"I listened to all of your tracks," said Carl, "but 'Dry Ground' really stuck out to me more." He left contact info so we could talk about licensing our music "and possibly more."
Hmm.
On the one hand, his message was more targeted and personal than most spam. He did mention one of our songs by name. Then again, his comment about it was more than a little generic. "Stuck out" could mean anything, including "memorably bad."
"Is there any chance this could be legit?" I asked Ron the Drummer.
"Maybe," he said.
I hopped onto their website that night and poked around enough to discern that you'd have to pay for their services. Then I replied to Carl.
Thanks for writing. Please do tell me more about A&R Select. Do you review every track the artist submits and only shop the ones you think are worthy? Or do you submit anything the artist pays you to submit? How does the process work?Meanwhile, Ron did a little research of his own. He found out that the fee to submit stuff was at least $300. Even better, he found a query from another musician A&R Select had contacted. The e-mail that person received was nearly identical in wording to the one we got.
Funnily enough, Carl never wrote back. Perhaps they only prey upon bands too naive to figure out that they're being sold instead of recruited.
