HossTheBoss.com

If you’ve been following the comments on the November Hossey Music Award Song Voting Contest Show page, you already know that second place finisher — but still a record breaker — Sasha Eleyce has asked to be withdrawn from the 2009 finals because, to say the least, her experience in the November contest was less than thrilling. In fact, it has potentially cost her dearly!

Sasha reports that about a week into the November contest, she received a very derogatory comment on her MySpace page from someone who was, apparently, a fan of one of the other bands in the contest. She deleted the comment quickly, and only remembers that the user name was three capital letters (probably JBW). A few hours later is when her MySpace problems began. She cannot be certain, but she said she believes the comment and problems are related.

For nearly three weeks now, Sasha has had very limited communication with her with her more than 158,000 MySpace friends. (An astonishingly high number that has taken her two years to achieve.) She is unable to send messages or administer comments on her page, and friends are no longer able to see her picture or hear her music via their pages.

For a singer who has come to depend upon MySpace for 28 million page views and 36 million plays of her songs, this is a dramatic setback, and I do not blame Sasha for not being necessarily excited about an appearance in our finals — which even I admit is about as silly an honor as can be had by a musician.

Sasha and I spent a good portion of last night emailing each other about all this, and I have decided to try to get MySpace’s corporate office to look into the matter. Sasha has, by far, the most popular MySpace page of anyone who has been involved with HossTheBoss.com, and I know she’s bringing in loads of money for MySpace via the ads on her page. It behooves MySpace to get to the bottom of her problems fast, but, so far, all she’s received is routine messages from the company saying, “we’re working on the problems.”

A page pulling in numbers like Sasha’s does not need to be “worked on” for three damn weeks! It deserves top priority, and the fact that it’s not getting it is yet another reason why I will continue to encourage all bands that I know to begin weaning themselves off of MySpace — as well as Facebook and Twitter too. I don’t want to see any other band spend two years tirelessly building a very valuable on-line following, only to lose it overnight because of the incompetence of a huge corporation too big to notice even it’s most important partners.

Here’s the letter I sent last night to Tracy Akselrud, the Executive Director of Communications at MySpace (in other words, one of the main PR people in the company). I’ll keep you abreast of her response, and, if it is not a timely one, I’ll be back here later today and/or tomorrow encouraging all of you to contact her too.

Dear Tracy Akselrud,

I want to call to your attention some problems that Sasha Eleyce, a Washington D.C. area singer with 28,852,187 profile views, nearly 36 million plays and more than 158,000 friends, is having with her MySpace page.  For  much of November, Sasha has been unable to communicate with fans via MySpace,  and, as the owner of a website that has featured her in a “song voting contest” this month, I can attest that she has legions of  fans who are missing her on MySpace.

Sasha has told me that she and a number of her supporters have tried their best to communicate with MySpace about the problems, but have so far have only received, apparently automated, messages saying “we are working on it.”  Given the page’s numbers — and the fact that many of her friends pages have  huge numbers as well — I figured  someone in  MySpace public relations might be interested  enough to take a look at the situation.

Here are some specifics as I understand them:

MySpace URL: http://www.myspace.com/sashaeleyce

Specific Problems:

1. Sasha has no access to most features (messaging, friend requests, blogging, ect.) “Basically, all I can do is post a bulletin and send a stream,” she told me.

2. Sasha’s picture does not appear on pages of her friends.

3. Sasha’s music no longer appears on any of the (many) pages it was on.

4. Sasha says she has received hundreds of messages from fans wondering about the problems with the page, but she cannot respond to any of them.
Sasha reports that the problems began approximately two weeks ago shortly after she received a number of harshly critical comments from a fan, apparently, of another band in the contest I am running. She suspects that the author of those comments somehow is the source of the problems, but, of course, that is mere speculation. Unfortunately, she deleted the comments quickly, and cannot remember the precise username of the writer. Her best recollection is that the name had three letters, probably JBW.

I would be remiss if I did not point out that MySpace has suffered some negative PR on my own site from fans who are upset that they cannot communicate with Sasha, so, while I may eventually be contacting MySpace to specifically request a comment on the problems with Sasha’s page, my current purpose is only to bring the matter to your attention and to recommend that you look into it. I would be happy to pass along any other specifics that I may know of but have not listed here. Please do not hesitate to contact me if I can be of more assistance.

Sincerely,
Don Cudd (aka Hoss The Boss)
www.HossTheBoss.com