As someone who turned down the project (from Feb. 2020), I can tell you the things that I have an issue with:
1. Ian presented himself as a Nytimes writer to me, from his nytimes address, after he had already left the Nytimes. He presented his project as a Nytimes venture, and linked to the project AT the Nytimes, that he insinuated was one in the same. I felt like this was intentionally misleading to seem as though it was going to be a Nytimes affiliated project.
2. He never presented this project as some sort of a charity, or as something where the profit was intended to fund journalism. He presented it as a creative collaboration, one which combined journalism and images with music as an exciting new creative concept. He said that because of this, it was garnering interest from Netflix, etc.. and that's why we should be interested in participating. He didn't have money upfront because of the $50K he put into it, but the insinuation was that it definitely had monetary potential. It was NOT presented as some sort of a charitable contribution to a worthy journalistic cause, regardless of how he presents it in his FAQ currently.
3. He DID mislead about the fact that Synestesia was himself. In his email, he talks about how "we are working with Synesthesia Media on this." Meaning what? Ian is working with Ian on this? Now, I was able to see in a later, more detailed email, that money going to Synesthesia was money going to him because they put "ian" in parenthesis in a payout section, but he did obfuscate and make Synesthesia out to be a totally different label from himself. Whether it's NOW on his imdb page or not is irrelevant.
4. Lastly, while he did talk about working with a lot of musicians, which turned me off, I would NEVER suspect that it would be something like 450 musicians and 2000 tracks in 1 year. That is the most blatant part of this whole thing. It's obviously more of a stream farm at that point. If you can point to any other "compilation" or "project" like that, where one person has 50% of the writer credit for each track simply for providing field recordings, I'd love to see it.
While I dismissed the thing outright for not providing upfront compensation, it DEFINITELY was not a normal pitch. I'm not saying it was illegal, but "scam" is not a legal term. You can easily call something like this scammy for the intentional obfuscation. And just because something isn't illegal, it can be a worthy topic of conversation.
1. I deleted a bunch of comments here (and issued bans) where there was a clear lack of interest in real engagement. While I'm happy to entertain all critical questions, however pointed, I owe no debt to trolls. In the interest of transparency though, the deleted comments were about (a) my relationship with Ian (absolutely none going into this), (b) whether I have some kind of class interest to side with journalists (literally the opposite of what this newsletter does), (c) whether I under-represented the artists (I had *extensive* conversations with Benn and others, and made several public offers to work in their POVs and emails as I went), (d) that it was unprofessional of me to not try to find evidence for whether Ian referred to himself as an active NYT reporter after he'd left them (I stand by my commentary there; though note that I was happy to edit in the first example that someone showed me of Ian doing so, and even gave a $25 donation to the preferred charity of the person who flagged it to me). Anyway, I remain happy to answer additional concrete questions on those and other related topics. Just no to active trolling.
2. I'm working on a sequel that will go into more depth on the financials and some other FAQ / side criticisms that came out of the original. Ian and his staff/lawyers/accountants have been cooperating. Just taking time to sort it all out. Hopefully before the new year.
"Ian doesn’t draw a penny from Synesthesia, and has a fixed salary deal with Outlaw Ocean that doesn’t factor any royalties."
So where does the money to pay his salary come from, and how much is he making? All of this seems like the same legal jiggery-pokery that accountants and lawyers engage in for their clients to be able to claim "legitimate" income. The only question here is: did he and/or the companies he owns profit from music more than the composers themselves profited from it?
Sounds like Jeremy Arnold made this article literally to back up Ian's lies and reinforce a lot of scummy behavior under the guise of misunderstanding. You're just as despicable as Ian. Go to hell.
How closely did you review their Form 990 because there is a big missing amount that is not accounted for as well as incorrect information and other issues.
1. Unaccounted for Expenses:
According to the IRS: Form 900 must be publicly available and also that on Schedule "O",
'All organizations must describe their accomplishments for each of their three largest program services, as measured by total expenses incurred'. and the IRS gives specific examples of the types of services and amounts spent for each that should be listed
But their Schedule O only lists unspecified "Contractor Services" for $299,525
2. Form 900 is fraudulent because they do not disclose that one of the main other businesses that they are interacting with is being operated by a family member (ie his wife).
3. There is a line item that says that there is an outstanding expense of $60,000 for Royalties.
Given a Net income of $1,132,554 this means that Royalties (the main driver for the Income) made up less than 6% of the amount earned
All of this reminds me of the time that I briefly went into business with my Neighbor.
He said that we would split the money earned from the project 50 - 50 with my share being about $500.
Right after the project was over, I found out that he had been paid over $3000 in total.
When I confronted him, he said we did split the money 50-50.
$500 for him, $500 for me and the other $2,000 went back into the business
Needless to say, our business partnership (and friendship) ended that day.
