First thought is: Great – someone likes a track and wants to use it.

Then I read the licensing agreement. I have to pay them 300 USD. And so too, presumably, do the other 19 acts who are going to feature on the 20-track CD. So that’s a cool 6,000 USD for these guys, and as far as I can tell, they only need to make a couple of hundred CDs to satisfy each act that the project is real.

Once you figure it out, the vagueness of the opening mail becomes clearer. It’s obviously being sent to every act under the sun, so whilst the mail merge is sophisticated enough to mention your act by name, it doesn’t go into details like which track they like, or why they like it.

Nice work if you can get it, eh?

I know a lot of people will be wise to this kind of thing, but I could certainly have used other artists being open about this a few years back – so here’s my 2p now.