We’ve all heard of holiday scammers and emergency scammers, but what about scammers within a local music community?
A local independent music company has ceased trading after social media posts reveal they have not been paying staff and artists as young as 16 years old.
Sound Music Group promoted and ran gigs for up-and-coming musicians in grassroots venues across Liverpool since 2019, previously working closely with the venues EBJBS, The Jacaranda, Phase One and Jimmy’s. With work being paid, the gigs appealed to students and musicians starting their careers.
Thomas Woolman, founder of Sound Music Group, has not been paying his small team of staff and artists since 2021, despite there being signed documentation agreeing to these payments.
Journalist Jessica Mason has investigated further and found that Mr Woolman owes at least £3618.00 to 17 different people.
When staff and musicians would contact Sound Music Group following up on their missed payments, they would be met with the same multiple excuses and stalling tactics. These being that the invoice would not be in the “correct format”, or Woolman would “chase up the accountant” and proceed to not give an update.
Unpaid artists:
Danelia Calles, who was one of the first to share her frustrations on Facebook, is owed £137.00 after playing a solo show at EBJBS on 18th February 2022. This was her first ever headline gig at 21 years old and it ruined her experience of this.
She posted on social media to warn others not to work with him. Danelia told me: “The last time I spoke to Tom was the day I posted on social media because they messaged asking me to take it down.
“He said, ‘I think it’s unfair that you’ve gone to social media.’ I said I think it’s unfair of you to not pay your staff and the people you’re meant to be paying.
“They wanted me to take it down in a kind of deal if I got my money I would take it down, which I told them I wouldn't do. I would say that I have been paid, but I wouldn’t take it down.”
The international student’s post on social media made other artists and staff speak up about Sound Music Group when they previously felt they could not in fear that other promoters would be wary of working with them.
Mr Woolman managed Ryan Pridding’s band Hollywood Eyes for a year. Ryan said: “He seemed legit at first because he always presented himself as someone who was doing well and had a nice office in Liverpool.”
As their band manager, Woolman was supposed to book the band gigs, but often did not deliver. Ryan continued: “He used to lie a lot, for example ‘Don’t book anything for the bank holiday weekend in August because you’re going to be playing the BBC Introducing stage at Leeds’.
“We knew it was a lie because he’d never give you proof. He just wanted to convince us he was something he wasn’t.”
Not only this, but Tom had pocketed the money for three shows of Hollywood Eyes that they still have not received and did not give back a box of merch worth £800 that the band had paid for.
Ryan said: “So with the three shows and box of merch, he took well over a grand from us.
“At the time I said to him if you don’t sort this out, I’m going to post it everywhere, to which he threatened to report us to the police for slander.”
“He targeted bands that were just starting out and didn’t really know how booking shows worked so just accepted his terms as normal.” - Reilly James, owed £140.00 for ticket sales and upfront fees in order to play despite gigs then being cancelled due to COVID in 2020 and 2021. | “It’s not really coming from ‘we want our money’, we want to be able to take what we’re doing from our gig and reinvest it in the band. It does make a difference to what you can spend on recording your singles.” - Lemon Skies, owed £30.00 after their gig supporting Red Shakes at The Jacaranda on 18th June 2022. |
While the individual payments may not seem a lot, when starting up as a grassroots musician this money can cover transport to the venue or help break even so artists are not at a loss.
One band, who want to remain anonymous, are missing a payment after playing a gig at The Jacaranda for Sound Music Group and were preparing for a tour supporting another band the following month.
The band said: “We were doing those gigs to make some money so that we had money to go on tour and to pay for accommodation and stuff.”
When contacting Sound Music Group in attempt to receive their money, the band were passed around two different email addresses of accountants as stalling tactics and did not receive any further updates. This is a pattern that has happened to several other bands when they have tried to contact the promotions company for their payment.
In the ‘Show Advances’ that Sound Music Group supply their artists with, it highlights that artists will be paid within two weeks of the event date.
However, for the band The Marigolds, they are still awaiting payment of £63.00 after their headline show at The Jacaranda on 11th June 2022.
Joe Green from the band told me: “It’s ridiculous. They had offices in the centre of Liverpool. For most people it’s like a side to their actual job until you can actually provide good promotion. It just felt incompetent like they had the wrong idea of how to run it.”
From the email thread below, it shows that Mr Woolman terminated one of his email addresses so that bands awaiting payments could not get in touch with him.
