Is there no such thing as being ‘private’ any more?

Why do companies feel the need to (and why does tech crunch have the desire to), whore all their personal information on the internet!?

If I only used this thread as to learn what a journalist does, I’d say it’s a translator from bull***t to politically correct bull***t.
However, I haven’t made up my mind whether the argument is better supported by the lack of such a translator from the Tunecore end or the excess of it on the Techcrunch side.
But thinking about the bottom line, this post and Twitter! prove that a wardrobe malfunction is always a good way to get free publicity.

Get ‘em Mike. Rock on!

Enough already! Pick up the phone and give Jeff a call. I’m sure you will both be able to sort it all out amicably in no time at all (and laugh about it too). Emails are rubbish for this sort of exchange.

After a long day convinced that the Internet is doomed, nothing warms my heart more than the CEO of net music startup DNKing TechCrunch. Of course he’ knows TechCrunch, they’re that site that doesn’t believe in copyrights for music.

Hi there - yes that’s my smiley face up at the top of this really long thread

Michael is correct, the email was sent to press@tunecore.com and not me directly. I use the Mac apple client and when an email comes in to my Inbox from Press, it does distinguish it.

All I can say is a cold email showed up in my Inbox form an intern asking me for sensitive personal financial information with introduction, context or background.

An introduction, a phone call, an ” I am so and so and this is what we are about and we were wondering if we could have information on you” would have been helpful.

As I said in my last email to Mike - We are an interesting company with an interesting and compelling story. I am open to starting over if you would like to speak. Its always good to network and meet people - the art of communication can sometime be lost in email.

Jeff

Hey, we just launched today and we’d love to hear from members of the media or blogosphere (already submitted to TechCrunch and CrunchBase).

Artists use our Flash store widget to sell stuff on their social networking profiles. Sexy, eh?

It’s got selling, it’s got social networking, it doesn’t have porn, but it’s got wild creativity. And we promise to be polite to inquiries.

Jonathan

Is TC forgetting that startups give them a good chunk of the content?

If I got an email from someone asking about funds raised, investors and other confidential information I would not even respond.

Sorry but not everyone lives in Silicon Valley and knows who TC is….

I actually use TuneCore. I’ve even sold one single!

If I can sell just 28 more I’ll make a profit.

http://flickr.com/photos/jcuthrell/2495292451/

Obviously, they monitor the Interweb for the “tunecore” tag or have a Google Alert setup.

I didn’t know shooting email to press@ would shoot a copy to the CEO like that. But then again… that’s Peter.

Good stuff!

@Jeff Price,

Despite what everyone said above, if comment #164 is really you, than you’ve earned a second shot in my opinion. Whether the person emailing you for this information was a single person, or in the case an intern for TechCrunch, I don’t think your emails were written properly - other than the, “Hi Peter”, they lacked any respect at all. You, knowing that emails can be taken out of context, should have never sent an email like that.

You may have crappy email manners, but it took balls to make that comment, so I commend you for that. Good luck with your venture. Hopefully this was a lesson for you and you don’t make that mistake again.

Still waiting on Price’s response….Or maybe he really doesn’t read or know anything about TC after all.

Check a few posts up, John.

As a seasoned (that means old) marketing professional in high tech in Silicon Valley, I can attest that TechCrunch’s method of reaching out to this company was completely appropriate. It is the job of a company’s PR person/firm to take such open inquiries daily. And if a CEO is acting in that PR role (which is often the case in that job), he should know that too.

And questions regarding funding are completely fair game. If you don’t want to answer them, you kindly decline. I know; I’ve been there many times.

The CEO of this company acted very inappropriately…to a member of the press, no less. As a CEO, you can slight some people and get away with it, but you never do that to the press. Not just because it’s not nice, but because you can’t win. This guy has obviously had no media training whatsoever. His company deserves whatever it gets out of this blunder, but a positive image certainly won’t be it.

As much as I love to see TC being shown the middle finger, I’ve to agree that Jeff’s response was rude. Simply replying back with ” we can’t share the confidential information” would have been fine.

By the way, is Mike going to reply to comment #46?

@164
An introduction, a phone call, an ” I am so and so and this is what we are about and we were wondering if we could have information on you” would have been helpful.

