I hear that most record companies do not take unsolicited material from bands. What is unsolicited and why don they take packages unsolicited?
After years of threatened or actual lawsuits by writers and performers who claimed that their unsolicited submitted work had been stolen or infringed upon by the very label or label artist that they submitted their material to, labels now feel the need to ‘screen’ or filter the flood of submissions they receive. Thus, submissions not expected or arranged for will be considered unsolicited. Hence, the term ‘solicited’ versus ‘unsolicited’. In the U.S., the bulk of the shopping of artists is performed by attorneys. Labels feel that they have at least a slight shield to the amount of problems created by accepting unsolicited packages if they accept submissions from attorneys that they have a relationship with. The presumption being that these submissions are more ‘serious’ and that they have been potentially pre-screened by the attorneys who shop them.
