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$40,000,000 X 1,000,000 = 40,000,000,000,000 That is 40 trillion for it to be 40,000,000 it would have to be $1 x 40,000,000!

Sorry to say there Bobster!

Anyway your other comments are sadly both funny and true.


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If GM could make a car that lasts five years without major problems, they wouldn't be in this mess.




I'm still driving my 1996 Bonneville Pontiac. Probably the best car I've ever had.

The only problem was the intake manifold - GM's famous Dex-Cool anti-freeze finally ate it out last year. Of course there was a class action lawsuit against GM over this, and GM is settling, but they're still using the stuff. Full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes seems to be their credo.

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And I understand that it's sold Hummer to a Chinese company..........


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And I understand that it's sold Hummer to a Chinese company..........




You mean someone actually bought it? Well you know the old saying about what's "born every minute". But I didn't know it was that bad.

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If GM could make a car that lasts five years without major problems, they wouldn't be in this mess.




They've been doing this for the past 15 years at least. The problem is, everyone remembers the Chevy Citations from the 1980s.

There is an american media bias against american car companies and a general 'pass' for the japanese companies. You probably haven't heard about the Toyota oil sludge issue, but just google those terms. Had that issue been associated with GM, Ford or Chrysler, it would have been headline news.

Consumer Reports even admits that it refuses to give GM a 'recommended buy', the most coveted award in the automotive industry, for a new model in it's first year, whereas it will do such for Toyota and Honda.

This may not seem like a big deal, but it is financially a HUGE deal. The first model year of a vehicle is where it can do the most to conquer sales from other manufacturers. Getting that CR rating is a big part of the equation.

GM's current mess was created mainly by the lack of credit availability - plain and simple. 40% of nearly all car company customers, foreign and domestic, were removed from the marketplace nearly overnight. (the middle 6 months of 2008).

Look, I worked for them for 15 years - just quit in April. 2 years ago I got a profit sharing check, with a much less favorable cost structure than what exists today.

The car industry had been cranking along with 16,000,000,000 to 17,000,000 unit sales on a year to year basis. Now it's looking like a 9,000,000 to 10,000,000 unit per year market. All the car companies are reeling as a result - but again, the bad news focuses on the domestics. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for them to fail.

The only reason the Japanese companies aren't in as much of a hurt is they had more cash on hand. Toyota lost money this year. And it will likely happen again for 2010.

They also don't have a big retirement aged former workforce in this country as a sunk cost. You can look at that as a good thing, but guess what - now the taxpayer will be paying more for those retiree's health care bills as well as a result of the bankruptcy.

Honestly - check the real reliability results and you'll see there that the playing field is flat these days. I'm not talking about people's opinions on reliability (such as yours posted above), but the reliability ratings based on part and system failures.

And nobody tips a hat to GM for what they did immediately following 9/11. Kept a good part of the US economy in business with 0% financing.

I was fortunate to escape the industry. It's impossible to sustain a domestic industry when we are making the best products in decades; better than a good deal if not all of the competition, and attitudes like the above are still present in the society. Perception is reality.

Just please go test-drive a Malibu.

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And I understand that it's sold Hummer to a Chinese company..........




You mean someone actually bought it? Well you know the old saying about what's "born every minute". But I didn't know it was that bad.




Glen, Just a little over a year ago, this was probably the most profitable brand in the stable of GM. It was a cash cow.

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If GM could make a car that lasts five years without major problems, they wouldn't be in this mess.




They've been doing this for the past 15 years at least. The problem is, everyone remembers the Chevy Citations from the 1980s.