Additionally, in the Sound Music Group ‘Gig Offer’ document that they send out to bands when initially booking shows, a section reads, “We aim to always ensure of shows are well planned and professionally run, striving to provide a memorable experience for all involved.”
However, for some musicians, this experience is memorable for the wrong reasons, and it can often warp a young artist’s first look at what the industry is like.
Ed Fisher had just turned 18 when he was booked by Sound Music Group to support 32 Tens at Jimmy’s on 4th November 2021.
Previously, he had put on his own gigs by himself independently and this was one of his first gigs ran by an external promoter.
Ed is owed £70.00 and recounts the stress: “I had a backing band of session musicians who would play my songs live. These guys were like ‘we don’t mind doing it’, because they were supporting my music, ‘but we have got to get paid’.
“I was in this awkward tug of war that I can’t get money off this guy, but my band mates were asking for money.”
Ed also notes how the show was disorganised: “There was no help at the venue. We told Tom about our tech spec saying we couldn’t get certain things to the venue like kick drums and stuff. He was said we could use the main acts’. The main act let us use them, but they were like ‘did you not bring your own?’.
“The set-up of the whole gig just didn’t feel comfortable at all.”
The following Instagram messages highlight the range of excuses Mr Woolman would use with Ed Fisher to avoid payments.
Other bands that have outstanding payments include Wolf Neck, Cothel and Red Shakes.
Unpaid staff:
However, it is not only talent that have not been paid, but also Woolman’s small team of staff at Sound Music Group that were unaware of the alleged scams taking place.
Maya Leaning, who was 21 at the time, was offered a job by Tom after doing some door work selling tickets for him as he knew she wanted to get into the industry.
Maya did an array of admin jobs, including emails, for the 2022 Sound Music Awards, a night put on by the company to celebrate talent in the Liverpool music scene in November 2022.
Tom asked Maya to start direct messaging artists on Instagram that he’d previously worked with to buy a table for the Sound Music Awards.
Maya noted that an artist on Instagram asked where his payment from June was, so she made Tom aware. She reflected: “He said leave that to him to reply. Then I noticed the whole conversation had been deleted. He had just wiped the conversation which I thought was strange because he knew I’d seen it and hadn’t even pretended to resolve it.”
Alarm bells started ring however, she did not know to what extent Tom owed artists money.
She went on to stage manage the Sound Music Awards and was paid for this and her first instalment of admin work but is still owed £290.00 for hours more admin work.
Maya messaged continuously: “I thought if I was relentless enough, he would give the money. But now I know how many people he owes, he probably just genuinely doesn’t have the money.
“I feel like he knew what he was doing. I also feel like the element of getting me to work on the door for £30.00 then paying me, he gained my trust over time.”
Tom Woolman stated in messages to Maya that his “company is under some financial issues” in November 2022 and gave ‘Chris’ as another name for an accountant.
Just like some of the artists, Maya’s first job in the industry altered her view: “I was so naive and so young and immediately was like, ‘oh, I can't trust anyone that works in the music industry they've all got like an ulterior motive.’ That made me start my own project because I was like ‘I’ll just do it myself’.”
An ex-staff member who wants to remain anonymous and was paid months late told me what they thought about Woolman’s decision to host an Awards show: “If you are going to start your own company, financial difficulty happens to everyone, I get that. But why would you then continue spending money? Spending thousands, potentially tens of thousands, on an award show that you can’t afford when you’re already in mass debt. That is your own fault.
“He’s putting false promises in young people’s heads and exploiting them for money. I just think the whole thing is disgusting to be honest.”
The company is no longer operating and, in a letter sent on the 2nd April 2023 to another person missing payment who would like to remain anonymous, Mr Woolman claims “I have fallen behind on payments due to the company income having dropped considerably and previously taking risks on events that have failed financially through no fault of my own”, suggesting Thomas Woolman accepts no liability despite being the director of the company.
Tom Woolman has sent one other email since to the recipient of this letter, delaying the payment even further than the “30 working days” stating that he will “be in touch by middle of May to arrange a suitable payment plan/dates in order to resolve this overdue invoice.” However, the receiver has not heard anything further from Mr Woolman.
The recipient worked closely with Tom and followed him on private social media accounts. They told me: “I know from his social media posts he recently moved into a new place. He definitely said it was an upgrade from what he had.” Several other sources have also confirmed this.
