I joined very innocently a few days ago, thinking it was more or less on the same lines as myspace or reverbnation - just another place online to put your links and music, but was then taken back by the amount of email addresses signing up to the mailing list and the amount of plays the music was receiving.
It was insinuated that because I had a free account, I would need to review other bands in order to get any further promotional privileges and that the free promotion works from a 'word of mouth' basis.
'Fair enough' I thought... so I requested to become a 'reviewer' and to be sent an email about it. After no email arrived and no indication was found on how long it would take for the email to be sent, I thought I would try to contact them.
It was when they were asking me to type my user name and password into the contact form that I began suspecting the website's legitimacy. By this I mean that rather than the usual privacy dots that occur when you type in your password online, my real password was completely visible.... ???
eg. Rather than: ******** it came up as 'PASS9876'.
Why would they need to know my actual password just so I could contact them?
No one asks for your physical password outright do they???
So I did a quick google search on numberonemusic.com and then found a number of forum threads:
amongst other numerous blogs detailing their personal experiences with numberonemusic.com....
Virtually, 99% of the people online are detailing many logical reasons as to why numberonemusic.com is a scam website.
It seems they are very cleverly deceiving people into 'buying in' (literally) to the flattering statistics/reviews/commentry, and that the people joining the mailing list are real, genuine fans....
It appears as though numberonemusic.com employ a crafty mix of computer generated comments/reviews, with some non-computer generated fraudulent humans, and that the combination of both seems genuine enough to trick people into parting with their money.... so much so that amongst the angry people that are speaking out about the website, there are others who are so convinced that their money has been well spent and that both the contacts and flattering comments they get are real, that they are defending numberonemusic.com to the death!
There seems to have been alot of musicians out there that have trusted and invested money into numberonemusic.com and have been completely ripped off.
The scary thing is that alot of these forum thread date back to 2006, and the most recent ones I can find are to 2010.
It has been suggested that the numberonemusic.com was closed down for a while and is now back up and running... but how have they managed to stay online for this ammount of time?
In my personal experience, I only joined a matter of days ago and have a free link back to my website and my details uploaded online... they haven't taken my money, but I am now wondering what exactly they have achieved through me signing up and not paying out?
I can't find anyone online who raised the 'contact / password revealing' issue.... and are therefore wondering what they might get from knowing my password...? Perhaps they want to use my profile account details to falsely sign me up to other people's mailing lists? Probably, they'll spam my email address too.
Besides which, I intend to boycott the website out of principle anyway... my profile on there only serves to make the whole thing appear more legitimate and convincing, thus contributing to the deceit.
The problem is that there appears to be no obvious way that enables me to close the numberonemusic.com account, therefore, I'm just going to use the account itself to inform people that it is a scam.
I should also mention that the reason I found numberonemusic.com to begin with was through a myspace contact who was paying a compliment and referencing a specific song on our profile. I know that half of myspace mail tends to be spam anyway, but as the comment seemed human and that genuine compliments are commonplace, I had no reason to doubt it. Silly me.
Please pass on this information to all other musicians out there....
Yep, the first thing I noticed was that my 'friend' mentioned one of my songs bu name and while I was happy with that, it also raided my suspicions immediately. After watching their intro video, I did the next thing that I always do and typed in their name plus 'review' and immediately came up with a lot of wary or unhappy people.
ReplyDeleteReally, if people refuse to just use common sense on the net they're only going to keep feeding these chancers.
Wake up Earth...111
An unintentional experiment:
ReplyDeleteTwo separate bands ("How To Avoid Art" in the USA and "Wanker Of The 1st Degree" in Iceland) signed up around the same time. Both bands received IDENTICAL e-mails from IDENTICAL "users" saying EXACTLY the same thing.
It was all the typical gushing slosh that one would tend to ignore anyway. For instance a "Barbara Ordway" wrote "I just started listening to you 10 minutes ago and I'm completely amazed. By far, you surpass anyone I've heard lately. Now I want to see you in concert...It would be amazing to see you perform, I'm sure."
I had forgotten about this tripe until just recently when NumberOneMusic e-mailed me about having X number of "fans" that I should log in and contact.
Nah. I'll pass.
Revebnation.com, Bandcamp.com and few others are the way to go - but, it depends on what you looking for: promotion, plays, or social circles. Reverb Nation appears (at this time) to be the most robust and syncs with other things such as Facebook or Twitter.
That said, if you want to find success with numberonemusic.com, your best bet to first find the free set of headphones in the corner of a round room.
Nie article and comments, The reason I googled it's legitimacy is because after I sent out a mailing list email to my 167 fans I accumulated in a week (should have been suspicious at the is point) I received 6 emails from random people saying they want to by my tracks on Itunes and see my band play live (though I'm a solo electronic musician Trance/dance etc) I replied to each one with a thankful message with a link to my Facebook page. None of them joined despite ABSOLUTELY LOVING my music.
