Tinderbox Music Ripoff Minneapolis, Minnesota
Tinderbox charged an exorbitant amount for a useless and perhaps somewhat false radio campaign. Then lied and tried to charge for licensing. Bands would do better avoiding this company.
We contacted Tinderbox Music to ask about the possibility of a radio campaign, and perhaps more importantly, music licensing for TV. During our conversations they talked us into doing the radio campaign when we were decidedly more interested in licensing. We were told that the radio campaign would be a lead-in to licensing. We were also told that licensing would be commission based and of no cost to us. So, we stupidly agreed to pay an exorbitant amount for the radio campaign.
The radio campaign is simply shipping out 300 of our CDs to high school, college, and community radio stations and following up to see if they played us (they call or email the station to ask and sometimes get a response). We were originally told they were all college stations, but turns out they weren't. We didn't see the list beforehand. Tinderbox then sent us a PDF showing (sort of) which stations were playing our CD and which were not. But we contacted some of the stations ourselves and some of them didn't have our CD. So there was really no way to know for certain if the CD was received, or if the information was accurate.
Either way, we could have hired someone to send our CDs out and make phone calls for a tiny fraction of the price we were charged by Tinderbox Music. There was no benefit to this service.
Worse yet, after the radio campaign they told us they would indeed charge us upfront for licensing. What a ripoff! And this guy Jon Delange is no doubt a smarmy one. He's apparently been in trouble before as well when he allegedly ripped off his past company: http://law.justia.com/cases/minnesota/court-of-appeals/2003/931-4.html
We highly recommend avoiding using Tinderbox Music. Save your money, go somewhere else, or do it yourself. Lesson learned the hard way.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Colorphase
Madison,Wisconsin,
Amazing Experience with Tinderbox
#2Consumer Comment
Sat, December 14, 2013
My experience with Tinderbox couldn't have been more different than the scenario detailed above. There is no shortage of people in the music industry looking to extort independent musicians to make a couple bucks. Jon Delange and his team at Tinderbox are NOT those people.
My band hired Tinderbox to run a radio and licensing campaign. They were transparent and honest about the services they would be providing, and at what cost. The radio campaign was run exactly as it was presented to us, and we got more from the licensing than I would have ever expected. Not only did Jon obtain 14 high-quality licenses, including big time players like MTV, Fox, E!, ESPN, NASCAR, Oxygen, and others, but out of his own generosity, only charged us for 10 of the 14 licenses.
But it goes even further than that. Jon arranged meetings in Nashvile with his own personal (and quality) contacts for us at absolutely no cost to us. Through those meetings we obtained a high quality booking agency that agreed to take us on. Even after the dissolution of the band that hired Tinderbox, Jon has continued to offer guidance, contacts, and mentorship to me in my own personal music career.
Tinderbox believes in what they are doing. They believe in supporting hard working artists. Most of the major advances in my career can be traced back to Jon. And from meeting with some of his other contacts, I can tell that I am not an anomaly. He has guided a number of young, hard-working, people to find success in this cut-throat industry.
In the music business, you have to remember what you're paying for. Most of the time it's not just the service, but the contact. Even if Tinderbox had never run a radio campagin, I would still consider every dollar I paid them more than worth it. This business is all about who you know, and you can't find a better ally than Tinderbox Music.