Gibson Guitars promises $10,000 to musician, backs out

deStructuralized

Long story short: 1.5 years ago, rapper/producer/labelhead Tonedeff was promised $10,000 in gear from Gibson Guitars for winning all four rounds of Lollapalooza's 'Last Man Standing' competition. He hasn't received his gear after repeated attempts to communicate with Gibson representatives, and things are looking pretty grim.

You can read the full story on the official blog here:
http://blog.qn5.com/2008/general/rant-gibson-hates-hip-hop

And you can find an extensive list of sites covering this issue (HipHopDX, Consumerist, Digg, del.i.cious, Facebook, or stumbleupon, etc) and updates here: http://qn5.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=12432

Finally, you don't have to agree with Tone's POV 100%, but if you agree to some degree that he got shafted, you have something to say, or simply think this is a topic worth discussing, please take a few moments to help this story gain exposure by upvoting it at reddit:

http://reddit.com/r/business/info/66j3t/comments/

Registration literally takes five seconds because there's no email confirmation; just fill out a user/pass and you're good to go. It's currently #1 in the business category, and taking it to the front page could really help things out.

I know the Fri crowd is very anti rap, but it's my belief that regardless of whether you like hip hop or not, and regardless of how disappointed Gibson might be feeling that a rapper won instead of a band, it's their responsibility as a legitimate business to follow through on their word. If this were a polka artist getting stiffed out of 10 grand, I'd still feel the same way.

liljp617

Can't say it's really justified, but not a whole lot can be done about it unless they entered into some formal agreement/contract that had clauses for this situation. Kind of a bitch move by Gibson, but meh Not a lot can be done.

Insanity

$10,000 is a lot of money...

deStructuralized

Fantastic news; after about five days publicity surrounding this got so huge that Tonedeff got calls from Gibson representatives promising to solve the problem. He had a talk with the CEO, who apologized and assured him that this was "not the Gibson way," and that this problem arose from promoters not getting the giveaway approved through proper channels.

He was then overnighted a check for his $10,000 winnings.

Needless to say, I feel pretty inspired by all of this. I honestly didn't have much faith that anything could be done about the problem, but consumers came together and made a difference in the end.

You can read the official update on the situation at blog.qn5.com