As someone who turned down the project (from Feb. 2020), I can tell you the things that I have an issue with:
1. Ian presented himself as a Nytimes writer to me, from his nytimes address, after he had already left the Nytimes. He presented his project as a Nytimes venture, and linked to the project AT the Nytimes, that he insinuated was one in the same. I felt like this was intentionally misleading to seem as though it was going to be a Nytimes affiliated project.
2. He never presented this project as some sort of a charity, or as something where the profit was intended to fund journalism. He presented it as a creative collaboration, one which combined journalism and images with music as an exciting new creative concept. He said that because of this, it was garnering interest from Netflix, etc.. and that's why we should be interested in participating. He didn't have money upfront because of the $50K he put into it, but the insinuation was that it definitely had monetary potential. It was NOT presented as some sort of a charitable contribution to a worthy journalistic cause, regardless of how he presents it in his FAQ currently.
3. He DID mislead about the fact that Synestesia was himself. In his email, he talks about how "we are working with Synesthesia Media on this." Meaning what? Ian is working with Ian on this? Now, I was able to see in a later, more detailed email, that money going to Synesthesia was money going to him because they put "ian" in parenthesis in a payout section, but he did obfuscate and make Synesthesia out to be a totally different label from himself. Whether it's NOW on his imdb page or not is irrelevant.
4. Lastly, while he did talk about working with a lot of musicians, which turned me off, I would NEVER suspect that it would be something like 450 musicians and 2000 tracks in 1 year. That is the most blatant part of this whole thing. It's obviously more of a stream farm at that point. If you can point to any other "compilation" or "project" like that, where one person has 50% of the writer credit for each track simply for providing field recordings, I'd love to see it.
While I dismissed the thing outright for not providing upfront compensation, it DEFINITELY was not a normal pitch. I'm not saying it was illegal, but "scam" is not a legal term. You can easily call something like this scammy for the intentional obfuscation. And just because something isn't illegal, it can be a worthy topic of conversation.
Two notes:
1. I deleted a bunch of comments here (and issued bans) where there was a clear lack of interest in real engagement. While I'm happy to entertain all critical questions, however pointed, I owe no debt to trolls. In the interest of transparency though, the deleted comments were about (a) my relationship with Ian (absolutely none going into this), (b) whether I have some kind of class interest to side with journalists (literally the opposite of what this newsletter does), (c) whether I under-represented the artists (I had *extensive* conversations with Benn and others, and made several public offers to work in their POVs and emails as I went), (d) that it was unprofessional of me to not try to find evidence for whether Ian referred to himself as an active NYT reporter after he'd left them (I stand by my commentary there; though note that I was happy to edit in the first example that someone showed me of Ian doing so, and even gave a $25 donation to the preferred charity of the person who flagged it to me). Anyway, I remain happy to answer additional concrete questions on those and other related topics. Just no to active trolling.
2. I'm working on a sequel that will go into more depth on the financials and some other FAQ / side criticisms that came out of the original. Ian and his staff/lawyers/accountants have been cooperating. Just taking time to sort it all out. Hopefully before the new year.
"Ian doesn’t draw a penny from Synesthesia, and has a fixed salary deal with Outlaw Ocean that doesn’t factor any royalties."
So where does the money to pay his salary come from, and how much is he making? All of this seems like the same legal jiggery-pokery that accountants and lawyers engage in for their clients to be able to claim "legitimate" income. The only question here is: did he and/or the companies he owns profit from music more than the composers themselves profited from it?
Sounds like Jeremy Arnold made this article literally to back up Ian's lies and reinforce a lot of scummy behavior under the guise of misunderstanding. You're just as despicable as Ian. Go to hell.
How closely did you review their Form 990 because there is a big missing amount that is not accounted for as well as incorrect information and other issues.
1. Unaccounted for Expenses:
According to the IRS: Form 900 must be publicly available and also that on Schedule "O",
'All organizations must describe their accomplishments for each of their three largest program services, as measured by total expenses incurred'. and the IRS gives specific examples of the types of services and amounts spent for each that should be listed
But their Schedule O only lists unspecified "Contractor Services" for $299,525
2. Form 900 is fraudulent because they do not disclose that one of the main other businesses that they are interacting with is being operated by a family member (ie his wife).
3. There is a line item that says that there is an outstanding expense of $60,000 for Royalties.
Given a Net income of $1,132,554 this means that Royalties (the main driver for the Income) made up less than 6% of the amount earned
All of this reminds me of the time that I briefly went into business with my Neighbor.
He said that we would split the money earned from the project 50 - 50 with my share being about $500.
Right after the project was over, I found out that he had been paid over $3000 in total.
When I confronted him, he said we did split the money 50-50.
$500 for him, $500 for me and the other $2,000 went back into the business
Needless to say, our business partnership (and friendship) ended that day.