Bridging The Music 2024 Reports & Reviews

Bridging The Music Reports & Reviews (18)

• Jul 14, 2024

Type of a scam Business Email Compromise

Harassed by Owner

Jonah harassed me over the phone making all sorts of accusations that I was dropping out of the show. We were in the middle of revising a contract so that my band would be fairly compensated. I had signed a first draft of the contract but this contract did not include his signature on it. I have no contract with his signature in my possession - so there is no legal binding agreement between us.

He sent me a revision after my request to include a clause with the video footage — this was summed up as: “promoter will do it’s best to..” essentially no guarantee of any kind of payout.

In trying to discuss the revision, I was harassed over the phone by him. There was no discussion, he was yelling at me and cutting me off the whole time, saying “I’ve worked so hard for this”, and that he was going to contact his lawyer and his accountant to “find a resolution”.
He also kept moving my set time around with the half-signed, first-draft contract.

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Type of a scam Phishing

Bridging the Music is a scam

These people are the most unprofessional people you could ever work with in this music industry. even their own employees can’t stand how their own company is screwing people over.
The scam is they’ll paint this picture that they care about you and how you can trust them if you invested with them and you’ll get your money back 100% but that’s a lie. If they manage to make you sign the contract, in total you’ll be losing $500 just to perform for 30 minutes.
After you’ve wasted your money, you’re left with chump change while they just scored $500 off each artist they bamboozled to sign a contract that will only make them look good in court because they’ll tell you one thing over the zoom call and then flip the script and tell you some nonsense. If you actually pay attention to the reviews of this wannabe festivals (Minifest) then you’ll see who these people really are.

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More than just a pay to play scam

They make performers buy more tickets then the venue has capacity for. I worked for a venue in Boston last year that Jonah and his manifest scam held a show at. Each performer said they had to buy 50 tickets at 10 bucks a piece. There were 10 performers total. So 500 tickets right. The venue is only 350 capacity. Those vultures scammed naive performers out of at the very least 1500 bucks that night. If the room fee is paid in advance the promoter gets all the profit from all sales through the door. We paid Jonah 3800. He also got 5000 from the pay to play tickets in advance. I doubt the performers saw any of that 8800 dollars, but even if they did he already made a substantial amount off of the performers.

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Resolved

Initial means of contact Not applicable

Don't sign rude and unprofessional

My son signed on and he was not able to perform as he got called into work. After several harassment phone calls and messages from them my son just went to perform to keep everyone off his back. He was told he would get at least 15-20 mins of playing time however he got one good song and on the second one his mic kept cutting in and out on him he walked off stage and said he was done. Because their equipment was faulty they still want us to pay the full balance and have been harassing me and talking to me so rude and threatening to report this to my sons credit. i will never let him do business with these people again! They will harass you and talk to you in such a rude manor it is unbelievable. There are so many other productions that he performs with and has never been treated like this.

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Everything was fixed and everything went great we came to a mutual agreement and worked things out i can't edit the review so a reply on here is what it allowed me to do

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JONAH IS A HORRIBLE PERSON

I was contacted by the owner Jonah to play at one of the Bridging the Music shows. He explained to me that is I were to cancel well before the event I would not be obligated to pay the minimum rate as he would have enough time to fill my spot. So, I signed the contract about 6 months before the show (although the numbers were more in favor of the company than the artist). About 1 month after signing, my step mother had a stroke and was paralyzed from the waist down. I was unable to perform anymore because I had to focus on helping to support my household. My family is not rich and in an event such as the breadwinner of our home having a stroke - all hands must be on deck. I explained this to Jonah. Not only was he extremely rude and inconsiderate but he also sent the “unpaid balance” that I would’ve owed after performing to collections which has poorly effected my credit. DO NOT SIGN THIS CONTRACT. This is such a poor way to treat upcoming artist. Jonah is predatory and should sued for this scam of a business.

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Hey can you send me an email directly, I work with an artist that is set to perform with this festival.. I was very skeptical about it but they wanted to do it.. email is [email protected]

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The producer is a scam artist and run don't walk away.
I had to ask for my money several times after the gig, the money he owed me and he's really a scam artist so I would stay far away from bridging the music how disappointing. I love music so much what a shame that there are people like that around ripping off artists.

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DO NOT SIGN THEIR CONTRACT

DO NOT SIGN THEIR CONTRACT. Jonah, the owner of this is a nightmare to work with. He contacted me to play one of his shows and made everything sound so amazing and like it was a great opportunity…. Wrong. The venue he booked wasn’t opened yet and he rescheduled the event twice (the first time I didn’t even find out from him, another artist reached out and told me so I contacted the venue to confirm) This wouldn’t have been a big deal except for in the contract, he has a ticket sale minimum which is quite high for local artists. If you don’t sell your required minimum, you have to pay him out of your own pocket. I was confident I would meet the requirement, until he rescheduled the show not once.. but twice. When I tried to get out of it, he threatened me, saying he would make sure I never played a show anywhere that mattered again. We had multiple conversations that ended with me in tears because of how aggressive he was. It got to the point to where I had to have my parents talk to him because we couldn’t speak without it escalating. Also, his sneaky contract made it so I was going to have to pay him a hefty cancellation fee. Even though he rescheduled twice. I can get people to come out to a show but fans start to get upset and less likely to go when the date and venue kept changing. It felt like pulling teeth to get him to refund anyone who bought tickets after I backed out, I felt so bad. Never working with him again.

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Also, he is now threatening to sue for “defamation of character” because of this review. Anyone know of any helpful advice? Nothing I have stated is false.

