And we’re back with another sudden addition to our Am I Being Scammed series. This time, we take a look at a recent interaction with a Toronto-based music promoter and invite you to follow along as we spot the red flags.

Now, there isn’t much to share here by ways of screenshots or visual evidence since the most damning part of the interaction took place over the phone in under 10 minutes, but we do believe it’s an important conversation to highlight and in every emerging indie musicians best interest to ensure they’re informed of it.

This one is an absolute classic grift. Any musician who has been in the live circuit scene for a minute has dealt with this type of smarmy character at some point in their career and if they were wise, they avoided them entirely.

So here’s what happened.

First Contact

About a week ago I received a direct message from someone I don’t know on one of my artist pages. Without so much as a “Hey, how are ya?” the promotion company gave me a date, a venue and an artist name while asking me if I’d like to perform at a show with them.

I consider this our first red flag. In the Toronto music scene, at least in my experience, it isn’t really common to get cold-messaged in this way for a show. Getting even small shows as an emerging artist is a grind that usually requires significant leg-work, hand shaking or the help of a reputable booker to get any real movement. On the off chance that a promoter or venue is reaching out to me in this way, it almost always comes with a side of, “hey, I’m friends with (mutual) and they gave me your contact,” which makes way more sense given the way things run here.

In any case, I always say it never really hurts to have a conversation with somebody, so I told him I’d like to hear more about the show and we went from there.

Of course, before we were due to chat I made a point to jump into their Instagram page and see what it looked like.

The short answer is – not much. There’s less than 35 posts in total and the account goes back at least until 2022, but they have over 12,000 followers including some mutuals with me.

In the description, it mentions that the founder is the artist I’d be performing with at the show, so now I knew who I was talking to. It also claims they’re a Mississauga Music Award winner, although it doesn’t specify any details about it, and says that it’s a promotion company that provides artists a platform to showcase their music.

Pretty standard with the added credability of including an actual artists tags, but I didn’t like the look of it.

The showcases, from what I could tell by the posters and the few promotional photos, looked like sort of generic events that targeted the hip-hop and rap community more than anything, and I hate that this is a red flag, but it just is when it comes to internet based scams.

I’ve talked about it before so I won’t get too deep into it here, but there seems to be some sort of conscious choice of many scam promotion companies to target these genres specifically and it almost never is in the favour of the showcased artists to be part of them.

All that said, some of the photos on the Instagram page included the venue that they mentioned in their message to me, so it does appear they do at least put on some sort of event. It would be a couple days before our call, but after my quick little sleuthing excursion, I wasn’t holding my breath about it.

Second Contact

We had agreed to chat on Sunday evening, but once the day arrived, our knight in shining promoter wristbands was suddenly busy.

I’ll call this one a soft red flag. Maybe like a rosy pink. Because obviously, sometimes things come up and I get that. But he messaged me after our scheduled call time and I just found it a little sus, as the kids say.

I told him to give me a shout the next day instead and we left it there for the night.

Third Contact

And here is where I was quite sure that we were dealing with a grifter.

It’s now Monday and our promoter friend has suddenly gotten a flat tire which has rendered him incapable of our phone call about this alleged show opportunity.

Am I saying I don’t believe that he got a flat tire? Not necessarily. I’ve gotten one before, it was sudden and unexpected (and happened like 3 blocks from my house, yeesh!), but I was failing to see how a conversation about a show – a conversation that by all accounts couldn’t take more than a couple minutes by text, nevermind on the phone, was taking so many days just to take place.

I don’t know why this is part of the grifting hand-book, but scam artists love to keep you hanging by a thread and will regularly do little bait and switches like this, sometimes for weeks or even months, even before they get to their grift pitch.

I read once it’s something to do with the psychology of finding vulnerable people, because if you’re willing to keep putting up with them on these types of messages, you’ll be more willing to finally succumb to the grift. Someone else can probably explain it better, I’m not a sociologist or whatever, alright?

The point is, I knew at this point that even if there was a real show opportunity, this guy was going to try to get something out of me for it and I’m not talking about my willingness to perform it.

I offered for him to just send me an e-mail (or an Instagram message like the many we’ve had at this point!), but he said he prefers to chat over the phone.

Forest friends, this was my next red flag.

Again, I can’t really explain my rationale for it, but experience has taught me that anyone who fights hard to get you on a phone call instead of getting a pitch in writing to you is going to try to pull a fast one over on you and should you proceed, it should be with extreme caution.

Fourth Contact – The Phone Call

So, I’m not going to lie to you guys; As I write this, today is Wednesday. Earlier this afternoon I was busy going over some rhythm guitar parts for a collaboration I’m working on with another local artist. I entirely forgot about the phone call that was schedueld for 5:45PM and although my phone was on silent, I happened to notice it light up on my table a few minutes after that.