Bingo. As one car guy to another Scott, this is right on. They make a lot of great cars now but it's too late. To anybody under 40, GM Ford or Chrysler do not exist, it's that simple. They totally screwed the pooch in the 70's and 80's with the Vega, the Pinto, the X cars, the unbelievably awful Olds diesel, the equally awful Seville 4-6-8 and how about that little pos Cadillac Cimmaron based on whatever that Chevy was called? What a bargain that was. The list goes on and on, I'm digging em up now. That turbo V6 Regal (not the Grand National, that was pretty hot), the turbo Trans Am, that little crap Mustang II, the Buick Le Sabre, there's a classic for ya, man the hits just keep on comin. There's that very smooth jewel like Olds Quad 4. Not. Oh yeah, lets not forget the Dodge Diplomat and all of it's siblings. And then of course, Chevy importing that total pos Isuzu whatever it was in an attempt to compete with Honda. If you can't tell, after I stopped playing music for a living I sold, test drove, financed or managed all of those brands during that time because I was a patriotic Air Force veteran and no way was I working for a Japanese car company. My mistake. I finally gave up and worked for BMW for several years.
Meanwhile, the Japanese companies captured that whole generation of buyers and they're not coming back. The business model that GM had now works beautifully for Toyota. Get the buyer in his first car with a Corolla, then move up to a Camry, then move up to Lexus. Of course don't forget the dealer "experience" with all those domestics. It was an experience all right. Most but not all, of the foreign dealers are much better too.
The current generation of 20 somethings are more open to some domestics but only a few and I doubt it will be enough to sustain the former big 3 without continual government subsidies. Still, they didn't live through all those "great" cars, so maybe they wind up saving the companies because as you said the current models are fine. They're right up there in the JD Power rankings.
All this bailout really is is a jobs program and probably necessary given the current economic climate. But, in a few years when we're humming along again, the government will feel it's safe to pull the plug on GM and Chrysler and they will probably dry up and go away unless GM can make a going business just with Cadillac and Corvette and maybe selling Buicks to the Chinese. Even the Toyota Tundra is starting to eat the Silverado now. Not sure about Ford, they may make it.

Bob


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Just build a car designed to last 8 to 10 years without needing to buy new wipers after 3 months, tires after 8 months, stuff that works. No need to make 12 models, this one has 2 pieces of chrome, this one 4, this one has a roof hole, that one has a locking gas cap cover. Don't change the model for 3 years, just improve on what you had.

What was the make of that taxi cab that was prevalent in the 50's? Was it called a Universal? They made the thing to last forever, using the best transmission, chassis, etc.

I've had 3 vehicles over the last 30 years. An olds 88 I drove into the ground and sold to my neighbour for $1000 and he was an auto engineer, fixed it in the driveway and sold it for $3000 (It was the same as the cadillac at the time.) Then a Dodge van, now a Ford Van. The Ford is the 2000 model, and I've changed the transmission and engine. The engine change cost me $1200. But I bought all them with cash. So the $1200 spent 5 months ago to change the engine seems ok because for the year I'll spend $100 bucks a month in theory and the engine that went in had 80,000 kms less on it than mine did. As soon as the kids are gone, and I sell the 5 bedroom house (which is within a year), I will buy the last car. Heaven knows with how much less I drive, it should last me quite some time, except for the salt eating it every winter.

Without the teams of people changing 12 models of every car every year, retooling the plants, and having a dealer on every corner, it would reduce costs to have a car that didn't change much, and who cares if it looks like we are all going down the road on the same car.

Maybe the next one I'll take to the Punjabi temple and let them 'bless' it with oil and flowers and stuff. I just have to ask what day it's ok to buy, they have very strict rules on what days you can purchase products with metal or some such thing. LOL


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If GM could make a car that lasts five years without major problems, they wouldn't be in this mess.




And if they made cars the people actually wanted instead of trying to manipulate public tastes into what GM wanted them to buy.

That's just my opinion.

Notes


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What was the make of that taxi cab that was prevalent in the 50's? Was it called a Universal?



Are you referring to the Checker?

When I was a kid, we were tickled to make it to 100,000 miles on a car.
Today I have an Olds Bravada with 304,000 miles. (runs like a top)
2) Chevy Astros 250,000 miles + both run well & a 2006 Jeep Liberty Diesel w/111,000 miles.
All vehicles were bought new. No major repairs. The quality is there.

The bloat is in the unions. Now that they own 30% of GM & approx. 50% of Chrysler, how will they negotiate their contracts?