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Pay to Play Scam

Company is forcing acts to sell a minimum ticket amount. Added together, this amount WELL EXCEEDS the venue capacity. If the act cannot come up with that amount they are forced to pay the difference. The venues capacity is WAY under the amount of tickets this company is forcing their artists to sell. The Company does nothing to promote the show and relies all on the artists to sell the tickets.

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In response

First off. Get [censored]ed. Im not the door guy I'm one of the managers and bookers and was filling in on door bc we are short staffed. I've been running music venues for over a decade and never have nor never will steal from a performer. My reputation speaks for its self. As does yours you vultures. Yeah I was rude to your proxy, he lied to my face. I know pay to play when I see it. Secondly there's a HUGE difference between asking bands to sell tickets and MAKING them purchase 500 dollars worth of tickets in advance. You're a [censored] pure and simple.

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Initial means of contact Not applicable

Pay to play b[censored]

I worked the door for one of their shows. As each artist came in, I asked them did you have to pay to play this show, and they all said yes, and they all said for about 500 bucks. (10 artists) I work for the venue. I saw the numbers. Jonah made 5000 grand off the performers. And they also said they'd be reimbursed, which I [censored]in doubt… We pay the promoter what ever ticket sales come through the door… That's another 3800 we collected that night. Each performer played like 15 mins a piece. Book your own shows. People like Jonah are piece of [censored] vultures. And you don't need them to book a show. It's super easy.

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Did they try to take any artist to court or threats from collections

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This person, Harley works for a venue that our company produces shows at in Boston. He is the door guy who treated our staff unprofessionally and rudely at our event. Unfortunately we don't feel like Harley is someone who we can trust. We have been lead to believe that door sales were withheld/stolen, as performers reported they had sales, that were not accounted for by Harley at the door.

Nonetheless, we do ask performers and bands to sell some tickets but we also give them a lot of room for profit. This in turn makes the show not only a good potential money maker for the Artist, but it inspires all of the Artists to work together with us to create an event that's a win/win situation for all. Not only on the financial side, but everyone working together creates a great crowd and on this specific night, there were over 200 people through the door - and a great crowd for bands and performers to play in front of. Maybe our event isn't for everyone, but it truly helps many performers and in general provides a fun experience. Harley unfortunately doesn't know us, or how we work countless hours to create these experiences. He also isn't aware of the many expenses this entails to keep it sustainable. We fly our Host/MC to every event - as he is an experienced professional, we rent the venue, there's marketing, research, social media, travel expenses, web/ticketing expenses and more. It's a shame Harley can't be open minded enough to see that we truly have passion and heart into creating quality events. Experience it for yourself and be open minded -- we will do our very best for every performer and event.

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The reviews above are fictitious and slander. We work with literally hundreds of performers a year which you can easily see by visiting our Instagram page. We have a ton of footage from our events under our Highlights. Every single artist we book has a legally binding contract with us. We have NEVER done any phishing or anything even close to the description of the above review. We have never published anyone's personal information anywhere on the internet, in any shape or any form. It's unfortunate but some people like the reviewer above is a liar. Based on their review it seems like they are disgruntled because they apparently owe us money.

We are happy to book artists for our events and continue to provide the best experience we can - as we have done for over 12 years now. It's a shame that people have to make up lies about a small business that puts on cool, fun events for musicians and bands in the music community.

Reviewer above, feel free to contact us directly and we would be happy to try and rectify any grievances.

-Bridging The Music

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I concur.
I got scammed too, I pre-bought 50 tickets ($10 each) in 2013 from a guy called Jonah in order to participate to a band contest organized by his organization, it was the minimum I had to buy in order to participate and have a chance to play live with 3 other bands at a venue in Austin TX. The winners would supposedly win 10k to record an album. Of Course we didn't win, we don't know who did.
The trick is that Bridging the Music sends a standard copy paste email praising the bands who feel special, something like "Hello , I've listened to your music, and it's amazing...etc".
I believe this is a one guy company, a guy called Jonah, he sent emails to all my subsequent bands, not knowing he already scammed me, and every time I got mad at him, and 1 year later he would send me the same cookie cutter email, I was still supposedly amazing, blah blah.. This time I knew he hadn't even listened to the band.
These guys should be fined and closed, they take advantage of gullible artists, but they get away with it because they're not doing anything really illegal, except it's still a scam.

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+12

- Miami, FL, USA

Scammer's website bridgingthemusic.com
Scammer's address 1823 Folsom St STE 204 Boulder CO, Boulder, CO 80302, USA
Country United States
Victim Location FL 33156, USA
Total money lost $350
Type of a scam Phishing
Initial means of contact Not applicable

Bridging the Music is not a business. Bridging the Music is cyberfraud.
Founded in Colorado, Bridging the Music is a phishing "pay-to-play" scam that is currently organizing concerts and live performances across the United States of America that violate CDC guidelines and, in occasional yet extremely serious circumstances, the guidelines of local health authorities.
Bridging The Music is a non-accredited, illegitimate business utilizing social media services such as Facebook and Instagram alongside digital payments applications (eg. Venmo, Cash App) to illegally and recklessly collect personal identification, including the personal financial records of artistic and creative individuals. This includes, but is not limited to, young adults and minors under 18 years old.
I am choosing to remain anonymous at this time for three important reasons:
1) Bridging the Music has compromised all of my financial information through a phishing scam.
2) Bridging the Music has threatened unauthorized legal action against my name.
3) Bridging the Music has a track record of publishing personal identification on the BBB.com website in retaliation against legitimate, negative reviews.
Phishing is not a business. Financial identity theft is a crime.
Avoid at all costs.

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