out updates and I am sorry Brandon, but maybe we lost your email address. As for opportunities, we have contacted as many bands as we can (they do change emails on us on a regular basis) and offer to place them on and in all sorts of things. Maybe some of you are being missed, so I will include a series of links for all of you. They will show you how to promote yourself on all our sites. For free. And forever.

Missed and avoided are different. It is funny that with over 50 employees at your place, many bands have complained about not being able to contact you guys in the office. People seem to be out at lunch a lot there, or in a meeting. So if you could take time to get a hold of your bands around your meeting times, and lunches, that'd be great. Also when employees leave for "personal reasons," it would be nice to know. Multiple bands, as well as mine, had their A&R director leave ILLUMINA unannounced. This leaves people with no one to talk to and/or complain to.

INSERT LINKS HERE

Rockers for life was always advertising "1 Million Hits On Your Myspace Page". Well I've gotten some hits... from fans? No. Just from other bands who wanted to ask me if they should join up with Illumina. And I always tell them "NO!" I got no more hits than normal, no press, no exposure, no concert, no nothing. A big waste of time for me.

We NEVER said that you would receive"1 Million Hits On Your MySpace Page". We do send out 1 million friend requests to OUR MySpace pages with the bands on them, and link bands to over 1 million friends. Now, we have had an artist become the most listened to local artist on MySpace. We also have had hundreds of thousands of people coming to our sites on their own. Hundreds of bands have reported loads of MySpace activity. If people like your music, they will come. If people like your band, they will add. It is NOT our job to make people like you, only to expose you and your music and then let the market decide. Obviously, for whatever reason, this hasn't worked for this person. I never told anyone that they would be liked by the public.

Hmm… I think that Myspace is often too much focused on as success. I am not bummed that I did not get 1,000,000 hits, but I was under the impression that the Myspace media blitz would had some sort of effect on my Myspace site, and subsequently my web page. You are right, it is not your job to make people like us, but you do clearly state that it is your job to "expose you and your music…" Something I have not seen done.

Rockers For Life is supposed to raise awareness of drunk driving... It's funny how after dealing with them, getting drunk and crashing my car into a telephone poll didn't seem like too bad of an idea. Maybe if they closed down their organization a lot of the drunk driving would finally stop! It's the ultimate paradox.

This is hilarious. And this person should be ashamed of themselves. To poke fun at people killed in drunk driving accidents is the lowest of the low.

Sorry if I sounded like a jerk, i'm really just a laid back dude who is good to most everyone. But this is the first time i've gotten a chance to vent about this. I've counted my losses and I've moved on.

You did sound like a Jerk!

The only thing that I received from Illumina was the package of 50 CDs. Nothing else. I don't remember who at Illumina first contacted me. But all of the other promises of putting on concerts for us to headline, etc. have not come to pass.

JE

I love this as well. We offer to assist bands with shows promotionally. But we do not offer to create concerts for bands to headline. Never.

You say "never", but you may want to review who trains you're A&R staff. JE is not the only person to complain about the shows. In fact, in our inbox, the majority of bands and people mainly complain about the promised shows and CD releases. Also the help in booking college events, SADD/MADD hookups, and the national concert series that select bands were suppose to be involved in. What else do you do to "assist bands with shows promotionally?" Other than your infamous online posters.


illumina sucks.
all they did for us is take our money that we had to save for so long for.
tell them to give us back our money.
the cd's were awful. i wish they had someone on quality control duty

fly upright kite

Let me tell the whole world about this band. Want to know why we don't do CD release parties?Because of bands like Fly Upright Kite. We did do a show that they played at and on. Want to know how many people they attracted? ZERO to TEN. Liam told me for a week that he would be drawing 35 to 50 people and he didn't bring five. Since then, Liam has been a little whiner. My office is probably 15 miles from this kid's house. He can drive here in less than a half an hour. I have had 200 plus bands visit us. Why didn't Liam come and visit? Why hasn't he said "Hey Ron, I have a problem"? Is anyone reading this right now thinking that I don't care about the bands on the label? I am addressing this blog, aren't I? I care and I would have addressed Liam's problems as well. Liam, why don't you just call me? Come up here and talk to me and stop being a whiner.

