Street Smart Business Roget Romain
Field guide / 6 checks

The
Promoter
Test

Six questions to ask before you wire a music promoter one dollar. Every one of them is answerable by a real one in ten minutes. The ones who cannot answer are the reason this page exists.

You are not buying streams. You are buying an action you can verify. If nobody will write the action down, you are buying a feeling.

0 / 6 cleared
Say this word for word "Name three artists you have run campaigns for. For each one I want the release, the budget, the dates it ran, and the streams before and after."
Real answer

Three releases you can pull up right now. Names can be blacked out if there is a real confidentiality agreement, but the release, the spend, and the dates still come through.

Dodge

"I cannot share my clients." An NDA covers a name. It does not erase the existence of results, the budget, or the dates.

Why it is first: it costs nothing to answer and everything to fake. If this one goes soft, you can stop the meeting here and keep your money.

Say this word for word "Does my money run through my ad account or yours, and will you give me reporting access with the spend, the reach, and the cost per result?"
Real answer

The campaign runs in your ad account and they get partner access, or they hand you a live dashboard with real spend numbers on it. You can see the dollars leave.

Dodge

"We handle all of that in house." Then you have no way to know whether a single dollar of your money was ever spent on an ad.

The trap: a screenshot of a results page is not proof of spend. A spend number with a date range is.

Say this word for word "Do you own these playlists, or are you paying a curator for placement? Send me the playlist links."
Real answer

Links, in writing, before you pay. You can see the followers, the update history, and whether real people actually listen to it.

Dodge

Numbers with no links. "300,000 followers combined" is not a playlist, it is a sentence.

Read the warning further down this page before you buy any playlist package. This is the one that can cost you more than the invoice.

Say this word for word "Write down the deliverable, the number, and the date it lands. One sentence."
Real answer

"Eight hundred dollars of ad spend to a targeted audience, running March 3 to March 24, with a report on the 25th." You can hold that up later.

Dodge

Exposure. Visibility. Buzz. Momentum. We are going to push it hard. None of those words can be measured, which is exactly why they get used.

Rule: if it cannot be counted, it cannot be owed to you.

Say this word for word "Send me the refund and make good policy in writing before I pay."
Real answer

A short written agreement. Nobody honest promises a result, but an honest shop will re run or refund if the agreed deliverable from check 04 never happened.

Dodge

"All sales final, results are not guaranteed," attached to a four figure package where the deliverable was never defined. That is a policy built to be unlosable.

Pay with a card, never Cash App or Zelle. A card gives you a dispute. A cash transfer gives you a screenshot and a lesson.

Say this word for word "What is your legal name, what is the registered business, and what state is it registered in?"
Real answer

A name and an entity. Then you check it yourself. Every state runs a free business search, it takes about ninety seconds.

Dodge

Only a handle. A brand is not a person. If something goes wrong, you cannot take a logo to small claims court.

Last, on purpose. A working pro answers this without blinking, so it is a weak filter on its own. It gets sharp when checks 01 through 05 already went soft.

All six cleared

Now get it in writing and pay with a card.

Clearing the test does not mean the campaign works. It means you know what you bought, who you bought it from, and what you are owed if it does not land. That is the whole job.

Walk away on any one of these

Seven red flags

The part nobody tells you

Paid streams can get your music pulled

Read this twice

Spotify's own artist policy states that third party promotional services which advertise streams in return for payment violate their terms, and that using one can result in your music being removed from the platform.

The penalty lands on the artist, not the vendor.

  • Royalties withheld
  • Public stream counts corrected back down
  • Tracks pulled off playlists
  • Warnings from your distributor, or account suspension
  • Content permanently removed

You eat all of that. The person you paid keeps the money and goes back to posting tips. Before you buy any playlist package, read the policy yourself on Spotify for Artists and ask check 03 in writing.

If you remember one line

Never pay for a result.
Pay for an action you can verify.

A promoter cannot control whether people like your record. They can control what they run, where they run it, what it costs, and what they show you afterward. Buy that. Everything else is a wish with an invoice attached.

Street Smart Business

Real deals. Real stories.
Real lessons. No fake guru talk.

Twenty years in the music business, gold and platinum plaques on the wall, and no reason left to be polite about how artists get taken.

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