Dealing with shifty Net Labels

With all this "honor system" business going on with paying labels up front, yeah you'll get screwed once in a while. Case in point, AMDisc Records. A rising artist is signed here, and it seems almost like a CafePress, Zazzle type outfit. They'll put your image on anything from shirts to mugs, require all payment up front, but have all their email addresses set to block incoming email. Translation, no order confirmation, no way to communicate, pathetic shipping time (3-4 weeks??) and a lot of customers never receive anything. Beware of people like this, I imagine a couple of hipsters in a house dubbing cassettes, and subbing out all their printing, then just adding their profit on top of their actual costs. It's a shame shit like this happens, just beware with your money, as I've found out.

Easy solution: only release on labels if they have full distro and if they have contracts and/or paid advances up front. This just puts their legitimacy out on the table.

If you're an artist releasing on a label that has 2 releases, both of which are on cassette tapes, kind of your own fault if they turn out to be bunk. The signs were all there and it was pretty obvious to begin with that it's not a serious musical enterprise.