About your quote:

“What’s my point? Paying folks to use your product, service, etc. is not in and of itself insane — provided that you have the means of making the money in other ways.”

Maybe I am reading it wrong, but if you meant by stating “is not in and of itself insane ” that it is wrong to “paying folks….etc”;

Isn’t it exactly what the outer world think of Sonic Bids?
You pay to play in the end, despite al the motivations and setup and whatsoever reasons there are. You pay an amount varying from $2,= to $ ??? to submit to a festival, gig, listing/whatever.
I am not complaining however, so far no gigs booked, but received a nice amount of attention.
But it looks like you declare your own company insane with yur statement

Regardz,
Joop

Excellent point, Joop. Actually, I meant exactly that: as long as you have a clear plan to make money from each investment you are making, then it’s perfectly OK to pay money in order to connect with an audience. Every company does that in one form or another. That’s what marketing is, right? That’s why I don’t think that what Officer Roseland did is as crazy as some people think.

What you said, Panos. If I paid people to listen directly rather than go through a middle man like a PR team or (dare I say) Sonicbids there may be different results. It’s not so radical as you point out. The question is where’s the biggest ROI. My sense is that the biggest return came from the press coverage of the event rather than the event itself so, as a marketing strategy, this probably worked.