Why I haven’t renewed

I’d been a member of DDM since it’s inception – give or take a month or two.  My renewal date was in October, and I’d faithfully renewed each year, until this one.  In the past I’d often wondered if I really needed to renew, but in my head it just felt like another cost of being a fan – and at $35.00 a year, I didn’t think it was that much money, and it really isn’t.  I know that over the years a lot of the original members stopped renewing, but in the past I guess I just wasn’t ready.  It didn’t seem like such a big deal to keep my membership going, so why did I decide to quit this year?  This year…as in the middle of a big world tour…this year?

For me, it had everything to do with circumstance and nothing to do with the band.  I don’t even know how much, if anything, they really see out of DDM (money wise), so I don’t feel as though I’m slighting them by not being a member.  That part I worked out of my head a long, long time ago.  I can still be a fan, and a pretty good one I might add, without that membership.  I also noticed that I was going over to DDM fewer and fewer times each month, and I had completely stopped going to the forum, or message boards.  The only real reason to keep my membership, and the only reason I still wonder if I shouldn’t sign back up is because of presales and possibly buying VIP tickets in the future, but at the end of the day I’m just not sure that’s reason enough to be a member.

From day one people have complained about DDM.  Not only the cost, although that’s certainly a good deal of the problem, but also that there’s just not enough offered to make the cost worth the trouble.  I would have to agree.  Ultimately, the “exclusive” things offered by DDM – the Katy Kafe’s for example – just aren’t enough.  Yes, the site has some decent features, but nothing that couldn’t or shouldn’t be offered by the band’s own website.  It just doesn’t make good sense, and DDM certainly doesn’t offer anything beyond the mundane.  Yes, you can get presale tickets, often within HOURS notice of tour dates being announced.  Yes, there is the off chance that the band will agree to do meet and greets for a “lucky” few. (no offense to the band on that one – its just become rather obvious that the same “lucky” few tend to win over and over and over again.  How many times can you really meet and greet the band on tour before the band themselves start wondering if they’re having a deep sense of deja vu each night???)  Absolutely, they do offer VIP tickets, and sometimes, those tickets are actually worthy of being called VIP simply due to where they are located – meaning that while the seats themselves might be good, there isn’t much offered along WITH the VIP ticket that would indicate it’s premium.  Yes, there are t-shirts that come in the package, along with a laminate, a poster, maybe a tote bag… all sent to you either before or after the show.  At the show itself though, aside from your seat, there’s not much to being a VIP.  I guess if I were doing the planning, I might make being a VIP a little more desirable.  A little more special and exclusive.  Private entrances and exits, a special bar area…a reasonable attempt to allow the first 5 rows access to the stage railing without a big security guy telling you no, even though you paid the same amount as the folks in the front row.  For around $300 a ticket, it seems as though it might be worth the extra effort.  I think that generally speaking something has been lost in the translation between idea on paper to execution.

As I said before, in my case it came down to circumstance.  October came and went, I was busy, and money was at a premium in our house.  I felt as though I needed to curtail my own spending to some degree, and DDM is very much just an “extra”, so out it went.   I very much wish that DDM was something so special that it would have felt a little more difficult to make the choice, but it was not.  I know many that will gladly say that when the next set of shows are announced (whether its for this tour or another), and I’m crying that I don’t have presale access, they’ll be the first to say they told me so – and that’s fair.  Perhaps by then I will have signed back up.

The real point I’m trying to make here, in case it was somehow lost, is that its a shame the decision wasn’t made more difficult for me in the end.  DDM is one of those things that doesn’t really have much of a soul.  You pay money, you have a shot at presale tickets, and they throw some silly extra things your way to try and make you feel good about paying them for the opportunity….but not too good.  If you’ve got the extra cash, it probably doesn’t matter and you don’t think much about it when you renew each year.  I played that way for a few years myself.  This year though, I just decided it wasn’t worth it.

-R