Is it legitimate?
One thing that I guess I shouldn't be surprised by but I am is the amount of groups out there that seem to try to scam musicians out of their money -- which there isn't much of in the first place. I've already told you about that new york music fest ($945 entrance fee), and I was also contacted by someone that wanted to loan us money for buying instruments -- the fine print interest was like 30%, which is a horrible deal.

Now I just got an email from "Brighter Life Records" (which doesn't have a website that I can find, and a quick google search returned no results.

From: "jeremy boe"
Date: Sat, 01 May 2004 06:28:13 +0000
To: info@thelookmachine.com
Subject: brighter life records

hi, brighter life records is looking forward towards our first release. we
are currently looking for talented artists to work with in the future. we
stumbled upon your band the look machine from pure volume, we really like
your sound. what we would like to do is release one of your songs on our
upcoming comp, to see what kinda response you get from the public. if you
would like more information on the upcoming release please respond to this
email.

thanks,
brighter life records
c/o jeromy

Always suspicious, I wrote back saying maybe we were interested, give us more details.

And he writes:

awsome, we‚re very happy that your taking interest in brighter life records.
okay well heres the deal with the comp. like with all comps the bands pay
a fee to be on it, this particular one is $150. but rest assured that we
aren‚t making money off of your dividend, we‚re having such a huge amount
pressed that we alone couldn‚t cover the costs of pressing. At $150, the
bands are covering about a quarter of the costs. because we don‚t have any
talent yet, this entire compilation is exclusively for our reference. we
want to see which bands receive the best response, in the hopes to start a
professional relation ship with them. therefore there will not be any
signed national acts on this comp, but that doesn‚t mean that your band will
be the only one worth listening to. we are doing all of the contacting for
this release, and we pride ourselves in our taste in music. the style that
we‚re targeting is the emo/indie sound. putting aside the potential to gain
a furthered relationship, there are other benefits. it will be distributed
nationwide, and that means that if we do not get in touch for an extended
relationship, theres a good chance that somebody else will. also we already
have made engagements with college radio stations all over the north east to
play the upcoming release. finally each band will receive 50 copies to sell
at their will. so at $150 dollars the cost of each cd is $3, sell them for
$6 and you doubled your investment. if you are still interested in working
with us please contact me again for a conformation, and we‚ll get back to
you with further instructions.

thanks,
brighter life records
c/o jeromy

Ahhh. . . so the money. It's always about the money. he wants $150. Anxious to smoke him out, I ask him why he likes our music, where he is located, what contacts he has for us. . . and he answers:

hi, i'd be happy to give you my opinion of your music. i like the blend of
genres that you gracefully incorporate into you music. i like the tasteful
distortion. too often do you hear bands today that rely too much on
distortion. i like it that theres really no band out there that can claim
you to be their xerox copy. also the versatility of your band, you could
play anything from an underground club with a bunch of emo bands to a
college bar or even an alt rock event. thats what sticks out to me. thats
why i feel that your band has potential. as far as distribution, we'll be
using lumberjack, insound and probably rev hq. all of which get the record
out into stores and into the hands of customers. finally we're from
pennsylvania, northern. small town called jim thorpe. pleasant,
historical, beautiful. you should visit someday. i hope that i was able to
answer all your questions and look forward to working with you on this
upcoming release. let me know if you have any other questions that you'd
like me to answer. oh yeah, there arent any bands confirmed yet, there will
be approximately 10 - 15 bands, and they will range from the entire east
coast. and will not request any type of deposit until all bands are
confirmed and the final product is ready to ship.

thanks,
brighter life records
c/o jeromy

I have to admit, his response shows some thought, like maybe he has listened to us and likes us. BUT, then I know that he is only saying positive stuff that maybe all bands would want to hear (which is a trick of psyhics and "prophets" -- they tell you somewhat generic stuff that is complimentary, so of course you're going to think it's "perfect for you"). . . So I ask him where his website is, and he says:

at the moment we do not have a working website, mostly because we haven't
worked with any artists yet, but we are looking to launch it soon. another
reason as to why we haven't launched it is because we don't want tons of
junk bands emailing us asking to be on the comp. right now we're
exclusively in the scouting phase of production, and we like to do all of
the searching. but i believe we will be launching it after we confirm all
the bands via email.

thanks,
brighter life records
c/o jeromy

Hmmmm... . . what are your thoughts, is it a scam????