phishing scheme????

[Tricky-Loops]

But this is her real email address

I don't know. Maybe she uses a special email address for these mass emails?

It's hard to tell if this is a scammer outside Official.fm or an incredibly stupid screw up within Official.fm.

Very unlikely.

If they would detect a copyright infringement, they surely would contact the artist SPECIFICALLY and wouldn't send a general form which has nothing to do with copyright infringement at all (only with data collecting).

[Frantz]

a general form which has nothing to do with copyright infringement at all

The form mentions ownership of songs: "only artists/labels who own the rights to the songs they upload will be considered for an account extension"

I am also leaning towards it being a scam. I just can't see the point of it. Let's say the scammer sends out 100,000 of these bogus notices to Official.fm users and 10% of the people fall for it and fill out the form. Now the scammer has an email list of 10,000 Official.fm users to spam. The problem is spammers need millions of addresses to make money because almost everyone deletes spam. The list would be too small to be of any use.

[SODDI]

Diego Garcia. That's where the U.S. bombers are based.

[Frantz]

I just sent email to Stephanie with a link to this thread. I'll post here when she replies.

[SODDI]

This all makes me glad I don't use OfficialFM.

[Tricky-Loops]

I am also leaning towards it being a scam. I just can't see the point of it. Let's say the scammer sends out 100,000 of these bogus notices to Official.fm users and 10% of the people fall for it and fill out the form. Now the scammer has an email list of 10,000 Official.fm users to spam. The problem is spammers need millions of addresses to make money because almost everyone deletes spam. The list would be too small to be of any use.

The scammer himself doesn't use the collected data for spamming. He sells it to another scammer or spammer, promising him that he will get much $$$ and how much worth this extraordinary data collection is...

...this is big business in some poorer countries, and even if the scammer only gets $500 for the data collection, he will be a rich guy!

I've seen some online forums in Nigera where the only purpose was how to get as much $$$ as possible with least working!

[Dominus]

Stephanie is real!

https://twitter.com/StephaYamaguchi
"I Help You On Official.fm"

Stephanie Yamaguchi ‏@StephaYamaguchi 24 Jun

Mi lickey @soundpellegrino compiration alubum so niceee!!!!

Really?

[chaosWyrM]

Stephanie is real!

https://twitter.com/StephaYamaguchi
"I Help You On Official.fm"

Stephanie Yamaguchi ‏@StephaYamaguchi 24 Jun

Mi lickey @soundpellegrino compiration alubum so niceee!!!!

Really?

hehe...i saw that too.

im really surprised at the attention this got. i have no updates though...i still havent heard back from officialfm.

strangely though, i did notice that i got another email from stephanie (from the same address) i got it on the 18th but i didnt even look at it as the info didnt interest me. i cant say it looks very scammy to me though, seems harmless:


Hey (removed),

It's curation season!

We're insanely excited to announce that OUR NEW HOME PAGE ( <- thats a link to the officialfm home page) is up and running, so fresh so clean for summer 20-13!




What's the idea behind the new home page? It's music content curated by humans to please humans. It's all about quality not quantity.

So, what to expect? A new series of playlists curated by artists and tastemakers we love: the home page will have music for any kind of mood you might be in, thanx to thematic playlists, secret gems, and timeless claaaaassssics. Matter of fact, let's go through the 6 categories of music you'll find on the home page.



I Got 6 On It
The special guest playlist, 6 songs carefully selected by talented artists and awesome people with interesting music taste. We begin with critically-acclaimed French trio Chateau Marmont (link), then follow with DJ Falcon(link), Is Tropical(link), Electric Youth(link), and Cameo Gallery(link) among many others to be announced soon...it's gon' be a hot summer!

Track du Jour
Now that's THE song you should not miss, the hidden gem with a little je ne sais quoi, the soon-to-be-a-hit masterpiece, the coup de maître.

Smooth Operator
This playlist is all about kicking back, relaxing, maybe reminiscing on the good old days...on the smooth tip, coast to coast, LA to Chicago.

In Da Club
"Yo, gimme something to dance to!"(link) - Dr. Dre, 1988.

Shuffled Music
This was originally called The Truffle Shuffle and it's exactly what you think it is: amazing songs that didn't fit the Smooth Operator or In Da Club playlists. It's got a bit of everything, it sounds great at home, in the car, at the bbq or the skatepark...pretty much anywhere!

Back In The Day
You know what they say: classics never die!


Ok, enough words for the day - let's get to the fun part! JUMP ON THE HOME PAGE NOW(link), press play, and remember to come back every week for updates and exclusives. ENJOY!



CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE NEW OFFICIAL.FM HOME PAGE(link)

[chaosWyrM]

UPDATE

so i got this email from officialfm today:

Stephan Armleder, Jul 29 14:52 (CEST):

Hello there,

Thanx for getting in touch. Your account will not be deleted. No worries.