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Just build a car designed to last 8 to 10 years without needing to buy new wipers after 3 months, tires after 8 months, stuff that works. No need to make 12 models, this one has 2 pieces of chrome, this one 4, this one has a roof hole, that one has a locking gas cap cover. Don't change the model for 3 years, just improve on what you had.<...>




The original VW Beetle approach. I agree with that. There is no need to re-tool the sheet metal and redesign everything just to get a new look when they could make a basic body style and then simply make improvements on that through the years.

As far as reliability is concerned, the US cars are much more reliable than they used to be. When I was young it was extremely rare for a vehicle to last 100,000 miles. The odometers didn't go that high, and if you "flipped" the odometer, it was a cause for celebration. Now I can "flip" them twice and still drive them.

I need a mini-van to haul my music gear to the gig (PA, sax, guitar, synths, etc. and I've had 3. A 1984 Plymouth Voyager almost 200,000 miles, a 1995 4 cylinder Dodge Caravan over 200,000 miles and currently a 2002 Dodge Caravan with 130,000 miles and counting.

The Caravan I'm driving now has had nothing major done to it. Other than tune up items, I've replaced the battery once, wiper refills once (they are due again) and the tires once (at about 100,000 miles). I drive it conservatively, slow acceleration, anticipating slow downs so I use the brakes as little as I can (I'm on the original set), and I get 5 miles per gallon more than the car is rated for (that's 100 miles per tank - see http://www.nortonmusic.com/environment.html and scroll down to the sub-heading Automobile for details).

Of course, driving the car sanely hurts the vehicle manufacturer. The car companies instead of building a product that lasts and selling fewer items in a smaller company, decided long ago to sell as many cars and replacement parts as they could therefore growing the company as big as they could and maximizing profits. But nothing can grow forever.

The industry term is "Chiclets items", products like the chewing gum namesake are not meant to last but instead are to be chewed up and spit out.

They used intensive advertising to tell the public that they need a new car every two years, and actually designed parts so that they do not last forever (they make a lot of money selling replacement parts).

When the imports started becoming more reliable than the domestics, and using that as a selling point, the US car companies started responding (Quality is job one) and now US vehicles are much better than they used to be.

But after all those shoddy quality for "maximum Chiclets" years it was difficult to change public perception. The general public remembers driving those US Junk cars while the Hondas and Volvos seem to last forever. It's difficult to change a person's mind once he/she has been burned. For example, I got sick eating too many strawberries as a child and to this day I cannot eat strawberries even though I tell myself I won't get sick if I eat them.

Plus the US industry is still geared towards the Chiclets approach and longer lasting cars that don't need replacing hurt the huge bloated Chiclets industry. So even if they can convince the public that they changed their ways, they have to reorganize, close factories, get rid of laborers, get rid of management and become a much smaller company that sells fewer units but units that last longer. And that's tough to do.

Plus while the majority of people really wanted fuel efficient vehicles, through the advertising, product placement in movies/TV, and pressure from dealers, the US Auto companies were busy telling the people they would be looked down upon by their peer group if they drove anything smaller than a gas-guzzling SUV. So too many people bought those Hummers, Escalades, Expeditions and their slightly smaller brethren like the Jimmy, Navigator, etc., and when the gas prices shot up (partly caused by the increased consumption of these behemoths), they regretted their purchase, saw the foreign market producing cars that get 30-50mpg and that was one more "nail in the coffin" of the US manufacturer.

They have been going for this quarter's bottom line instead of long term stability and profitability. This is the problem with corporationalism (as opposed to real capitalism).

A small company only needs to make enough money to pay the employees and the owners a decent salary (with of course the owners making a more "decent" salary). There is no need to make more and more and more profit every quarter, but simply enough so everybody can live comfortably.

A huge corporation needs to make more and more and more and more profit, every quarter, or the stockholders will sell their stock and invest somewhere else. As mentioned before, nothing can grow indefinitely.

So in effect, the stock market becomes a legal Ponzi scheme, and the day of reckoning has come again. Look at history, it's not the first time. Each depression/recession may be better or worse than the last one, but they do come in cycles. And each time it takes away the hard-earned lifetime savings of the investors and leaves them worse off than if they buried their money in a jar in their back yard. They CEOs win, the investors lose. Every Ponzi scheme has it's few winners and many losers.