ReplyDeleteA week or so passes (7 days left on my free account) My fans are up to 1200ish (this point very dubious) I sent another mailing list letter out to which I received around 15 emails, 1 saying almost the same thing as a previous one, following the same steps sneding a link about facebook, not one went over. A little disappointed I googled and found a lot of similar stories.
As for what you said about what do they gain if you don't sign up, Thats easy scammers target a group and know only a small percentage will fall for it but make it that everyone who does fall for it makes it profitable.
Its a nasty scam, If I wasn't a starving musician and less stringent with cash I would have probably paid.
-------------------------
I agree about Reverbnation its good, simple and really easy for people to use. You can always release your music via itunes (via dittomusic - free or tunecore - a fee but more sites like amazon) and just use Reverb etc as your band page for contacting.
Hope I didn't bore you.
Lee
They conned me as well... I was smart enough to contact the billing company and I got my money back. If you folks could, please spread this video around so that other artist aren't taken by this company. The reason they can get away with it is because they are based in Russia. That is also why that have a 3rd party bill collector. Also, if you have been conned and got you money back from the billing company, make sure they block number one music. Those snakes tried to bill me again the following year.
ReplyDeleteHere is the link from when I went to my local news channels.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U86HuCLxcX0
Lansky
CEO SouthBound Productions
Amazing! I proved that this company was a scam way back in 2006. I was the first to force them to give me a full refund and I detailed how everyone else could do it in the UKBands.net forum. It is puzzling to me that they are still ripping people off after all these years. All I can say is don't give these Russian scammers your money. Its all crock of bull! Don't be duped.
ReplyDeleteRespect,
Stonewall "Stoneman" Towery
Thank you for your post, I only wished i have read earlier before I made a stupid mistake.
DeleteI read your post on MacJam and I am so upset because I feel like I made such a horrible mistake dealing with those people from NumberOne I did pay them and I contacted them as soon as I realized that they do not respond to my messages. I want my money back but I don't know what to do?
I realized now that the numberonemusic is a scam but I also feel like there is nothing I can do.
Thank you anyways
Hallo. They are a scam for shore:( Now l just feel like an idiot who belived all this nice comments about my music:(
ReplyDeleteBut l still belive in me and that my songs are goooood:)
So just stay away from number one music people. All of the stuff others have written about them here is true.
And the WORST for me is that they have something they call MY SPACE PROMO AGENT. l paid for this and my space blocked my account because it was FORBIDDEN to use on MY SPACE:(
Realy ugly way of making money. l wrote to my space and told them that l paid and used this in good faith.
l sent several og e mail to number one music and they just asked me for my password to My Space:(
Charity.
Thank you for your Blog site, I only wish I would read this before I sign with the NumberOne, They are SCAM and I don't know how to get money back, how to contact them and close my account.
ReplyDeleteThank you again
KJoasia
@ Kjoasia I'm sorry that you were scammed by numberone music. I posted this in the hope that it would serve as a warning for other musicians. It seems that other people have managed to get their money back, including some of the people who have commented on this post. If I were you I would try to contact them for advice and also seek help on the forums. It might not be too late. I hope you get somewhere with it. Rachel x
ReplyDeletethanks, I read this BEFORE I fell for it, I feel like I dodged a bullet this time
ReplyDeleteSo I've had them sussed for a while now, and I sent them a scathing message to which they replied by deleting my account (Cowards) What would be the next step in order to bring this site to an end?
ReplyDeleteThank you all my musician friends for saving me time and $$$, I was suspicious, glad I googled "Review" first:)
ReplyDeleteWe started about 3 weeks ago and have rocketed up the charts. We currently sit 1, 2 and 6 in the hip hop charts. We knew that it wasn't logical. I never forked over any money to them nor have I thought to.
ReplyDeleteThe scam is genius though. It makes you not want to believe any positive feedback.
We received messages such as,"So versatile--best ever made."
so versatile is a title of our song. I do like our music, but best ever made?
Yes, thanks for writing this. I was also finding very odd the number of views and plays my music had in just a few days. I was already thinking it was a scam, now I'm sure!
ReplyDeleteToo late for me.... How can I be so idiot. I'll try to recover my money but first I have took some images from my profile before they delete it.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the info.
Only one question. How do they send the requests at facebook?
ReplyDeleteHas they hacked my facebook?
Has they hacked all these facebook accounts which has liked my page?
Do they spam and only spam?
Thank you for your help!
Daniel
Thanks for this blog. Here's what I find alarming: I took the freebee offer of 3 songs and selected the option of them using my songs directly from Reverbnation instead of me uploading 3 songs. Then they somehow transferred the first three songs from my reverbnation site and automatically made them not only stream-able but also downloadable. But one of the 3 songs they took from reverbnation was not downloadable from reberbnation but streaming only. So how could they take a song from reberbnation that was streaming only and not downloadable and move it to their N1M site and make it available for streaming and download without my authorization? The only way this could be possible is if they had full cooperation from reverbnation.... but why would reverbnation allow them to transfer a song from their site that was not available for download? I am beginning to think all these sites are controlled by the same entity. It's all a scam.
ReplyDeleteRMJ