From the skeptical mind that brought you “Am I Being Scammed By A Spotify Playlist?” I bring you, “Am I Being Scammed By A Universal Music Group Representative?”

This will be on ongoing series until we document all major forms of scams targeting musicians online. Coming soon: the birthday song scam, the booking-recruiter scam, the not-really-a-PR company scam, and more! 

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That’ll Be $300

Between becoming competent enough at an instrument to be able to play it with other musicians, writing original music, scouring your local scene for promoters or venues and convincing them to let you take up a 30 minute time slot rto perform live, managing your website or social media networks and putting together products like albums or merch, it’s difficult enough to take on the essential tasks of operating a band and manage to keep your head straight on top of all the other things pulling for your time and attention. 

Depending on your own music journey, you can even find yourself taking on absolutely all those tasks as a single solo entity, which I can tell you from experience is the quickest way to induce absolute madness in the clinical sense. 

Now, before I get into today’s cautionary tale I want to touch on a more popular and common scam that some of you may already be familiar with. 

Regrettably, I’ve since deleted the original e-mails I myself received from these types of scam artists (though I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before they resurface) so I can only describe the e-mail to you, but it’s important and relevant enough to mention.

The e-mail will come through stating it’s from Universal Music Group or Sony Music (I’ve yet to see any other major label distributors be used, but as a good general rule I’d be wary of any e-mail that sounds similar) and it’ll in the most general terms state that you’ve been scouted (yay!) by a Universal/Sony A&R representative. 

They may give a name (it’s fake), and say something complimentary about your music without being overly descriptive. You’ll probably find yourself wondering, “gee, what song or album?” and you’ll never get a response about this. They probably won’t also use your artist name in the e-mail, so you can’t even be sure what project it’s referring to if you’re someone that has multiple.

They’ll then include some sort of generic line that’s meant to hype you up like, “are you ready to take your career to the next level?” which of COURSE you are and then comes the scam. 

“It’ll be $300 to proceed with getting the contract sent over to you, but it’s totally legit and official, it’s just for administrative purposes and we can’t go any further until we get that from you”.

And that’s the whole thing really. What you need to do at this point is report the email as a scam and delete it forever because no reputable record label is going to cold-call e-mail you in this way to ask you for money in exchange for a contract before actually supplying you with some sort of contract that outlays what these fees are for.

None.

Save yourself the headache and ignore it, but keep doing whatever you’re doing musically because you’re obviously starting to get some sort of attention even if it’s not the type you’re looking for at this particular time. 

I’ll dive more into similar scams like that one later, but right now I actually want to talk about one that was even weirder and much more personal. 

Chris the A&R Guy

As some readers might already be aware, as a solo musician I’m on the lookout for other musicians to perform live shows with, but this really hasn’t been an easy task to accomplish. 

I’ve tried various call outs through different social media channels and I make a point to try out new open mic stages to meet musicians organically in person, too, but I wasn’t having much luck with that – not yet anyway. Somewhere along the way someone asked me if I’d heard of the website bandmix because they had found one of the members through the platform. 

I had heard the name but wasn’t overly familiar with it, so I dug into google. 

Bandmix is basically a musicians classified website where you can post about yourself and search for other musicians, reach out and respond to posts calling for specific instruments/genres or just let your profile sit until someone reaches out to you instead. 

I wasn’t feeling particularly keen about creating a profile on yet another platform (seriously, aren’t we all platformed out at this point?) but I figured it couldn’t hurt much to throw something quick together and let it sit. 

So I did. 

The very next day I got my first message to my Bandmix inbox – promising! 

Except it wasn’t.

Here’s what that message said:

Greetings,

My name is Michael Peterson 66 years young, I worked with US embassy in UK for 9 years before my wife died in a Motor accident with our two kids. I am diagnosed with esophageal cancer, it went unnoticed and I had to undergo a laryngectomy. Few days ago my doctor told me that I will not live more than 3 months and I am without Any child, I am Reaching out to a total stranger in your person because I am in the hospital right now as I am sending this message to you. I want to donate the sum of Four Million British Pound to you for the good work of the Lord. I want this last act of mine to be an Offering to GOD and humanity. I want these funds to be used to build a charity foundation in my names for the less privileged and orphanages. Send a reply back so i know you’ve got this message and for me to send every details to you on how the money will be transfer to you from UK to begin the charity work for humanity. I will explain more details to you when I recieve your response on my private email at mpeters0143459581@gmail.com

God bless you abundantly.

