Bandbox: an uncompensated review of an interesting new club

jamieanderson1968 said:
I would be willing to do that.

They must have been doing okay until last fall with paying bills. Then it all started to collapse. That was why they started to sell heavily discounted BadBux; couldn't borrow anymore cash.
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The guy from that pressing plant said they bumped into the CEO at south by southwest which was back in last March and they had owed them money already at that point. I bet they kept trying to get loans to stay afloat and the bandbux thing was a last ditch effort to pay some people
 
MikeH said:
The guy from that pressing plant said they bumped into the CEO at south by southwest which was back in last March and they had owed them money already at that point. I bet they kept trying to get loans to stay afloat and the bandbux thing was a last ditch effort to pay some people
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Which makes the COO trying to claim he had nothing to do with it an even more bs story.
 
I just don’t understand how they kept getting licenses to press more records when they couldn’t deliver the ones they had already licenses for. Seems like the labels would have shut that shit down before it got that bad. Plenty of blame everywhere to be honest.
 
Twentytwo said:
I just don’t understand how they kept getting licenses to press more records when they couldn’t deliver the ones they had already licenses for. Seems like the labels would have shut that shit down before it got that bad. Plenty of blame everywhere to be honest.
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I don’t think labels care. They are going to get their money for the license and unless you break the details of the license they could give two shits if you get the record made, pay other people, or send the product to your customers.
 
Lee Newman said:
I don’t think labels care. They are going to get their money for the license and unless you break the details of the license they could give two shits if you get the record made, pay other people, or send the product to your customers.
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Except aren’t there artists and labels on the creditors list?
 
Twentytwo said:
I just don’t understand how they kept getting licenses to press more records when they couldn’t deliver the ones they had already licenses for. Seems like the labels would have shut that shit down before it got that bad. Plenty of blame everywhere to be honest.
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While I'm not cynical enough to believe it was intentional at all, likely someone in over their heads running a business and then scrambling, It was the perfect shell game - they kept contracting with different labels and bands, and then also kept using a bunch of different pressing plants*, so it wouldn't have been clear to any one person truly how dire it was for the last few months. They likely were also using Bandbux sales, in-stock sales, and pre-orders to pay off some bills as records did ship to customers. That keeps word from spreading around the industry about avoiding them.

Without revealing sources, I now know they worked with a company last year (and still owe them a fair bit of $) to try to sort things out financially, and while they may have been handed the right tools to get on a better path, their continued existence was still a dicey situation; described as "touch and go" for the next 4 to 6 months as of July. I only heard about it after the bankruptcy filing.

*No idea if related, but Blue Sprocket posted on IG in July about getting all new presses and then in December announce that they're wrapping up final orders and closing up shop. They're not even the plant awaiting payment (at this point, likely pennies on the dollar) on 4 pallets of records. It sucks for the individual customers, bands, and labels but the pressing plants are going to take the biggest hit; big cost outlay for time and materials.
 
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serotonein said:
While I'm not cynical believe it was intentional at all, likely someone in over their heads running a business and then scrambling, It was the perfect shell game - they kept contracting with different labels and bands, and then also kept using a bunch of different pressing plants*, so it wouldn't have been clear to any one person truly how dire it was for the last few months. They likely were also using Bandbux sales, in-stock sales, and pre-orders to pay off some bills as records did ship to customers. That keeps word from spreading around the industry about avoiding them.

Without revealing sources, I now know they worked with a company last year (and still owe them a fair bit of $) to try to sort things out financially, and while they may have been handed the right tools to get on a better path, their continued existence was still a dicey situation; described as "touch and go" for the next 4 to 6 months as of July. I only heard about it after the bankruptcy filing.

*No idea if related, but Blue Sprocket posted on IG in July about getting all new presses and then in December announce that they're wrapping up final orders and closing up shop. They're not even the plant awaiting payment (at this point, likely pennies on the dollar) on 4 pallets of records. It sucks for the individual customers, bands, and labels but the pressing plants are going to take the biggest hit; big cost outlay for time and materials.
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I don’t know if Blue Sprocket ended up pressing anything for bandbox. They got asked to quote out a price for the Long Winters stuff and bandbox didn’t end up going with them.
 
MikeH said:
I don’t know if Blue Sprocket ended up pressing anything for bandbox. They got asked to quote out a price for the Long Winters stuff and bandbox didn’t end up going with them.
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Ok, I haven't dug into the bankruptcy paperwork, just saw someone mention them as one of plants that had done work for Bandbox. Like I said, no idea if their closure is related or completely other circumstances.
 
serotonein said:
Ok, I haven't dug into the bankruptcy paperwork, just saw someone mention them as one of plants that had done work for Bandbox. Like I said, no idea if their closure is related or completely other circumstances.
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yea--i think it may have been unrelated closing. i talked to them last week about the Long Winters stuff and they said they never actually pressed them. The guy on reddit though has 8 albums they pressed sitting there. Noiseland also has quite a few I think.
 
Twentytwo said:
I just don’t understand how they kept getting licenses to press more records when they couldn’t deliver the ones they had already licenses for. Seems like the labels would have shut that shit down before it got that bad. Plenty of blame everywhere to be honest.
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I think they should find a way to get the records out to people that are already pressed and people should get a full refund for anything that wasn't pressed. I almost got their exclusive version of lissies album but when they offered to send the album separately from the zine I decided to cancel my order because I honestly wasn't that interested in the zine, I had no idea when things would actually ship and there were other albums that I wanted more than this one. I rushed out and bought it because it was on a preorder sale but seeing the album get delayed made me realize that I didn't want the album as much as I though I did. If they didn't offer so many sales and sold things at normal prices they probably wouldn't have shut down. I don't get how they were constantly offering up new albums for preorders but they couldn't get their existing albums out in a timely manner. The exclusive version of the weather stations album was supposed to ship in october, november or december last year but I have no if the album was actually pressed or if it never got pressed because bandbox wasn't able to afford to pay the pressing plants to press the album.
 
boychik0830 said:
I think they should find a way to get the records out to people that are already pressed and people should get a full refund for anything that wasn't pressed. I almost got their exclusive version of lissies album but when they offered to send the album separately from the zine I decided to cancel my order because I honestly wasn't that interested in the zine, I had no idea when things would actually ship and there were other albums that I wanted more than this one. I rushed out and bought it because it was on a preorder sale but seeing the album get delayed made me realize that I didn't want the album as much as I though I did. If they didn't offer so many sales and sold things at normal prices they probably wouldn't have shut down. I don't get how they were constantly offering up new albums for preorders but they couldn't get their existing albums out in a timely manner. The exclusive version of the weather stations album was supposed to ship in october, november or december last year but I have no if the album was actually pressed or if it never got pressed because bandbox wasn't able to afford to pay the pressing plants to press the album.
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The money is gone and they don't own the records we paid for. So none of that can happen. They're bankrupt and it turned fraudulent, so it's up to the courts to sort things now, but typically that means consumers will get nothing. We got screwed, it's just the way she goes.
 
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