Are you telling me that a 20 band CD release show, like the one I was told about while "signing," couldn't draw more than 5 people? And to add, YOU ARE THE PROMOTER. You just admitted that a show you had bands at, and should have "assist(ed) bands with shows promotionally" failed to draw more than 5 people. The Band may not be the problem in this case. It is a ridiculous statement to say that all CD release shows are cancelled because one went sour. If you can't help the band down the road promote and achieve some local success, how can you expect to help others across the country? If you in Boston can't build a scene, what makes you think that you can build one online for bands? What gave you the idea to promise bands promotions, booking, assistance and festival gigs if you have no plans on delivering? MOST IMPORTANTLY, How can you compensate any/all bands that turned down gigs, pasted up festivals, and lost money all summer waiting for YOUR festival(s) to start? Answer those Ron.

As a matter of fact, readers, why don't we use this as a test? Let's see if Liam wants to succeed and progress or continue to whine like a little girl. I am formally inviting Liam and the rest of his band to a face to face meeting at my office to discuss his problems with Illumina. I will update the rest of you. And, by the way, the offer is extended to all of you, but Liam lives right down the road. Let's have him come in, we will photograph it and document it, and I will have an opportunity to show all of you how much I care. And Liam and company will have the opportunity to tell you all about us. Or they can keep whining like little girls. What do you say Fly Upright Kite?

Liam, don't go there to meet him. It will just be used as an example on how he can make 1 band happy, one at a time. Also, just because Liam's band lives in the area, doesn't make him special. You want to meet someone to "smooth over" Ron? Come meet me. I'd come out there, but I have enough blue collar money invested into your white collar LLC. And complaining isn't whining, it's just a signal that you have something wrong with your system. You need to re-evaluate your company's morals, direction, and competence of the music industry. 

In closing, I do care and I hope this proves it. Please watch this page, as I will be checking it daily and responding.

Then why Ron did you delete your first comment less than 5 hours it was posted?

Ron Bellanti
President
Illumina Records

Posted by Nicole@iLLUMINA Records on September 10, 2007 - Monday at 2:59 PM

In closure to this response, I challenge you Ron, to answer all of the preceding questions, and these last ones below:

How is it that with Illumina Media LLC being just 11 months young, you had compilations released under the same names as the current ones well before the date of registration in the State of Massachusetts?

If you sell "hundreds of millions" compilations a year (doubtful, but stated), where does that money go? "Hundreds of millions" would turn a CD distributor that profits at about $10 a CD (considering you have all the graphic artists and CD duplication/packaging internally) into a multi-billion dollar company. (200,000,000 x 10 = 2,000,000,000)

I paid $600, while another paid $500, and another paid only $300, but one more paid $800. Why is this? Did the different amounts of money determine how many compilation discs the band received? Does the contract change based upon location of the bands? Based on economic profile of the band? Did more established bands get charged more? How did this come about? I, and all the other bands (especially the $800 ones) would love to know.

Is price the only difference that the bands could note on their contracts? Are there differences in layouts of the contracts? This would help explain to me why some bands are much more content than others. Maybe they were not told that there would be shows(verbally though A&R peoples)? Or maybe on the other peoples contracts, they were not told that "ILLUMINA RECORDS/GROUND CONTROL agrees to submit the below signed performers song to radio stations, universities, music publications & available industry/media available in the performers surrounding area." I have no proof so far that you have, and in one case a counter example claiming that they have never heard FROM you, and never heard OF you. I have the voicemail if you want to hear it sometime. Why would one of your staff members say that it was sent to this station if it hadn't?

As far as universities go, we have plenty in our surrounding area. Yet, I have no knowledge of them hearing about my Ground Control effort (others than the ones I contacted myself). Please address that breach in contract.

As for the section on my contract, "ILLUMINA RECORDS/GROUND CONTROL agrees to send out approximately one hundred thousand (100,000) friend requests to the below signed performers home state/local area. These requests will all link to the Rockers For Life Myspace page, and subsequently link directly to the performers," is concerned, It doesn't add up. If you add 100,000 per city/region for each disc (just on the Rockers for Life myspace page) you should be looking at 3,000,000 friend requests.                      (30 x 100,000 = 3,000,000). Can you deliver on this, or is this another breech in contract.

Does the Better Business Bureau know how the structure of your LLC is set up? They will.

Ron, don't think you have discourage me at all. You have inspired me not to lie/manipulate my way into some money, not to take off more than I can chew, not to take from small (sometimes poor) bands/people, and that if I ever endeavor a project to better mankind, I won't damage other people, and their lives in the process.