This is what Karl Marx saw as the problem with Capitalism/Corporationalism, and he had good intentions to fix it. Unfortunately, communism had it's own set of problems that were harder on the population than Capitalism so it failed.

I'm not smart enough to devise a system that doesn't have the excesses of Capitalism/Corporationalism or the shortages of Communism, if I was I'd write a book and perhaps initiate change. I can see the problem, but I don't know how to fix it -- and I've thought about it a lot.

As Alvin Lee once sang, "I'd love to change the world, but I don't know what to do. So I'm leaving it up to you."

Sadly,
Notes


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<...>The bloat is in the unions.<...>




I partially agree with you.

But last year, the CEO of GM made almost 15 million dollars for his yearly salary (including bonuses and stock options) while the company hemorrhaged money. It's hard for the union to cut their paychecks when the person steering the ship is making an obscene amount of money while he is steering the ships straight into the rocks.

And when the ship goes down, they know he is not going down with the ship, and he is not even getting on a lifeboat, but abandoning ship in a helicopter and leaving the crew to sink or swim. How can anybody justify a CEO making 15 million dollars a year when the company he/she is running is rapidly heading towards bankruptcy? Is he/she being rewarded for making bad decisions? It seems so.

So it's union plus management in my opinion.

And I'm not happy about any of the bail outs, but again, I don't have the solution.

Notes


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Remember the magnificent documentation 'An Inconvenient Truth' by Al Gore in 2006?

An impressive chart depicted the efficiency of cars built by various car manufacturers all over the globe. U.S. car manufacturers build the most inefficient cars in the world - by a long shot.

You see such a chart and know immediately -> U.S. car manufacturers are prone to crash.


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Quote:

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If GM could make a car that lasts five years without major problems, they wouldn't be in this mess.




And if they made cars the people actually wanted instead of trying to manipulate public tastes into what GM wanted them to buy.

That's just my opinion.

Notes




Bob, I will grant that they missed your segment. Missed it by a mile; or shall we say "missed it by about 15 mpg". But they also had a business goal in mind. Make money on every single model. It is a for profit company after all. It's not a benevolent charity.

Toyota still loses money on every single Prius that they make.

But you know what, it's advertising cost for them. It makes the public think that everything that they make is fuel efficient. That's a big 'ol pile of you know what. But their gamble worked.

The government wants all the cars to be Priuses. Well, we still build houses and things like that in this country. Lots of people still want trucks. GM offers fuel efficient trucks that can actually handle the hard work thrown at them.

Toyota - well, try looking up the Tundra tailgate deformation issue.

Again, swept under the rug by the general media.

Look to see who is still selling Sequoias, and then look to see what MPG they get versus the domestic competition.

About the union comment - For many years, this has not been the biggest thorn in the side of GM. I was a non-union salaried engineer for GM. If anyone would want to cast stones their way, it would be me. But I can vouch that looking at the contract that Rick Wagoner's team negotiated with the union in 2007, it made the GM/UAW contract cost competitive with non-union labor from the foreign makers.

You can look it up yourself.

Don't believe the senator's figures. They used very old information.

As for Rick Wagoner making 15 million/year - He probably should have volunteered to do the 1$ salary a year earlier.

Keep in mind that the economy, the inflow/outflow of money, of even just GM's full size truck program, was big enough to make it a Fortune 100 company all by itself. Shoot, it was a bigger economy than many countries of the world for that matter.

That's just for one vehicle line.

Folks in charge of stuff like that should get paid in kind, I would say.

I think he earned his keep pretty well. He was a sacrificial lamb. It's the bank CEOs and the lack of any regulation on the credit markets (congress), that have put the economy into this mess. Not one of them have required to leave. Hmm.

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This is what Karl Marx saw as the problem with Capitalism/Corporationalism, and he had good intentions to fix it. Unfortunately, communism had it's own set of problems that were harder on the population than Capitalism so it failed. -Notes Norton



Quote:

"The problem with communism is communism. The problem with capitalism is capitalists."



Quote:

"Capitalism is the worst economic system ever devised, except for all the others."



