View Maniac, Inc

>> PUBLISHED ON SEPTEMBER 14, 2019

VIDYPS 79 d.o.o. is a software development company from the Republic of Serbia (Europe). Doing business as Blue2Digital, throughout the period 2012-2015 it operated as a music distribution service with the aim of connecting its clients with multiple digital music platforms including Vevo, Google Play, Spotify and many others.

On July 11, 2014 Mr. Jason Valenti a.k.a. "View Maniac" sent an email to Blue2Digital asking if he could sell our Vevo service to over 500+ clients, as he owned a music marketing company. There was no reason for us to say no to him and some time later, on September 10, 2014, Jason Valenti signed up for Blue2Digital's music and video distribution service having accepted the Digital Music Distribution Agreement. From that time on, Mr. Valenti used this contact info in every email he sent to us:
Jason Valenti
View Maniac LLC
New York, NY | Miami, FL
www.View Maniac.com
The account, however, was not registered to View Maniac, but to Jason Valenti himself. We therefore had to check the official data provided by NYS Department of State, Division of Corporations and found an entity under the name of "View Maniac". The date of filing of the articles of organization, i.e. the date "View Maniac, Inc" was approved by the New York Division of Corporations was April 4, 2014. Their label was confirmed to be legit and it persuaded us to disregard Mr. Valenti's improper registration.

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We noticed no irregularities until Vevo sent us an inquiery regarding View Maniac. We had to look into the records they had with us more detailed.

In the period September 2014 - February 2015 there were 104 purchases of our "Create Your Own VEVO Channel" service made on behalf of View Maniac. A number of the purchases was made from the same IP address, while there were used two different email addresses:

j...media@gmail.com - 103 purchases

k...music@gmail.com - 1 purchase

As for the names of the purchasers, here they are:

Jason Valenti - 98 purchases

Jason Floyd - 3 purchases

Kevin Floyd - 2 purchases

Adam Jonathan - 1 purchase

Which name of these is real and which is not, or which one was legally bound to View Maniac and which was not, is hard to tell. It was only one of them (Kevin Floyd) who we could find on the address reported within the invoices as received. Our Digital Music Distribution Agreement is, however, very clear about the accuracy of data provided by the clients:

"You represent, warrant and undertake to Blue2Digital that the information that You have provided when uploading your tracks is true, accurate, current, complete and is compliant with the Terms Of Use."

When somebody makes an online purchase or registers for using our services, he must enter the correct information. Misrepresentation is a serious breach of contract and so is submitting incorrect user's data. In case of necessity of sending a certified letter by mail, for example, what name or address do we put in there?

* Orders were made by using a few different names; all the names must have been legally bound to View Maniac, Inc, or it would be a serious breach of contract due to misrepresentation and submission of incorrect information

It seems that we were wrong for disregarding the inaccurate data used by Jason Valenti in his completing the registration.

There was one more question to be raised and it pertained to the nature of the services View Maniac was charging for. Blue2Digital was an official Vevo distributor and the parent company which View Maniac was doing business through. The only service that we charged for was the creation of one's Vevo channel. We didn't charge for video uploads or video promotion because of the simple fact that Vevo didn't charge us for that service either. Blue2Digital would suggest a video to get up for promo consideration and submit a promo request to Vevo. Once submitted for programming, the Vevo Team would offer it a premiere, a feed post, social support etc. There may be some other types of promotion too, but the clients must always be informed on the best slates and placements they could get and how much it would cost.

Because they ordered a significant number of Vevo channels, View Maniac was approved a big discount, while at the same time they were reselling our service at a few times higher prices. View Maniac was hence suspected of misinforming its clients on the actual status of a reseller indirectly distributing videos to Vevo. We were informed that View Maniac was also "making promises about guaranteed numbers of views", which we had no idea about. Any client of View Maniac's who would contact Vevo and ask about the status of his account would be redirected to Blue2Digital, which he would find responsible for an insufficient number of views on his video(s). Did View Maniac ever think about the consequences, or they were just too much occupied with making easy money?

In April 2015, we began receiving royalty reports that did not reflect the actual number of views we could count on Vevo.com. Of course, it did affect the amount Vevo was supposed to pay out and it was significantly smaller than it should have been. Millions of video views were missing (this especially goes for the most valuable ones made by the viewers in the United States) and we, as a socially responsible company, refused to send such false reports over to our clients. It was an unpleasant situation. Vevo was very unprofessional and as it turned out later, they were dealing with indeterminate business entities suspected of being intent on taking the control of the flow of digital sales revenues, individuals who created and submitted forged, falsified and altered documents, improperly counting the video views which (in)directly caused its video-hosting service to shut down, or unauthorized use of around 1,000 music videos previously distributed by our company to their platform.

We therefore decided to terminate the music distribution deal we had with Vevo. We understand this affected View Maniac's business as well, but unlike ourselves, View Maniac had a comfortable option of moving their artists and videos over to another Vevo distributor, if they wanted to. We tried to deal with the situation the best we could, although it wasn't our fault at all, but "Jason Valenti" showed a penchant for intrigue and sent a lot of messages with an offensive tone of voice. And what did View Maniac eventually do? Not a big thing - they either signed a contract with Vevo or just changed the distributor and recommenced their reseller program. After all the fuss, isn't it a little weird?

For the aforementioned reasons, should you do any business with Kevin Miles Floyd, Kevin Floyd, Jason Floyd or Jason Valenti and View Maniac, make sure to pay attention to every detail. When somebody offers you a strategy needed to level up your career, you must not fall for seducing tales about leverage and success promised to achieve if you just pay a certain fee in advance.

* This content is in compliance with our Terms Of Use. We are a socially responsible company whose goal is to warn people of the inconvenience and damage that irresponsible companies and individuals can cause.

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