There was a time not too long ago when, if I was looking at an item in a store and I wasn’t sure whether or not I wanted to buy it, I would think to myself, “Eh, I can always find it on eBay later, maybe cheaper.” That is no longer the case.
Whether the item is a book, a comic, a CD, a video, or a piece of electronic equipment, the eBay bargains are gone. Everything that’s there is priced right about what one would expect to pay anywhere else, with the only added enticement being a much greater possibility of potential fraud than at nearly any other online retail outlet.
Perhaps worse, the selection has vanished along with the savings. As an avid music listener from an early age I have a lot of music, and 99% of the time if I’m looking to buy a piece of music the chances are it’s not going to be the kind of thing they have at Wal-Mart. At one time, virtually any album — in print or out — was available on eBay. Often at ridiculously inflated prices, true — but still, there were bargains to be had there. Once, but no more.
Where have the deals and selection gone? For the most part, Amazon is where I find myself ordering items online, and if it’s not Amazon it’ll be some smaller, dedicated online retailer that specializes in what I’m looking for.
It’s not just buying, either — I’ve pretty much lost interest in selling things on eBay. All of the items listed above are also things I’ve sold on eBay over the years, in the range of multiple thousand dollars’ worth of merchandise, nearly all via auctions I started at 1 cent with no reserve price. Some auctions went for more, some went for less, but it all evened out for the most part and made it worthwhile. But over time, the margins of profit got whittled down, and so did sellers’ freedom, and eventually, my selling activities tapered off. It takes time and effort to sell things anywhere, including eBay, and for the effort to be worthwhile there has to be a significant payoff at the end. As that payoff dwindled, so too did my willingness to spend my time on eBay.
As a seller, I think the last straw was when they took away the ability for sellers to give negative feedback to buyers. Any schoolchild can tell you that a feedback system where the “positive” option has no corresponding “negative” value is meaningless (”Was this the best field trip ever? Or the bestest field trip ever?”), but evidently eBay management couldn’t figure that out. I actually only recall leaving negative feedback once or twice out of hundreds of auctions — for some reason, packages sent to Italy had a tendency to mysteriously disappear before delivery — but that was hardly the point. The removal of the option was insulting to the point that I just decided I’d had enough.
Since then, I haven’t sold a single item on eBay. I think I’ve bought one CD — and let me note I have no boycott or any other aversion against buying items from eBay, I’ll get whatever I need from whomever’s willing to sell it to me at the best price. It’s just happened that that has been ebay only once in the past — year and a half? Two years? More?
I have a stack of books building up that I would have put on eBay in the past, and it’s starting to build up to the point that it’s nearly time that I need to do something about it. Recently, eBay switched their policies again to make auction-style listings with a starting price under $1 free, up to 100 per month. That’s free to list, of course, but on the back end, there’s that 9% final value fee, and then PayPal’s almost 4% fee, and then of course the userbase just isn’t what it used to be, and USPS rates have gone up, and…
I think I’ll look into selling on Amazon, they always seem to have good deals on used books there these days. Although frankly, the best deals I’ve gotten on books in the past year have been from walking in and browsing the shelves at 5th Avenue Books here in San Diego’s Hillcrest district, so maybe I’ll just take them down and see what I can get for trade — you know, the way people did before eBay.
My version of this Joseph Arthur song has the guitar capoed at the first fret; the original version, which can be found on the album Come To Where I’m From, is capoed at the second. Double-click the video to watch in720p HD on youtube.
This About.com piece contains some extremely basic, solid ground rules for musicians attempting to handle their own music press PR — occasionally to the degree that certain points might seem blatantly obvious (”Don’t be annoying”), but the common fatal flaw of the self-promoter is a complete lack of perspective. There are a couple of real groaner sentences in the piece that indicate the writer knows all too well the type of person most in need of her advice, particularly: “Stay professional in all emails and phone calls with the press, even if you don’t like what you’re hearing. You’ll get your revenge when you’re big and famous and they’re scrambling to get on the guest list for your show!” Anyone with half a lick of sense can see how ludicrous that second sentence is, but there are many, many musicians who are utterly convinced of that reality. All would do well to disabuse themselves of that notion (and all similarly delusional ideas) immediately.
