Pay to have your demos heard by A&R

[Adam Blake]

It's surprising it took so long, really. Ever wonder how you can make sure your little three song demo gets heard by the big A&R guy at the big record company? Now those kind people have found a way to accommodate you. For a mere $475 you can have the ears and opinions of some 'um and ah' person who will tell you in detail why they're not signing you to their label.

To quote Maurice Chevalier: I'm glad I'm not young anymore.

http://www.arlive.com/product_details.p ... tem_id=644

[howard male]

Sounds like an idea straight out of 'Kill Your Friends' by John Niven, which I'm currently reading. Anyone else read it? It's a shockingly politically incorrect saga of a kind of John Self of the music business, set in 1990's London.

[NormanD]

How does this practice differ from the similar deal offered to budding writers? The deal with that, of course, is the 'offer' to get it published.

[Adam Blake]

Oh, it's just that it kills completely dead the romantic notion that sending your demo in to an A&R man might just possibly result in a record deal.

[howard male]

The A&R man who narrates ‘Kill Your Friends’ conservatively estimated that each year (this was in the 1990s) around half a million demo tapes are received by the UK music industry, out of which a couple of hundred acts get signed, out of which – in a good year – twenty or so get a bit of airplay or good press, out of which perhaps ten recoup the money invested in them. Sobering stuff.

[Jonathan E.]

If you give me 2/6, half a crown for the linguistically/typographically challenged, I'll read "Kill Your Friends", but then I might anyway.

[Nigel w]

The A&R man who narrates ‘Kill Your Friends’ conservatively estimated that each year (this was in the 1990s) around half a million demo tapes are received by the UK music industry

Proving the theory I've held for some time that there are now more people out there making music than buying it !

[joel]

Proving the theory I've held for some time that there are now more people out there making music than buying it !

Mos Def. You only need to compare the number of hifi shops and magazines with musical instrument (MI in the jargon ;-)) and "home studio" shops and magazines to understand the imbalance (heck, throw in the few remaining music retailers/mags into the hifi side and it won't really change much). A Good Thing, no?

[judith]

Has Kickstarter been mentioned on the forum? It's for funding a creative project rather than promotion. A quick search doesn't show that it has. I know of one small band who was able to raise the funds (5 grand) to put out a cd and I know of several people who have donated to projects on Kickstarter.

[Paul Inglis]

There's cheaper (alhough not cheap) ways to have your demos heard by A&R. But no matter what you spend it'll be akin to pissing your money up against the wall unless you sound exactly like the kind of commercial trend that's currently popular.

It's much better to build up a following of real fans and then court record company attention - if you have enough of a following then the record companies will beat a path to your door anyway.

This notion that one can bypass or shortcircuit the process by buying the ears of an A&R person is essentially a nasty con. To 99.9% of artists (no matter how talented) all they will give are reasons why your song can't be a hit.