As you know, there are many song submission services out there that guarantee feedback from A&R. This seems great, until you look a little closer.
These services charge you (the musician) for every song submission and give a cut of that money to the A&R in exchange for their feedback.
What worries Dave and I here at Audio Rokit is that there is a question as to what the motivation is for A&R, is it to find great new music or to make money?
I own a recording studio in London and was recently asked by a company to place a listing on their website. They said that they have 50,000 members and that I could charge up to £40 per listing (they would keep 50%). So, you can see that if I simply wanted money, I could quite easily place a listing saying that I am a “top company” and am looking for new music.
Audio Rokit doesn’t pay A&R to review demos or give feedback. If an A&R has placed the listing on our website they must genuinly want to find new talent. There is no other incentive for them. This means ALL of our listings are legitimate. Despite this, we still vet our listings to make doubly sure they are from real companies. We also don’t charge ‘per submission’, we have a set monthly membership fee that covers all submissions.
So how do Audio Rokit members get feedback?
We have begun coding a new feature that will ensure A&R give feedback to our members. If they do not provide feedback, we will following up on your behalf and request that they review your submission(s).
We have developed new software to make A&R’s job easier. We don’t charge them for this and as such can secure higher levels of feedback. We hope to get this new feature launched by the end of June 2011. This is great news for our members and we’re excited to increase feedback rates from the current 30% to 80%.
As this develops we will be posting news on our Blog Website Announcements page.
» Let us know your thoughts, leave a reply below!
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2 Comments on "Paying for Feedback – Is it Wrong?"
Great article! I did not know that my fee membership covered submissions. I know that is a another topic but, clarification is always good.
Good point. Sometimes we are so into the smaller details that we forget to get the basic message across!
Yes, your membership is all you need to pay, all submission are free, no matter how many you submit to. Even better, unlike many other pitching sites, we will not list opportunities from companies that charge musicians for their services (some companies will list saying that they are looking for musicians, then when the musicians submits songs, the company tries to sell a service to them – that it not on).
We list high quality opportunities and vet them all – we literally phone call 99% of everyone who lists on our website to be ultra thorough and to make sure they are legit.