Ah yes the site that so nicely spammed our forums looking to poach members earlier today saying it wasn't advertising because it was a free site when their tos refers to paypal payments, that it says it is by invitation only yet anyone can join. I don't trust sites that stoop to dodgy promo tactics or contradict themselves in much they say. The basic membership may be free, just now, but it looks suspiciously like they don't intend staying that way, and that they do intend charging for their services.
I say poach our members because they say they have a "professional forum". We put a lot of time and effort into promoting Songstuff to attract new members because members are the lifeblood of a community. For some reason they think we built our community to be a free advertising resource for their community and that posting to encourage members here to join and spend their time there is neither an Advertisement, nor a means to undermine this community while feeding their own community. Call me daft but after all the time I have invested here, the friends I have made, and the plans we have for further development, I prefer this community. Yeah, yeah, I'm biased, I know.
The member in question made two posts, mentioning how he was looking forward to taking part here when his posts were completely a sales pitch for his community. His honesty and straight up nature shone through.
Interesting they are a student project that is in fact an LLC.
Check out their tos & privacy statement.
Interesting Songstuff promotes in legitimate ways, we have given fair warning of about two years that we intended offering some paid services to augment all the free stuff at some point in the near future in order to fund the site after 13 years of giving it all away for free. While our sites may appear on the surface to be similar we are poles apart.
To say something isn't an Ad because they have a free site is just plain ridiculous.