Paying for a review always raises conflict of interest concerns. If it was called a shutout or exposure or something that would be less dubious. But reviews shouldn’t be bought.

I think that it’s a little dodgy not guaranteeing a review. That’s probably why it’s not considered a payment for services and instead a “donation”. Ultimately it comes down to what you value your time and platform at, but still not providing a service for the fee is scummy.

Just to clarify, there is a pay scale. $15 puts your submission in line. $35 puts you in front of the line. $50 I guess means you’re next? Its just lised as the “very front”. So I guess if you’re only willing to shell out $15, you better hope no one has paid 50 or 35.

I can understand that this also benefits from just an onslaught of any old garbage to get reviewed, because I have no doubt that if submissions were free it would be hours of Glenn just skipping through all of the garbage.

I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong I suppose, everyone has to make a living and you have to police content that gets shoved in your face somehow, but I can’t say I’m a huge fan of this set up. Not that I have a better suggestion, though, and I absolutely would hope for a better system than this.

That being said, if I were in a metal band then I would probably throw money his way to see what he said. His channel has a lot of great information that I’ve used over the years.

Go figure, I put the stream on as I’m typing this comment, and he read a comment where someone said they’d love to have their music reviewed but they don’t have any money and in typically Glenn fashion he responded with “then get a job you cheap fuck!”. Which I guess really is kind of how it goes. For a band who is serious about getting input, $50 really isn’t that much. Most bands lose more money than that on many gigs early on anyway, that’s just the nature of the industry. It isn’t necessarily fair - but again, I sure don’t have a better solution. There’s only so much time for people to listen to and review all of the new music being made.

I think if they do it right it’s not bad, this podcast I sometimes listen to ‘that one time on tour’ I think does a good job where they give a brief intro about the band then play a song before the show and it’s not really a review it’s just exposure. On the other hand I know a band that does those paid reviews all the time and they seem to like paying for it but I’m not sure if they do see any spike in new listeners because of it