BSQUARED MGMT is a Symptom of Spotify's Grotesque Treatment of Independent Artists

Artists demand that Birdee Bow's company BSquared MGMT refund their investment

I honestly can not believe I am here writing this piece. Normally I am in my music room for hours on end writing music for Northern Gloom or shuffling off to rehearsal with one of the seven bands I play in. In stead of doing that, I am here with you today to talk about BSquared MGMT.

BSquared MGMT is a company founded and run by Birdee Bow who is also allegedly married to Scott Travis of Judas Priest. Birdee and her business partner Kristina Pulido have been a royal pain in my ass since late December 2022. Why, you ask?

First off, Northern Gloom and Babel Map were contacted by a representative of BSquared in Summer of 2022. I continued talking with them for a few months. The representative I originally spoke with was super nice and assured me that BSquared could get any band I play in live show bookings, Spotify play-listing and sync licensing.

Northern Gloom decided to book a tour in March 2023 and asked BSquared to take on booking duty in November 2022. Plenty of time to book a tour… especially since the booking was in the Northeast where we perform many nights out of the year. We simply thought that maybe, just maybe, a professional booking company that had been in business for 8 years would be able to get us better opportunities than we could get ourselves.

BSquared charged us $2,250 for 3 months of venue outreach, sync licensing attempts, Spotify play-listing and press. In December, we did 4 interviews for fake magazines that I didn’t realize were fake at the time. BSquared got us a show opportunity to open for the band TRAPT (lol) in California in a month we weren’t hoping to book. Not to mention it was a pay to play situation.

BSquared also gave us the opportunity to submit to a bull riding festival of some kind in Calgary, Canada in August of 2023. You read that right, they didn’t book us - they just gave us the opportunity to submit ourselves to a festival that probably has more bull testicles than bands.

Anyway, around my birthday which is December 31st, I got hit up from a former employee who informed me that the entire BSquared staff had been fired and not paid for work completed before the holidays. They told me that no one had been working to book my band for nearly a month because no one was working aside from Birdee and Kristina!

Direct Quote from Former BSquared Employee (BSquared requires all workers to sign NDA’s seeing as how they do some dicey shit on the regular):

“Working 70 hours a week and to be paid for 40..then to be told they are getting new email systems so they wanted our passwords and then called us off unpaid during holidays & told us not to tell the artists. So no body has been working on booking you guys for over a month. That's bullshit.”

I contacted the original representative that was able to capture my business and said, “Why did I hear that all BSquared employees have been fired from a disgruntled former employee and not you?” This representative assured me that Kristina and Birdee would be booking for Northern Gloom now so, now we have the best. “They run the company”, I thought to myself, “this should be even better than what I originally hoped for!”

I WAS WRONG. Kristina and Birdee then proceeded to waste two more weeks of my life by doing nothing while telling me they were working tirelessly to book Northern Gloom. So, Northern Gloom started booking our own dates. We were successful thanks to our friends in the music community.

At this point I requested my money back. After several emails back and forth where Kristina just ignored my refund requests I finally said, “This is your last opportunity to handle this situation quietly”… aka I am going to speak out about BSquared if I don’t get my money back. They sent me $1,500 of my $2,250 and said I wasn’t getting the remaining $750.

So I made this video which reached thousands of people on Instagram:

This video spread further than I imagined and led to A BUNCH of musicians, bands and former employees reaching out in solidarity. Which culminated in THIS video:

YEP. I got Northern Gloom’s FUCKING money back. BSquared finally did the right thing for once and gave someone a refund. Now it’s time to 1) Give the other artists you screwed over a refund (They owe the band Stone Theory $4,800! This is the highest debt I have heard of so far. And instead of giving them a refund they paid a lawyer to intimidate them!) 2) Pay your employees the money they are allegedly owed and 3) Stay out of the DIY scene as you are just trying to deceive people into giving you their band’s hard earned money.

I then found a great clip of Birdee Bow talking about her business on a podcast years ago. So, I got the bright idea to put her customer and employee reviews on screen while she spoke. The dichotomy between her words and the reality is laughable. See below:

I will finish this up by saying I wish no harm on Birdee or Kristina. This situation is really sad and I hate that artists have been set back by BSquared’s scam service. I hate that this happened to people just as we’re climbing out of the COVID-19 hellscape. I hate that Spotify has created a loop hole for businesses like this to exist.

How is Spotify responsible? Well, all streaming services are, but Spotify is the most popular. Spotify requires a certain amount of plays to get into their algorithmic playlists. This means nothing to established artists, but for independent artists that are new to the market this rule is CRUSHING their chances at growing an organic fan base.

So what do you do about getting your plays up in a bleak market? You pay companies like BSquared to “help” get your plays up. So, how do they help? They make playlists and add your music to them. They make blogs and interview you. They get you on podcasts that no one gives a fuck about. It’s all fake. It’s like the fucking Truman Show, but for bands.

Truly grotesque in my opinion. We all need to ask ourselves, “what the fuck are doing?” And we need to ask ourselves this right now. If we want a rich culture we need to support new art and new ideas while keeping good art and ideas from the past there to inform us of a world gone by. Companies like Spotify can not be gate keepers. There needs to be simple legislation drafted by someone who wants to end the age old assault on artist income.

If an independent band or artist makes enough from their art to pay their way on to the front page of Spotify WHY THE FUCK WOULD SPOTIFY NOT WANT THAT?! Spotify would pocket even more money (if you can imagine that) and they’d be doing something good for ALL artists. This would also render businesses like BSquared MGMT obsolete and create a musical landscape that is way more exciting than it currently is.

Thanks for reading! Please share this article with your local DIY music community to avoid BSquared infiltrating it!