Noting the call display showing the promotion company name, I reluctantly put down my guitar and answered the call.

He addressed himself by his name and the company name, so we were off to a good start. A little bit of banter about how we are artists are also entreprenurs and always juggling so many things; friendly enough, but boy am I ever bored of that goofy conversation. I don’t know if artists feel this need to explain how tough it is to make a living in this industry and that’s why we are all so quick to bring up our various hats, but let’s just focus on the moment with what we’re here to talk about, yea?

We redirected the conversation to details about the show.

Within the first couple moments of speaking to the promoter, I instinctively knew it was going to be a waste of energy. I’m not usually so quick to judge a person so quickly, but if I get on the phone with someone who wants to pitch me on an idea or opportunity and they start speaking a mile a minute without barely taking a breath between words, my guards are right up and I’m already getting tired just trying to focus in on the conversation. Fast talkers always have something to hide.

This guy spoke so fast that I’m probably going to get the order of things he mentioned incorrect; it wasn’t exactly logical to begin with and the speed of it all made it that much more challenging to follow.

He started (I think) by reiterating that he was calling about a show opportunity with (artist name who is also him), at (venue that I hadn’t heard of before this opportunity) in Toronto (city in which I live), and talked it up a bit saying how they do these great showcases in this space and he’s now sent over a photo of the venue to me and have I got the photo? It should have gone through to my phone? Is it there, the photo?

I had not receieved an alert yet so I knew it didn’t come through, but I glanced down at my phone anyway and he kept speaking, repeating something about the venue and asking again if the photo came through.

“I don’t believe it has yet but it’s alright, I’m pretty sure I saw a photo of the place when you first reached out about this,” I tried to redirect him back to the more important information I needed about the gig.

And that’s when he asked me, “what date did my (associate? what did he call him?) give you for the show? What date did we offer you?”

I sort of laughed to myself because I in no way believed this promotion company to be a two-man operation at this point, but I replied, “If I’m not mistaken I believe it was the 25th.”

“Ah, yeah, Friday the 25th. Is that date still good for you? Are you still available that day?”

I told him I was pretty sure I was, but I flipped open my agenda quickly to confirm while sort of internally rolling my eyes that this guy who allegedly had an opportuntity for me, over the last week in the time leading up to this phone call, did not confirm for himself what day we we even going to be speaking about. Super professional! Where are all my red flags?

Noting that I was indeed available on the date in question, he rambled on with his pitch at continued lightning speed.

It was a jumbled mess, to be honest. He ran right into saying something like, “So what’ll happen is you’ll arrive early and do a quick sound check. The sound check allows you time to work with our DJ and sound to ensure your tracks play through the speakers and make sure you’re ready to perform,” — and I wanted to groan.

Is this guys seriously explaining a sound check to me?

Is this guy also implying that I’ll be playing to backing tracks?

Does this guy know he’s speaking to an acoustic solo artist?

Does this guy know a single thing about what I do? Does he know a single tihng about live sound? I reckon not, to all of the above, based on the way he’s explaining things.

I bit my tongue. “Uh huh, yeah, I get how sound checks work, but uh, hey question for ya. How did you come across me anyway?” I always love to ask this question when I know someone is trying to pull a fast one on me. They usually stumble through a response and that says a lot about their true intentions, I think anyway.

He explained that his “associate” who had found me must have come across me online somewhere and they thought they really liked what I was doing and I’d be a great fit for the showcase. It was vague and he was stepping over his own words; it was clear that there was no associate.

I hit him with a “Okay, sure,” and then “Can we get back to more details about the show itself. How many acts usually perform at these things?”

“Oh yeah for sure, for sure. So, usually, at max, like maybe 15 artists perform.”

Fifteen?! The fuck is this? Battle of the Bands, but worse?

“Ffiteen? Wow, okay -“

He tried to cut me off and go into his pitch some more, but I stopped him – I needed more info about this.

“And so, how does that look for me, like how much time do these artists all get to perform?”

“You get about 10 minutes or 3 songs worth.”

I smirked. I knew it would get a little worse before it got… well, I knew it would just get a little worse.

He seemed pleased with these details so far, confident.

So he began in on arguably the most important detail. Tickets. “So of course obviously you get 10 minutes and everyone else gets their time and we expect that you know you promote the show as well of course, and it’s a great space; We sell tickets for $30 ($30?! This guy has gotta be smokin’. I was internally doing the quick math of 15 artists each selling x tickets for $30/pop as he rambled on and on) and we sell everything online, and you’ll get your own unique ticket code so we can keep track of the sales –“

He seemed particularly impressed by that last bit of info, but it told me that we were about to get to the juggernaut of this pitch.