Michael Peterson.

Now, I’m not blocking any of the information out of this one because just look at it. 

I’m certain the e-mail address doesn’t exist anymore and even if it does, I don’t care if it gets spammed to hell. 

I groaned and sighed and threw my hands up in exhaustion. Is there no place on this Earth anymore where people are not constantly trying to screw you out of money? 

I closed the page and forgot about Bandmix entirely. 

Some weeks later, I get a message on Instagram while I’m on my lunch break at work. 

The guy said he was a drummer and had come across my profile on Bandmix. He’d played in some bands before and was looking for a new project, enjoyed my sound – you know the deal, super complimentary. 

I asked for a bit more info but as he proceeded to tell me he had 15+ years professional experience, told me another artist name he had worked with and that he was actually also an A&R rep for Universal Music Group.

I smirked. 

I’d already been to his profile page and thought it odd he only had about 6 photos on his page and they all seemed to be from the same staged photo shoot and mimicked the portfolio of an actor rather than a drummer. Now, with the new tidbit about Universal, something was off about him for sure. 

We’ll say his name is Chris because that’s what he said it is. Chris then requested I give him a call, which normally I wouldn’t say is that weird, except when it comes to musician classifieds it almost always ends that way for me. 

Since I was about to head back into work, I told him I’d give him a shout later on. For about the next hour he kept messaging me over Instagram to talk about himself and point a couple questions towards me, but not many. 

There is nothing like a musician’s ego. 

By the time I called him, I knew that he was a few years younger than me, allegedly worked as an A&R which mean the had a flexible schedule, lived a couple hours away, but was fine with having to drive into my part of the city because it’s what he used to do with the other artist he drummed for. He sent me some of that music so I could hear how he played, which was in a genre quite different from what I was writing and looking for, but he seemed to want to assure me of his versatility and professionalism.

Sure, okay. 

So later on I give him a call and he’s driving somewhere which means he has time to chat. 

He goes ahead, hesitantly says that he found me on …band lab? (he doesn’t sound sure at all) or… band…mix? and reiterates a lot of the information he’s already given me before asking me my own goals with my music. 

I always feel a little weird when people ask this for some reason, it never seems to come from a genuine palace of interest when it comes up and puts me mildly on edge, even if I am actively recruiting members. In fact, perhaps that’s why it’s even stranger to me, because I’m pretty up front about my own intentions right there in those posts. 

Nonetheless, I explain that I’ve been putting out music for a while now and I’m looking for bandmates to bring them to life on stage in Toronto/the GTA, and if all goes well hopefully it leads to some touring and down the road, write more music. You know, like a band does. 

He says that’s great and that’s what he’s looking for, too and makes a comment about how it’s so hard to find committed players and I agree. Then he says something to the effect of, “if a band isn’t willing to practice 4-5 days a week, you’re not going to get anywhere,” and I let him go off on a little tangent about it which he explains is a byproduct of his work with Universal and how that’s how he gauges an artists willingness to “go pro”. 

We can all have our philosophies on this, it’s not really worth getting into right now. 

Then he tells me that although he’s mid-20’s, he acts much younger and I laugh to myself because as someone in her 30’s, this is one of the worst things to hear a man say. 

He explains that he likes to drink and he’s Irish, which I don’t really care about generally but it’s a bit of an orange flag to someone who speaks quite vocally about her own sobriety. I explain I don’t drink and he quickly chimes in to  say that, “not before shows though, only after!” 

Phew, we can proceed, I guess. 

I can get along with and play with people who are drinkers, but my general rule is someone that brings up their love of alcohol in a first meeting or first phone call is someone to watch out for. It shouldn’t really be a staple of your personality at any point in your life, but I digress. 

At this point he goes on to explain more about him being from (town hours away from me) and how he drives into Toronto regularly to scout bands, which I’m not saying isn’t a part of modern A&R roles but it sounded utterly archaic the way he expressed it as though he can’t vet most musicians online first before making multiple trips into the city. 

But also, Universal HQ is just north of downtown Toronto, so he’d have to be in the area anyways. 

I started to get tired of the fast pace he was throwing all this information about himself at me, but he kept sweetening the deal with more and more incredible pieces of information, like how his dad owns a popular and successful music store in his town and was currently working with U2 at The Sphere. 