Woolman also writes: “I am deeply sorry for the inconvenience caused and embarrassed I got myself in this position.”
Woolman's earlier company:
However, Sound Music Group is not Woolman’s first company in the industry that has ceased business.
Mr Woolman also had a company named ‘Elite Music Group’ in Birmingham under which he owes singer Danny Boyle £120.00 for a wedding performance he got asked to do last minute.
Danny was 19 at the time and took Woolman to court in hope of getting his agreed payment of £220.00: “He lost the court case because he didn’t respond in time. He started to pay £50.00 a month. He paid me back £100.00. Then he just vanished again.
“I was at the point whereby he had covered my travel to the gig in Denbighshire, he had covered the court cost fee. I was just kind of like you know what, let’s just leave it there.
“With the court case, its £25.00 for small claims and then you have to go to the high court for like £100.00 and before you know it you are spending quite a significant amount.”
Cancelled Sound Music Group Awards 2023:
The independent promotions company have cancelled their upcoming 2023 Sound Music Awards.
Other promoters in the Liverpool music scene have sent Woolman sponsorship payments amounting to hundreds of pounds to fund the awards but have not received their money back - despite the cancellation and an email saying they would be refunded. With some of the promotion companies only just starting up and hoping for some brand exposure, this comes as a disappointment.
One promoter this happened to, who wants to remain unidentified, said: “As a person, he seemed nice, he seemed trustworthy. That’s why people liked him. He had a level of
charisma. When you boil it down, it didn’t come from this level of criminal mastermind plan. It genuinely came at a level of stupidity from him.”
This promoter also reflected on the current tight-knit music community in Liverpool: “Everyone is close and everyone backs each other up. The scene at the moment almost reflects the Manchester scene in the 80s and 90s.
“It’s a bit upsetting to see this dude come in and try and destroy everything.”
Sound Music Agency:
Sound Music Group also had a sister project named Sound Music Agency in which it would ask musicians for a start-up fee to be added to their website and ‘roster’ of gigs for bookings.
Woolman contacted several bands from 2019 via email and Instagram asking if they would be interested in signing up.
Kai Doyle’s band Cages for Preachers paid a start-up fee of £40.00 at the age of 16 and were added to the website.
Due to coronavirus restrictions, they heard nothing else from Woolman, but as live music was starting to come back, they noticed their information from the website had gone while other band’s information remained.
When questioned by the band about this, Tom said the website was under maintenance even though the other pages were still up and running. They then found out that Sound Music Agency were shortening their roster because “we can’t focus our attention on every single act on our current roster”, indicating that Woolman had signed too many musicians up to the roster but still took their payments.
Despite getting dropped from the roster and not being booked onto a single gig, Cages for Preachers never saw their £40.00 again.
Even artists who were kept on the roster, such as Sophie Wilson who signed up when she was 18, still did not get booked for any gigs with Sound Music Agency.
Other artists that this happened to were Anya Pailthorpe, who paid a start-up fee of £90.00, and Idle Lies.
These payments are not included in the total amount of money that Woolman owes due to there being no mention in the ‘agency offer’ that refunds would be issued if artists were not booked. However, it would take the total up to £3828.00.
Trust Pilot reviews:
Sound Music Group is also no stranger to the review-based website Trust Pilot, where there have been low reviews of the company since 2021.
19 of the 20 reviews are 1 star, with the only 5-star review being left by Emilié Leslie Wilson who later reported back on the website claiming that Woolman had asked her to leave a positive review in exchange for payment.
There are also reviews of Woolman taking money in exchange for making banners - to be used in the backdrop of a band’s live set - but the banners were not delivered to the buyers, and he supplied no evidence of postage.
Sound Music Group's response:
Since the claims on social media, Sound Music Group’s social media accounts have been deleted, alongside Woolman’s private accounts.
When contacted for an interview, Thomas Woolman responded with the following statement:
“Having fallen behind on payments, and not keeping on top of accounting through no fault of my own, and due to the company income having dropped considerably and previously taking risks the company failed financially.
“Those who are due outstanding invoices have been/and will be informed by email, in the coming weeks as I work to clear outstanding payments owed.
“I deeply apologise for the inconvenience caused and want to thank artists for their patience while working to resolve these payment issues.”
This article was initially submitted for a deadline on 21/04/23. After several attempts of trying to get this story published by an external news site, I have taken it upon myself to self-publish it.
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