For this reason, I’d generally advise skilled musicians who are inexperienced writers against attempting their own music copywriting, although the piece does contain links to some basic press release and bio templates for those who either want to give it shot or simply lack the resources to hire a proper music copywriter. In either case, having a professional music copywriter edit the work before release would be highly recommended (if not absolutely paramount) as well as significantly cheaper than hiring a copywriter to draft professional press release copy from scratch — probably less than half the cost.
I recorded and produced this track at the Indiana University Musical Arts Center studio in the mid-90s as part of my audio engineering studies. If I remember correctly, local bands wanting to be recorded put signup forms in an envelope outside the studio door, and I recall having a boombox demo tape they’d recorded beforehand — maybe that was submitted along with the initial form? Dunno. In any case, I was surprised at the number of solid tunes Yarnmarvins brought to the table and thought they were an really good band, even if they wore their R.E.M. influences a bit on their sleeves at times. I do recall pretty much every other band that submitted was utterly dire so it didn’t take me long to decide which band I wanted to record.
The session was recorded to 16-track 2-inch analog tape with the band all playing live together in the same room; that’s my voice at the beginning announcing the take. This was actually the rough mix I did right after the tracking session; I did a remix later that pushed the vocals further forward and removed most of the hiss evident in the recording (that’s the one I submitted for grading), but they preferred this mix. Listening to both later on, I had to agree with their decision.
I also the recall the upperclassman assigned to “assist” us in the session pushing the band to track separately, overdub the vocals, etc. and lead singer Darin Glenn looking extremely uncomfortable with his suggestions. I went over and asked him what he wanted to do — which was track everything live — and that’s what we did, above the sneering of the Queensryche-loving assistant engineer, who couldn’t resist throwing in “Going for that boombox sound, eh?” Whatever, dude — just plug in the cables like I asked.
Credits for Yarnmarvins - “Unturned”: Tom Hoff - bass, Josh Parks - drums, Eli McCormick - guitar, Darin Glenn - vocals.
I always regretted that I never got the chance to see them live, but the members of Yarnmarvins went on to about a dozen different Bloomington bands. You can learn more about that at their Musicalfamilytree page, as well as hear a bunch of other Yarnmarvins tunes.
DIETRICH performs “Gut Feeling/Slap Your Mammy” (originally by Devo) live at the Beauty Bar in San Diego, Saturday May 1 2010. Contact DIETRICH at dietrichsandiego@gmail.com
This final video excerpt from DIETRICH’s performance at the Kensington Club in San Diego Friday April 16 2010 includes two cover songs: Fang’s “The Money Will Roll Right In” and “Sooprize Package for Mr. Mineo” by Supercharger (also covered by the Mummies).
There was a time not too long ago when, if I was looking at an item in a store and I wasn’t sure whether or not I wanted to buy it, I would think to myself, “Eh, I can always find it on eBay later, maybe cheaper.” That is no longer the case.
I recorded and produced this track at the Indiana University Musical Arts Center studio in the mid-90s as part of my audio engineering studies. If I remember correctly, local bands wanting to be recorded put signup forms in an envelope outside the studio door, and I recall having a boombox demo tape they’d recorded beforehand — maybe that was submitted along with the initial form? Dunno. In any case, I was surprised at the number of solid tunes 
DIETRICH performs “Gut Feeling/Slap Your Mammy” (originally by Devo) live at the Beauty Bar in San Diego, Saturday May 1 2010. Contact DIETRICH at 
This Saturday night May 1st, I’ll be performing live with Nikki Lomas, Paul Szewczyk, and Ryan Tully-Doyle as DIETRICH at 