Cool! 

Then came an incredible wave of name dropping that I couldn’t even keep up with, but for the purpose of this blog I’ll just let you know he’s also best friends with Shawn Mendez and Shawn like totally just called him last week. 

So. Cool!

It’s obviously at this point that I’m so amazed such an incredible musician and music industry success story is interested in my little band that currently has no other members outside of myself and I have to stop him from continuing to talk himself up because I get it, you’re connected, you’re in the biz, you’ve got it all together. 

Anyways, all of this is meaningless to me even if it is true if I don’t like you as a person and can’t see myself actually spending some serious time with you rehearsing, traveling, being pals – oh that reminds me, he also threw something in about how it was so important we get along and that it’s super cool and not weird at all when band members hug each other and get close and I ????? 

I don’t know where the fuck he was going with that part of it all but can I just say, to any male-identifying musician reading this, that to suggest so to a female musician again within the first 20-or so minutes of speaking to them in any sense, is another cause for at least mild alarm. 

In an effort to wrap up the bizarre conversation I explain that my general approach to finding new members is just to meet up and play through a couple of the songs so I can see if they’re a good fit before any of us get too carried away with it all and he agrees that’s the best approach. 

Then he says that he also gets a great discount at a downtown rehearsal space and he’ll even pay for the time we block off for our first jam. 

I say that’s cool, super kind to offer and that we’ll be in touch (though somehow I know we won’t be) to determine a good day for it. 

Weeks pass. 

He hasn’t reached out to me and I haven’t to him, as the more I mulled over the conversation the more I became absolutely certain that he was trying to pull one over on me but I wasn’t sure at all what it was meant to accomplish. 

And then I got another message. 

He said basically that he was really really sorry but he had just been offered another gig with another band and was now going to be going on tour with them, so he wouldn’t be able to  proceed with the jam or my project. 

Man, this guy lives the life! 

I responded back, “Hey no worries, congrats on the tour gig!”

He says: “Okay cool 🙂 I didn’t wanna upset you Jamie”

Not sure why it would upset me, but I’ll chalk it up again to this guys insatiable ego. 

I don’t respond and he says, “How are you doing.”

I laugh a bit about the idea and reply, “Haha that would be silly. Can’t complain!”

He doesn’t respond and I leave the conversation alone, pretty sure that he won’t reach out again. 

Some time passes and… he does. 

His first message: 🙂 hey i got a huge question?

*side eye* We’re not at the “huge question” level of the friendship stage, in fact at this point we’re not even at the friend stage. I don’t respond. 

His second message: I can pay you back on Friday I know we don’t exactly know each other like 100% but I can pay it back i just need $40 bucks haha it’s for gas sorry for asking

*Side eye into a double eye roll* Oh? Mr. works for Universal Music Group, a job that requires him to drive 2 hours each way into the city regularly, is happy to pick up the fees for a rehearsal space, Daddy’s on tour with U2 and Shawn Mendez is my best friend, needs money for gas? I don’t respond. 

His third message: I promise I’ll pay you back Jamie 🙂 

What is it about these smiley faces that are now making me feel like this guy is a sociopath? Also how has he not managed to write my name correctly even once here? I don’t respond and I laugh as I share the messages with my coworkers. 

His fourth message: I’m broke at the moment only reason why I’m asking.

Well that makes absolutely sense given our previous conversation, doesn’t it? 

I pause for a moment, not even wanting to give him any sort of response because of the complete absurdity of the request before I do. 

“Ask Universal”.

And I never heard from Chris ever again. 

It’s definitely the most unique exchange I’ve had on the internet so far where someone ends up just trying to get money out of me, and I suppose I have to give him some credit for the creativity, but mostly I left the experience feeling once again bewildered and exhausted by the sheer magnitude of scammers that have infiltrated all aspects of the music industry over the years. 

No place is safe and you really can’t trust anyone’s intentions any more, which at bare minimum is an absolute shame when I consider music creation such a positive experience otherwise. 

Maybe one day I’ll find people who are in it for the same reason as me, but it looks like it’ll be a long hard road to travel on now more than ever. 

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Crooked Forest Pro Tip: if you’re not sure the service or person targeting you in a scam, avoid it and flag it with other musicians. 

If you’ve been a victim of a scam and want to share your story with us, please reach out!