Best regards


-----------------------------------

thats it. no mention about the original email being fake or anything.

[Fornax]

I hope it's ok to bump this thread since I feel this matter was not properly resolved here & also, since then, new facts have emerged that point to this being no phishing scam but something far more sinister (i.e. something ...official! ).

Let me first quote another Stephan Armleder answer that was posted in a thread called "An open letter to official.fm" over at the mashstix.com forums in which user "oki" wrote the following:

"this is the awnser i got from the helpdesk:

Stephan Armleder, Jul 29 13:58 (CEST):

Hello there,

Thank you for taking the time to get in touch.

Unfortunately we received claims from content owners of songs you used in your mashups.

Please fill in the form and we will make sure to consider your request for an account extension.

http // officialfm.wufoo.com/forms/offic ... extension/

so yea, i guess its real.... and i guess that mashstix is gonna loose all officialfm links, once again."
End Quote.

Also, this wasn't the first time they tried to do something against the mashup community. On Facebook there is a page called "An Open Letter To Official.fm" with more info:
https://www.facebook.com/openlettertoof ... ref=stream

Ok, so now comes the part where I talk about myself and how I see all this:
I know I'm fairly late to the party in that it took me 13 days to find the famous "Yamaguchi Mail" (in one of my rarely used email accounts). Very interesting, because I'm no mashup/remix artist and none of the 9 tracks I have uploaded there use copyrighted material. There is one track that contains a heavily twisted & distorted creative commons sample from freesound.org and that's it. In the last five years I have created well over 300 tracks and only used samples in maybe 10 of them - all samples with a creative commons license. But, like I said, I only uploaded 9 tracks to Official.fm and I really don't see how or why any of the very few people (my tracks have generated meagre 36 plays since april, when I created my account, but that's okay since this project is and always has been more of a personal exorcism than anything else), that listened to them could have filed a copyright claim over anything.
I highly doubt that there was more than maybe one real "claim from content owners" involved in this mass-send out of the "Yamaguchi mails". I think this whole thing is just a misguided and hamfisted attempt to clean the Official.fm "population" of unwanted individuals, so to speak. Unwanted individuals being artists that don't sell their tracks or playlists, tag their stuff with Experimental (that's the only tag I use - highly suspicious, yes?) or other rarely used tags and upload "unusual" looking artwork (they most likely also target users that have been inactive for some time, and, if they didn't generate a single sale since then - *bingo!* - another account added to their internal "terror-list".). Note also how in the "Official.fm account extension Form" that was being linked to in the Yamaguchi mail, there are red asterisks marking ALL fields as "required". Not everyone has a "Label/Management/Booking agency" or a release on "iTunes, Beatport or similar". Or, the best example: "One ISRC or one UPC code "!!! Hell, I don't even have a "Music genre"! Seems like what they really want is to weed out all uncommercial artists (and you really can't get more uncommercial than my "music"), to remove all of the music that cannot be put in concrete little boxes (ironically, I think that includes musique concrète!).
[I think all that's left for me to do now is to write an email to Stephanie Yamaguchi and Stephan Armleder - and any other official.fm-Stephpersons and their stephchildren which may or may not make their appearance later in the game. ]

[mkdr]

So when can we see Stephanies picture?

[Fornax]

So when can we see Stephanies picture?

When the time is right and the stars are in alignment, the Holy Grail will reveal itself!!

[Frantz]

thats it. no mention about the original email being fake or anything.

I received no reply to my email which I sent to two addresses. They run their operation like amateurs.

[chaosWyrM]

thats it. no mention about the original email being fake or anything.

I received no reply to my email which I sent to two addresses. They run their operation like amateurs.

yeah im pretty annoyed about the whole thing. i want a an explanation as to why i received the email in the first place, as im 99.9999999% sure there were no complaints.

so either they have a problem with the system...or theyre lying.

[Fornax]

yeah im pretty annoyed about the whole thing. i want a an explanation as to why i received the email in the first place, as im 99.9999999% sure there were no complaints.

so either they have a problem with the system...or theyre lying.

I think they're lying and I'm going to find out why. But I have yet to perfect the wording of my Email to them. I want it to cut like a sword, so i won't fire it off until it's strong enough to penetrate their shields.
I stated my guess as to why they do this in my rather longish first post in this thread (it's actually half a rant). The fact that official.fm (then under a different name) targeted mashup-artists once before (google "An open letter to official.fm", the first result should be the youtube video) strongly points to this being not a phishing scam but, more likely, some sort of crazy vendetta against all things mashup / Mix / remix - and beyond (I also got the YamaguchiMail, even though my tracks have ZERO copyrighted content - if i had more than 40 listeners I would be 99% sure there were no complaints - but, as it is, I'm 100% sure. It's all made up to fit the agenda.). Having said that, this is one of the most amateurishly executed vendetta-thingies ever. Stephanie, I'm disappoint.