Quote:

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of communism is the equal sharing of misery." -Winston Churchill



Notes,

Rather to my surprise, I agree with you about everything, with (I think) the minor exception of CEOs' 'obscene' salaries. A cap on earnings of companies or individuals goes a little too far in the direction of socialism for me. But otherwise--I'm right with ya.

R.


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I'm right there too. All of us in this discussion were also putting our two cents in during the election. I'm on the right, a lot of you were on the left and we all expressed ourselves. Well, now I'm nowhere. I've always been pretty cynical about this stuff but now I'm so cynical I can't even describe just how cynical I really am except to say I'm really, really cynical. The Madoff scandal was the tipping point for me. How could this happen right under the nose of the SEC? There's a guy in Boston who runs a 5 billion hedge fund who had his partner look into Madoff several years ago with the thought he might put some of his clients money with him. He discovered something was terribly wrong and wrote it all up with their evidence and turned it over to the SEC. And nothing happened. I give that guy a lot of credit because he did his due diligence and protected his clients. Then there's the totally unregulated AIG debacle. I'm a finance type and have studied these things trying to learn what happened and it represents a failure of government on a massive scale. Just unbelievable.
For 8 years this was Bush's responsibility but it was going on for over 20 years so it cuts across both parties. I now know the meaning of the phrase that it's a terrible thing when people lose their faith. I've lost my faith in my government and like Notes, I don't have any answers either. Unlike Rush Limbaugh, I desperately want Obama to succeed and if he can clean this mess up even somewhat by applying left wing liberal principles then guess what, I'm right there with them because the Republican free market principles I thought I believed in have done squat.
We all have to be careful though. This is exactly how Hitler came to power not that Obama is Hitler mind you, its just that when the people are completely disillusioned with their leaders, they can be prone to follow someone who turns out to be worse than they can imagine.

Bob


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Glen, Just a little over a year ago, this was probably the most profitable brand in the stable of GM. It was a cash cow.




Scott;

I don't doubt this, but surely someone had to realize that the future was not in gas guzzlers.

Let's leave climate change out of this and think about where all the oil is coming from to run these things. It's coming from the ground, just like other minerals - all of which are a finite resource. Finite simply means, it will run out. And the more Hummer types we have the faster it runs out.

I will state it again - my full size Pontiac has been an excellent car - I don't baby my car - it gets "driven". Still original shocks all round (my wife's 96 Camry had to have them replaced - her brakes squeal all the time - mine don't). On a used car lot her car would bring more than mine, but I wouldn't trade her cars - the Pontiac is better. For me to buy an efficient vehicle would require an outlay of cash that would more than pay for all the gas I'll use the rest of my life.

I think your comments on the press, etc are probably right - once a company gets a bad reputation (see other posts about the 70's and 80's) it's almost impossible to regain it. I've looked at the new Malibu, and it's a very good vehicle (but I can't afford a new car now).

The imports are not without their problems, but we blithely assume they are always better. I think it has something to do with the "grass being greener on the other side of the fence".

My only beef with GM is about their new electric car - they had an excellent start ten years ago, and killed it. Now they are pretending to be virtuous by developing an electric which isn't even a fully electric - it's a hybrid.

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If GM could make a car that lasts five years without major problems, they wouldn't be in this mess.




I think Merle said that years ago, "if a Ford and a Chevy would last ten years like they should". And of course that was, "when I girl could still cook and chop wood".

Later,

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My only beef with GM is about their new electric car - they had an excellent start ten years ago, and killed it. Now they are pretending to be virtuous by developing an electric which isn't even a fully electric - it's a hybrid.




Jeez - they built the car. To replace the batteries would have cost more than the car was worth. They killed it because there was not a business case to continue it. I drove the EV-1 two different occasions. It was a joy to drive, but the batteries just wouldn't last.

The Volt IS an electric car. It's a practical electric car. The battery size allows you to go 40 miles without a charge. The range extending feature (take your pick: gasoline, diesel, fuel cell) allows the battery to remain reasonable in size, meet federal crash requirements, etc. etc. etc.

Most people that buy it for a commuting vehicle will not need to ever run the gasoline engine.