An introduction? People need an introduction before you feel obligated to be civil to them? And they call Michael arrogent and self-important……

A phone call? Really?? Are you sure that you wouldn’t prefer that a secretary takes a letter in shorthand, types in up on a typewriter and posts it in the mail to you?

“I am so……information on you” They have this thing now, its called the internet, you can use it to look up stuff. Next time you see a word you don’t know or a company you’ve never heard of you might want to try the internet thing. Or you could just continue to expect everyone to explain things to you very slowly and with small words - maybe that has been working out for you so far.

@mike money #152- an ex KKR person, they’ve owned and sold so many companies that could be any of thousands of people - unless it’s K, K, or R himself….

In his post here (164) Jeff is conciliatory but look what he is putting up on the TuneCrush blog:

http://tunecore.typepad.com/tu.....-117444102

Hi Mike

Just landed off a too long flight to the west coast - but at least I got to hear Hil, Obama and McCain speak

In any event, I as you can imagine I strongly disagree with your assessment.

TuneCore is a personal passion and a start up, it’s my life and the life of the people that work for it. Your out of the blue no context question of “Can you give me information on the funding TuneCore has had to date? Can you provide me with the rounds, amounts, dates and investors? “feels” the same as me asking you how much you make a year, what is your annual salary etc. so I can post it on-line

In my two decades of running businesses, raising money and being an entrepreneur I have never received a cold email from an unknown entity via an unknown person asking for detailed personal financial information. On top of that, it turns out you post the information for others and seem to make your money off of other people’s info (i.e. the web traffic driving possible ad revenue and/or bringing you leads for possible companies to invest in). The least you could do on initial contact is make an introduction, explain who and what you are and then ask questions before getting under the kimono.

You are not “owed” personal and proprietary information simply because you work for TechCrunch.The information you ask for - if shared - would be shared with you out of a choice. Yes, I found your original email insulting. A VC firm would introduce itself first before asking for such information.

that being said, I do appreciate the posting you made about us but I think your headline is a bit silly. My intention was not to be insulting but to be sincere. It’s always best to establish a relationship first before asking for sensitive information. I am not sure if your goal was to “get” or “punish” us because I would not just respond when you first asked seems a bit odd, but so be it. I hope you choose to post this email as well….

Although you did not tell me who you are (all I know is your name is Mike) or what you do at TechCrunch, by your email address I have to assume you are an editor? We are an interesting company with an interesting and compelling story. I am open to starting over if you would like to speak. Its always good to network and meet people - the art of communication can sometime be lost in email.

Thank You

Jeff Price
TuneCore

The Tunecore blog shows that he sent the email posted @175 at ~9pm California time. At that point there were over 150 comments on this article and , more importantly, his site had gone down “for maintenance” six hours previously.
Yet *still* he can not be bothered to do a simple query or visit techcrunch.com in order to find out some basic information about TechCrunch as evidenced by his statement
“Although you did not tell me who you are (all I know is your name is Mike) or what you do at TechCrunch, by your email address I have to assume you are an editor?”

And someone decided it would be okay for this guy to be CEO?

And the header of the email says “Michael Arrington” yet Price says “…all I know is your name is Mike…”

Pretty amazing that this story generates 170+ comments. Most people would want to be interviewed on TC…but maybe they really didn’t know Techcrunch at all. In asia many would struggle to know it…but this was the US?

Nevertheless, seems a bit of a storm in a tea cup really.

Jeff Price isn’t taking responsibility for his actions.

For starters, at one point in his email response he berates the intern for “contacting the CEO.” Yet just in the prior sentence HE ADMITS HE KNEW the request was directed NOT to him (the CEO) but to the “press” department.

Jeff should just admit he is missed his nap that day, give an apology, and laugh it off like his partner Peter did in his response here. Either way, thanks to both sides for the laugh.

I don’t care what other people say. If you’re doing a web startup:

a) You bloody well know what TechCrunch is.
b) A simple “we don’t disclose that information” is sufficient response to the original query (it’s either public or private, so that should be a simple call to make).

I don’t see how this can be anything other than a totally clueless CEO, regardless of excuses.

michael… while I and other TC readers completely love your angle on this startup, you’ve given them WAY too much to feed on presswise. With your 3mm views and readers, Tunescore and their idiotic answers to your PR inquiries is just feeding their sites #’s. I mean has anyone ever heard of them before this article? If they are a “legit” site, how have they not heard of TC or CG?

