To paraphrase a point made by our elusive Australian friends:

There are two kinds of Music Businesses:

1) There are those whose work speaks for itself. They work hard and achieve success for the artists they represent. They have have named artists, web presences, phone numbers for their many international contacts and physical offices with their names on the door.
They don't need to approach artists, because artists are beating a pathway to their door.

2) Then there are "Web Music Businesses" who claim to do A&R, licensing, publishing and all kinds of other stuff. They harvest email addresses of independent/ unsigned artists from websites and listings, use lots of exclamation marks in their correspondence, and should you reply to them, will promise the moon on a string (for a small fee). I can't quite figure why anyone like this should need money up front, what with those grammy-winning artists, gold and platinum albums and number one hits. Maybe the royalty cheques take a while to come through.

Norman/ Lynda, if you're still reading this.

It's easy to slag off bloggers and independent musicians.

It's not so easy to name *actual* record labels you're "affililated to"

Or *actual* number one hits you publish.

Or *actual* platinum selling artists you've worked with.

Or *actual* artists who've covered songs you publish

Or *actual" grammy awards your artists have won.

Go on, make our day!