Dina LaPolt: The first thing I do is, “What are you doing? Tell me what you’re doing.” You know, if you are – whatever kind of artist. Let’s pretend it’s a rock band, okay? Okay, “Where do you live?” Okay, “Idaho.” “Great. Where are you playing?” “Well, the club down the street.” “Okay. Do you have a band?” “No, three guys are in,” you know, “school and one guy’s planning on going to law school.” “Well, fire him, okay? I mean, why am I gonna work full time for you when you’re not working full time to for yourselves? Like, you can’t expect me to be hot for you when you’re all, you know, just doing the band as a hobby. So, you know, you’re young. Go to law school when you’re 30. You know what I mean? If you wanna do this, then try to do it full time, you know? Get waiter kids, construction gigs. Do whatever you can to save up enough money so you can start touring regionally, you know? Go to South by Southwest, Nemo, CMJ. Try to get showcases there. Put together your demo. Build a site on MySpace. Do all those things and call me back in six months. You know, here’s my e-mail address – da-da-da.”

I mean, I actually have clients that I represent that I’ve done that with, you know? One client in particular called me from Denver and they’re like, “We, you know, we’re a great band from Denver and we need a music lawyer.” And I basically said the same thing. Get a van. Fire the kid that wants to go to law school. He’s only 21. He can go when he’s 30, you know, or get somebody else and do this, do this, do this. Call me back in four months. The kid calls me back and he’s like, “Okay. The kid that’s gonna go to law school is not gonna go now. He’s staying in the band. My father bought us a van and we’re all working construction and we’re gonna go out on the road in September for a month.” Great, you know? Find a, you know, studio. Go pay them two grand and, you know, record four songs and so you can sell your EP on the road. You know, I started – I did this with this – these four guys for, like, a year and half before I actually officially started working with them, you know?

I mean, I basically just gave them tips of how to do it themselves so they can garner interest and attention from other industries, you know – the industry leaders and that’s what I did. To this day, they’re – they’ve played the Warped Tour twice. They have their songs in four different movies, two different TV shows. They’re on their fifth album. They live in a van. They played 32 states in four years. It’s amazing.

Interviewer: That is amazing. Now are they doing it on their own?

Dina LaPolt: They’re doing it on their own. I’ve had a couple offers for them, but not good enough and you know what? They’re four boys under the age of 25. For them to live in a van and shower every five days is fun, okay? For me, I’d rather stick sharp needles in my eyes, but you know what? For four boys who are 22-years-old, that is some fun times. You know what I mean? So it’s like they’re not desperate for any record deal because they’re making money. They’re touring all over. They have fans. I mean, they’re great. They’re doing great and every now and then when I get their songs into a film, I mean, that pays some good money, 20 grand, boom. And that keeps them rolling for the next five or six months.

Interviewer: How do the songs get into a movie?

Dina LaPolt: Send them to music supervisors who, by the way, are so open and interested in hearing music from unsigned artists because number one, it’s a one stop shop ‘cause if you have – like say you’re Pink, okay? And you wanna use Pink’s song in a movie. Well, you have to, you know, go to Pink’s record company. You have to go to Pink’s publishing company and if Pink co-wrote the song with someone you have to go to that person’s publishing company. And these people, because she’s Pink, charge an astronomical amount of money, you know? So you’re looking 50 to $100,000.00 to put that song in a movie. Now, music supervisors, you know – well, you’re a filmmaker, but at the – even though you’re gonna be cut out of this, you’re a filmmaker. At the end of the thing, you know – at the end of the time you’re making the movie, what’s the most thing that gets cut ‘cause of the budget is the music.

So it’s like you, you know, at the end of the day, it’s like the music budget is this big when it used to be this big because of all these unforeseen costs. So people need music and movies, but they can’t afford to put Tupac in or whatever, so they want something that sounds like that. So they go to an unsigned artist who writes their own song, you know, they can get that track for like 10, $20,000.00 as opposed to spending $100,000.00. I actually have clients that have done cover songs of really popular songs like Annie Lennox’s Here Comes the Rain Again, I mean, different – you know, because these songs get placed a lot. You know, it’s a lot cheaper, eight times cheaper. The first –

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