Props to TC for calling their PR stunt out and I’m sure that they used that excuse of a reply email to you guys as a ploy to get pageviews.

I don’t care about your back office problems.
Arrington for President.

I agree that forwarding the press@… email address to the CEO isn’t exactly a good business decision from them, but its quite childish on your part for writing a derogatory post and blaming the CEO for it.

I mean lets face it, you guys are still not google or microsoft and there are people who actually might not know you. I understand if that hurt your ego but that’s life. Maybe you should read the original email that the intern wrote and try and understand that asking questions about funding and stuff aren’t exactly appreciated everywhere, even if they come from techcrunch.

Seriously, this episode makes me wonder why I started reading techcrunch in the first place.

Moral of the story: You don’t have to read Techcrunch to be a successful startup.

Wow, now this is entertainment. Plus, it reminds me of why I don’t like Silicon Valley. Just think of the lessons learned. Plus, now we all know how to get on the front page of TC.

TechCrunch: Figure out how to send emails using your owned domain name as a reply-to address. After all, you are writing about Internet startups.

Jeff Price: You need to use the filtering capabilities built into your Mac Email client.

Posters: TuneCore is actually one Internet company that does not need TechCrunch. They are quite successful providing services to independent musicians who need digital distribution, but do not have the (contacts, chichi, scale, etc.) to make their own deals with each provider.

The CEO looks like an a*hole, and sounds like it too.
Send them a free invite to the deadpool.

I agree with Prakash above ” Moral of the story: You don’t have to read or know Techcrunch to be a successful startup “

It is amazing how many good ideas are brought down by a-holes. It’s even more amazing that people fund these things and don’t vet personalities. I agree with Startup5mo- deadpool. Fail.

Anyone sent an email to press@tunecore.com?

That guy has such an annoying face

I really don’t think that his response is out of line when you consider the way that the guy has approached his business (that is, he went from “music biz”-> “internet music biz”, not “internet biz” -> “internet music biz”). I would guess that if Michael were to try to engage the guy in a discussion of the music-related aspects of his business, Jeff price could easily make a fool out of Mike as well by taking one of his mistaken assumptions/quotes and blowing it up.

You have to realize that not all people approach internet startups from the same angle that Techcrunch readers do. A typical Techcrunch fan looking to start a music company would probably start with an idea, build a prototype, attend conferences, try to get attention from VCs, show up at Michael Arrington’s house, etc.. They would start from the “Internet Startup ” angle and probably make tons of mistakes in alienating artists and labels (for example, TC recently did a story on a company that dropped into the “deadpool” because they could not negotiate royalties with record companies). Whereas a music guy starting a tech company will probably do much better with artists/labels, but make dumb “tech industry” mistakes like not knowing who Mike Arrington is.

It seems that TuneCore is trying “enjyo” marketing.
# The “enjyo” is Japanese language, which written as “炎上”.
# It is translated to English as “flame up”.

In generally, the purpose of enjyo marketing is to gather attention of blogosphere.
With this point, they succeed, because this post has almost 200 comments.

# But there is no guarantee that result is going good. -:p

Get off your horse Arrington. This post is a waste of time. Because you didn’t like a response to the all-mighty techcrunch you essentially want to flame this company in public.

Grow up.

“Otherwise, we’ll just go f** ourselves per Price’s request.”

Where did Price request that?

It’s not about everyone knowing TC, you donkeys. It’s about this idiot of a CEO understanding how to talk normally and do his own research before blowing off ol’ Peter.

Interesting, attacks on TC and micheal invite the more comments than most others posts on TC. And yeah, Mr.Price you can afford to be a lil less snorty

Jeff Price is a douche bag. I think he would fare well in the Douche Bag Olympics.

all the more reason people should go to WaTunes for digital distribution and to CD Baby for their physical distribution.

full disclosure: working with WaTunes at the moment …

Tunecore is my new hero!

TC has been sucking their own exhaust for far too long.

Why would you head to either WaTunes or CDBaby or Tunecore when http://routenote.com offers the best service in town..

Jeff Price responded the way anyone would to a cold contact about company info. There’s a decent article about the site over on Ars Technica, a site which is much more well known than Techcrunch.

Reading this again…I don’t see where TuneCore “tells us where we can shove it” or anything remotely like that.

