Gatekeeping

The pitch was free. The placement was four hundred dollars

A curator with a large following told me he loved the record and wanted to support it. Two emails later there was a curation fee, payable in advance, invoiced by a company registered to a residential address.

I paid it, because I had spent nine months on that song. The placement lasted eleven days. When I asked about the second placement I had paid for, the account had stopped replying.