There is a company that helps bands & musicians that is sparking some controversy on the web with unsigned musicians all over the U.S. Does your band or solo act have a myspace, official website and a Reverb Nation page? Did you get an e-mail message from a guy who works for “Afton Live” a company that claims they help book bands gigs? The guy will ask you if you’re interested in performing at this certain venue, at a certain date.

For example, I will copy & paste this guy’s e-mail he sent me in Reverb Nation, I will leave guy’s name out of it:

hey kev brock

… i get to browse around,, find artists i like in albany, and try to get them on some of my shows. i like your stuff, wanna see if i can get you in on this show i have comin up at red square on oct 3rd?

def seems like youd fit well on that one or some others i have in the next couple months, so lemme know ok? email me back at:

alb@aftonlive.com

then i can get you all the info you need to start bookin some shows

Sounds too good to be true right? You get an e-mail like that, and you get immediately excited, but looking at that e-mail address, “aftonlive.com”, hmmmm, that sounds a little fishy to me. I decided to google that up to see what it was all about.

Turns out that these guys are scam artists. They scam money from musicians. I read that you pay this company to get gigs. They probably want you to pay a lot of money like: $300 or more. I also read that if they book you a gig, the more tickets you sell from the fans, you get nothing in return.

Read some more stuff on it here on how it is a scam.

Notice on that Afton Live website, they don’t say where the company is located. They also don’t say how they charged to get gigs.

A musician named Zax Avila have already been a victim by them and plenty of other musicians have been victims as well. How to tell whether these companies are a scam or not? Well read more here.

When you want to become a successful musician, NEVER pay first to play, when it’s you the one that should be getting paid. Never go for gigs that ask you to pay first. I never went for that. You either play gigs for free or accept gigs from the venues themselves asking you to book a gig to be paid.

On top of that, you can become a successful musician on your own and do it all your own way without these shady companies doing it for you. How can you become a successful musician on your own without a promotions company, manager, or agent? I will write another blog post coming right up later on. Be very careful of these, “Pay to Play” companies trying to get you to work with them. Don’t buy into it.

Kev