This was added by Arrington. Seems to be there merely to incite. It ups the ante in an exchange fueled by misunderstanding.

TC could have cleared this up with a subsequent email, but rather decided that it would be better to smear.

Tunecore doesn’t care who TechCrunch is… they’re focused on musicians and the music industry… all of which don’t care where Tunecore got their funding. As for TechCrunch…. GFY for thinking you mean anything outside of the ValleyWag community. Online companies that are out there and making it on their services don’t need to share their back office info…. they’re already making money from their services… not from their “rounds of seed funding”.

I would love it if we could start hearing about more businesses that are growing out of existing industries that are leveraging the Net (rather than SV startups leveraging the Net to get into existing industries).

Another example in the music domain would be SonicBids.

(Now that I think about it, if TechCrunch wants that story, I’d be happy to write it; email me at ethanbauley // gmail)

Concentrating so much on SV just leads to too much irony:

TuneCore is probably THE most revolutionary music-focused web service (esp in terms of business model innovation) and they’ve been pulling in real revenue with a real, sustainable revenue stream that solves extreme problems for its customers for years.

To top it off, they have probably THE most intelligent strategic partnership (w/ Guitar Center) of any web-based business.

I agree that a) there’s only so many hours in the day, b) the Valley is the most important place in the world for software innovation, and c) much of the work TechCrunch does is very valuable, but it would be nice to see more “worldly” coverage [for lack of a better term].

(Disclosure: I’ve been a user since [almost] day one and have contributed to the Tunecore blog)

Thanks for listening! Some of the comments here are great…

Chris - mp3.com was a good idea, and was working well. I’m an artist, I put some songs up that were successful and made more than $1000 in a month. Their downfall wasn’t the business model - ad supported, revenue sharing for a music site would work with the amount of traffic mp3.com had, imho - they collapsed because they tried sharing copywritten music and the industry hammer came down on them.

The RIAA members (Universal, etc) were afraid of mp3.com because it was both good and viable.

What mp3.com actually had in common with TuneCore - since their business models are not even similar - is the fact that their CEOs seem like jerks. My few intereactions with Micheal Robertson during that time were not very pleasant.

hi - Jeff Price here. I have gotten a lot of emails from people calling me ignorant, stupid, and referring to me by female/male body parts (equal opportunity insulters, that’s good I suppose) - so be it. Guilty as charged, I did not know about Mike or the site.

I certainly hope that’s not going to be the downfall of the company….

I am now familiar with the site, it has some good articles and info. I am flattered by the attention (both good and bad) that we received. And would love to turn the conversation from whether or not either side was correct in their etiquette into a conversation about how technology has changed a media industry and what this means to the world

I could be wrong, but I think that’s a lot more interesting…

Jeff

Mr. Mike Arrogant,

I have been a long time reader of techcrunch and have observed over a period of time how arrogant you have become. This is more visible recently. Hope you realize this.

@Jeff - please do not apologize. As far as I can see the emails that Mike posted earlier or your responses, IT DOES NOT DESERVE the TC response.

I think at this point I am thinking of signing out of reading TC. Esp. if Mike starts to abuse his power given by readers like me.

Ciao

Tunecore is a revolutionary company, providing a service to artists that allows them to break free of greedy labels and distributors.

The more interesting story is how many artists they have helped, their brilliant business model, their vision for the future, and their alliance with Guitar Center. Tunecore is a company that is doing GOOD for thousands of people. Jeff and the staff at TC are visionaries.

I’ve known them for over a year now and write for the blog from time to time. They have always been generous, attentive and dedicated to helping artists…not just lip-service help, but authentic and meaningful help. They are a rare exception and we should be applauding what they do, not ripping the CEO for protecting the interests of his company.

jeff, don’t apologize. you’ve been smeared by Michael Arrington for some reason. seems to be an agenda of some sort, or a bad hangover on his part. in any case, he needs to apologize. this is one of the most embarrassing blog entries I’ve seen in a long time covering online startups. the arrogance is quite overwhelming, especially if he is deleting legitimate posts and comments as others have claimed.

The Ars Technica site ALWAYS has responsible, measured coverage, unlike TechCrunch, especially recently. i agree with others, it has declined as its owner’s self-absorption has increased.

Ars Technica has a good article about TuneCore:

http://arstechnica.com/article.....rofile.ars