How record companies select bands

Met an entertainment lawyer last night at a party. He has worked with bands like Rush, and was involved in screening demos from bands in the past. His take is that the only thing you can't fix is a bad song. He went on to explain that many bands make the mistake of confusing production quality with song quality, whereas the production can always be fixed, but if the song is bad, that is fatal. So what happens is bands spend money on studio time, fancy equipment, hired musicians, etc, with the vain hope of impressing distributors, when the distributors would re-record stuff in any case, and are really listening for song quality - not production.

Other than that, he had several entertaining stories about how to promote a band, playing in strip clubs, and digital versus analog equipment. A fun evening.