Breaking news, everybody! That horrible scamming company, Big Time Entertainment has changed their name. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this shitty company, basically what they do is prey on young, inexperienced bands. What they do (well, what they used to do, anyway… I’m unsure about whether they still practice this or not) is email bands on Myspace, telling them that their band is awesome and that they would like to book shows for them. Which sounds really good, until you realize that you have to sell a preset quota of tickets and basically do all the promoting yourself, and give them a ridiculously huge percentage of the ticket sales. Not only that, but you actually have to pay out of pocket to have the tickets printed out at Kinko’s! They won’t even give you the tickets they require you to sell! Basically, they make you do all the work and take all your money. According to their pay scale, if you sell 35 tickets at $7 a pop, BTE gets $210 of that money, and you get $35 to split between your band members, which is totally fucked up, because you did all the work. The only “work” they did was email you. They don’t stick around to support the show. They stick around long enough to take your money, and then they leave. Like I said, they’re a huge scam.

Well, today I decided to check up on them, to see if they were still up to their old game, when I discovered that they are no longer called Big Time Entertainment. Now they’re called Afton, and this is their website. I’m pretty sure that they’ve changed their name because people have caught on to their bullshit, and they’re hoping that by changing their name, people will assume they’re a completely different company. Not only have they changed their name, but now, instead of forcing bands to pay out of pocket to print out tickets, it’s all done online. Now you have to tell everyone to pay for the tickets online, and Afton/BTE has added some extra fees as well. Anything to squeeze more money out of their unsuspecting victims. And what’s worse is that by doing this, they now have a huge database of credit card numbers and email addresses. They still pretend that they’re out to help musicians make it big, but they’re really just out to make a buck off the naïveté of new and inexperienced bands. Do not fall for this scam! As a musician myself, I feel it is my duty to protect my fellow musicians from evil douchebags like this company. Fuck these assholes! I won’t rest until they stop scamming my fellow artists.

If you are friends with musicians, warn them about this company. We need to stand up for each other and let these assholes know that we’re not going to let them leach off our hard work! Let’s put an end to this horrible company once and for all! For more information on this horrible, shitty company, you can read here, here, and here.