You and I both know, Forest friends, that I was dying to know what the mandatory guranteed ticket sale number was for each artist on this bill. I couldn’t wait anymore and had to interrupt him again.

“And what’s the… what’s the expectation then for tickets, you’re saying $30/ticket but –”

“Yeah so, of course you’ve gotta promote as well, and basically before we secure your spot on the show then we need $250 from you.”

TWO-FIFTY?!

You want me to pay you… TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS… for the opportunity to perform a TEN MINUTE set at a venue no one has heard of with an artist that doesn’t make any sense within the scope of what I do.

And then you expect to sell tickets for THIRTY DOLLARS?!

This guy has to be smoking.

Let’s assume he does get 15 artists to agree to this pitch. That’s $3750 in his pocket right out of the gate. He’s been doing this a couple years including at this venue previously, so it’s also safe to assume he has an in at the venue or his equipment (P.A and a DJ deck at least) is already paid off. This guy is making good bank off his showcase artists backs and that’s before we even account for alcohol sales which he probably gets a cut of.

I was saying all of that internally to myself while he continued on excitedly to explain that, because the venue can hold up to 250 people and with selling each ticket at $30 a pop, I would actually only need to swindle like 12 people into coming to see me play like 2 songs (a set length I often perform for free at various Open Stages across the city), in order to break even and then anything I sell after that obviously, I get to take home $20/ticket and they take the extra $10 for… for this grand opportunity they’re bestowing upon me in this moment.

I was having flashbacks to my youth, recalling my first band in high school and falling prey to predatory music promotion scam companies like Hotboxx and Supernova who operated much the same way.

I let him finish explaining the details, but that was the gist of it. Before I could respond though, the promoter hit me with the funniest thing.

“I just have one question for you (Forest),”

I wanted to hesitate, but didn’t.

“Go on.”

“Are you ready… to rock this stage?”

I wanted to burst out laughing, but I stifled it.

This guy could not be for real. It was so corny I wanted to die on his behalf.

After a brief pause and a quick sigh, “(Name), I’m going to be completely honest with you right now.”

“Okay,” he replied.

“I hate everything about what you just told me.”

He remained quiet. “You came out of the gate talking real fast and I knew you were going to try to pull a fast one over me and I do not appreciate it. I hate everything about what you do and what you’ve offered. You want me to pay you $250 dollars to perform a ten minute set and that’s insane. I feel like you’re one of those real bad promoters I haven’t encountered since I was a teenager with my first band. It’s terrible what you’ve offered me here today and I under no circumstance will ever perform on your stage.”

I wanted to say more. I am actually kind of pissed that these types of people and companies still exist in this way. I think I was still mildly stunned by how bad the opportunity was – bad for me and bad for every single artist in Toronto that this shitty grifter was trying to scam. And I wondered how many people he’d already screwed over with this terrible showcase.

He is either used to people responding the way I did or he was rightly surprised by my annoyed tone. He replied back with just, “Okay.”

And I explained that I in no way agreed with what he and his company do and we were done here.

“Okay.”

And now I’m here, writing this blog. Wondering where the line is at where to call this out without landing myself in some potential legal trouble, because of course I have the name of the company and the artist that runs it and I don’t want anyone to ever perform at this guys events. Hopefully I’ve given you enough information to go off of and you’ll recognize these details if they’re ever presented to you.

As a general rule, I don’t think anyone should pay for the opportunity to perform at a showcase, especially one with no real credability or name for itself, but I especially find it gross that grifter promoters have an added expectation that you sell tickets, thereby doing their job for them, in addition to that cost.

Conclusion

If money is your goal with your performances, you are far better off approaching businesses and organizations that align with your music’s message or values and performing for them directly – businesses have budgets for this type of thing and even if you can only get $100 from them to perform, it’s still better to get $100 to perform than it is to pay someone else $250 to perform. And you’ll usually get more time, usually a full set 30minutes or more, to really showcase yourself, plus the opportunity to sell your merch and make real one on one connections with people who might come to the next event or hire you for one.

And for the record, you can rent venues in Toronto for less than the $250 this guy was asking for and put on your own event with your own buds and curate a showcase that makes sense for your genre.

Sometimes the multi-genre variety act thing works, but almost never when it’s done in this rubbish way where the promoter doesn’t even undestand anything about the artists he’s pitching the opportunity to.

My biggest tip? If you’re cold-approached over social media with the opportunity to perform… you guessed it – proceed with caution.

Get all the details you can up front and do your best to make an informed decision. If the opportunity sounds too good to be true or the guy is a fast talker with bad scheduling habits – run.

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If you believe you are in contact with a potential scam artist/grifter promoter and would like to share your story with CF, please don’t hesitate to reach out 🙂