It's an electric car. Plain and simple. It just won't leave you stranded should you drive it farther than 40 miles.

I could go into the details of what a hybrid actually means, but in simple terms: The Prius is a hybrid. The gas motor powers the drive wheels at times. Not the case with the Volt. Pure electric drive.

Hybrids are the short game.

I've driven GM's fuel cell vehicles, at least a production ready Equinox that made nothing but water out of the tailpipe. That's the green future state - but it requires an infrastructure change that the car companies can't finance on their own.

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For the larger Band-in-a-Box® packages (UltraPAK, UltraPAK+, Audiophile Edition), the hard drive backup copy is available for only $25. This will include a preinstalled and ready to use program, along with your installation files.

Backup copies are offered during the checkout process on our website.

Already purchased your e-delivery version, and now you wish you had a backup copy? It's not too late! If your purchase was for the current version of Band-in-a-Box®, you can still reach out to our team directly to place your backup copy order!

Note: the Band-in-a-Box® keychain is only included with flash drive backup copies, and cannot be purchased separately.

Handy flash drive tip: Always try plugging in a USB device the wrong way first? If your flash drive (or other USB plug) doesn't have a symbol to indicate which way is up, look for the side with a seam on the metal connector (it only has a line across one side) - that's the side that either faces down or to the left, depending on your port placement.

Update your Band-in-a-Box® 2024 for Windows® Today!

Update your Band-in-a-Box® 2024 for Windows for free with build 1111!

With this update, there's more control when saving images from the Print Preview window, we've added defaults to the MultiPicker for sorting and font size, updated printing options, updated RealTracks and other content, and addressed user-reported issues with the StylePicker, MIDI Soloists, key signature changes, and more!

Learn more about this free update for Band-in-a-Box® 2024 for Windows at www.pgmusic.com/support_windowsupdates.htm#1111

Band-in-a-Box® 2024 Review: 4.75 out of 5 Stars!

If you're looking for a in-depth review of the newest Band-in-a-Box® 2024 for Windows version, you'll definitely find it with Sound-Guy's latest review, Band-in-a-Box® 2024 for Windows Review: Incredible new capabilities to experiment, compose, arrange and mix songs.

A few excerpts:
"The Tracks view is possibly the single most powerful addition in 2024 and opens up a new way to edit and generate accompaniments. Combined with the new MultiPicker Library Window, it makes BIAB nearly perfect as an 'intelligent' composer/arranger program."

"MIDI SuperTracks partial generation showing six variations – each time the section is generated it can be instantly auditioned, re-generated or backed out to a previous generation – and you can do this with any track type. This is MAJOR! This takes musical experimentation and honing an arrangement to a new level, and faster than ever."

"Band in a Box continues to be an expansive musical tool-set for both novice and experienced musicians to experiment, compose, arrange and mix songs, as well as an extensive educational resource. It is huge, with hundreds of functions, more than any one person is likely to ever use. Yet, so is any DAW that I have used. BIAB can do some things that no DAW does, and this year BIAB has more DAW-like functions than ever."

Convenient Ways to Listen to Band-in-a-Box® Songs Created by Program Users!

The User Showcase Forum is an excellent place to share your Band-in-a-Box® songs and listen to songs other program users are creating!

There are other places you can listen to these songs too! Visit our User Showcase page to sort by genre, artist (forum name), song title, and date - each listing will direct you to the forum post for that song.

If you'd rather listen to these songs in one place, head to our Band-in-a-Box® Radio, where you'll have the option to select the genre playlist for your listening pleasure. This page has SoundCloud built in, so it won't redirect you. We've also added the link to the Artists SoundCloud page here, and a link to their forum post.

We hope you find some inspiration from this amazing collection of User Showcase Songs!

Congratulations to the 2023 User Showcase Award Winners!

We've just announced the 2023 User Showcase Award Winners!

There are 45 winners, each receiving a Band-in-a-Box 2024 UltraPAK! Read the official announcement to see if you've won.

Our User Showcase Forum receives more than 50 posts per day, with people sharing their Band-in-a-Box songs and providing feedback for other songs posted.

Thank you to everyone who has contributed!

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