Could you use a little cash? Why not prey on the hopes and dreams of bands and musicians who just want a voice? It's a million dollar industry, and I'm going to provide you with a few easy ideas for getting started.

Free Artist Profile!

One of the most common sites I see is a new "come create your profile and upload your music" start-up. I get nearly an email a day like this:

"Hey there, artist. I listened to your music and it's really good! You should come over to http://bandlistenmusic69ers.info/ and join the community. We are giving artists the opportunity to come to our site, upload their music, make an artist profile, and be a part of our growing online presence. And the best part is it won't even cost you! Come sign up and tell all your friends!"

Wow, what a great deal. You're telling me I can go to your website that has no established user base, implicitly license your site the use of my content that I created at great expense to me, and then ask my fans to come visit your bullshit site and drive traffic there so you can reap ad revenue? That's amazing, where can I sign up?! I can't imagine any other site providing a superior similar service with an existing built-in user base... say MySpace or FaceBook. What an original idea, kudos to you brave entrepreneur!

I'm so glad you took the time to personalize the email too, by using my name and telling me my music is "really good." Usually it's customary when you tell someone that something is either good or bad to provide a few specific examples like "that chorus really shreds" or "needs more cowbell" but good for you cutting right to the chase with a blanket statement anyone could make! That really shows me you care about my music.

Catch Your Big Break - Submit Your Music (and Payment)!

This actually falls into several different categories. The concept here is that there are numerous different places you can submit your music in order to have it included and, theoretically, promoted and exposed. Let's do a short break-down of some of the most common. Keep in mind that each submission to one of these opportunities usually asks for money to be considered, as compensation for their "valuable time listening to the music."

Indie Film Needs Music

"Hi there, an indie film studio needs some music for an upcoming silent aquatic neo-noir adventure drama film. No payment will be provided, but your music will be exposed to the film's audience. Your song should sound like "Bittersweet Symphony" by The Verve or "Vertigo" by U2."

Translation: We want some quality music but we're too cheap to actually license the real tracks we wanted, much less pay you even a pittance for the use of your music. Our indie film studio is actually two guys who dropped out of community college after realizing "beer pong" is neither a major nor a vocational program. You will get free exposure though! Both our moms have expressed interest in seeing the finished product and one of our girlfriends might be at the premiere too. Punch will be served. But no one will clap.

Compilation CD Seeking Hot New Artists

"We're No-Name-Bullshit-Studios Record Label from Random Small Town, Michigan and we're looking for up and coming young artists for a fresh CD featuring only the hottest jams. lolz! The complete CD will be for sale in over 1 location and will be a great chance to reach new fans!"

Translation: We want you to provide us free music so we can put 15 artists that probably sound nothing alike on this one clusterfuck of a CD. Here's some math for you: if we charge artists $10 to submit their music and we get 100 artists to submit, all we have to do is print 500 CDs at about $500 cost to us and that's $500 instant profit! If we want to actually live up to our promise we might drop a few off at a local record store to sell or we could just use them for Frisbees. If we actually SELL a single CD, we make even more profit! If we're feeling particularly lazy we could just take your money and say we made a CD, then you'll never hear from us again. Don't fret though, we will use the profits for pizza, beer, and our NetFlix subscription. It's for a good cause.

Radio Submissions

"Want to reach thousands of new fans all over the country? For only $1,500 we'll submit your music to over 300 radio stations. Guaranteed that they will receive your music!"

Translation: We're going to mail a big manila envelope with a burned copy of your CD to a bunch of radio stations that probably aren't even in the same format. There's no guarantee of radio play... hell, you're lucky if they even open the package and listen to it. We don't actually promote you to radio cause that might be useful. We just blast your material out which you could easily do yourself in a more targeted fashion for less money. It's easy for me to send out these packages and then I have the rest of the day free to touch myself.

And More

There are plenty of other variations too. I could go on, but all these opportunities really amount to the same thing: "give us some money and we'll give you nothing of significant value in return" or "use your content to make us money!" I have to admit though, there are a lot of bullshit artists out there too so maybe I'll rip them next time.