Original Post here : http://iamalaser.com/2010/04/13/music-pr-advances-a-rantadvice-for-producers/

Ok producers here’s a rant that you NEED to get. With the rise of independently created music and bedroom labels has come a slew of great new talent, techniques, and tracks -and we love that! But what is sorely lacking is some professionality of the old world variety when it comes to getting advances of your new material to blogs ON TIME.

Heres what "ON TIME" does not mean:

-Sending out PR the day of your launch.
-Sending out PR one week before your launch
-Sending out PR letting a blog know that you posted a Soundcloud track two weeks ago and you want some hits.

So what to do? I really have to stress that some of the old world record label practices are still tried and true. Hence the Art of the Advance needs to be learned here. As a music blog, our inboxes become inundated with submissions. It takes time to listen to music. Music is not a piece of plastic to be tasted once and discarded, unless that’s the way you feel about putting 40 hours of time into a tune.

Advances have to be sent, to any form of a music publication, at least 30 days before you intend your world wide dominating launch. Think about that -makes sense right? We live in such a media inundated world that even logging into Facebook can be too much. From what I have experienced, from working with more established dance labels, it’s really in the range of 2 to 3 months before launch that PR and an advance copy of the music are sent out.

But I’ll grant a little caveat here. The times we live in also dictate that art can be made and distributed that very same day. Just don’t expect too much hype without proper warning. Perhaps you can start to build some patience into your launches. Learn to cultivate a ramping up of attention for your works. It’s okay to let a track marinate in time before a kid in Moscow downloads it.

Unless you have an in with XLR8R, or are big enough to garner reviews on Rolling Stone (who cares), Independent Music Blogs are your media driving machines. Help us help you, and give us time to review your material.

Checklist for a complete PR mailing:

-Add an adequate image for the web. Something at least 600px wide.
-A brief Bio - and I mean BRIEF! Do you have time to read everything out there? Neither do bloggers.
-A track description. Who is playing on it? What’s notable about it?
-All relevant hyperlinks. That includes your Myspace, Website, Record Label (if you have one), and Store -fool! Oh and Twitter!!! If only I could bill for the amount of hours I have spent tracking down someone’s effin Twitter handle.
-Official launch date. Let us know how burning this is.
-Follow up email. About two weeks max after you mail/email out your package, send an email to say “hope you got our material.” Its a nice reminder for a busy blog to get on it. Makes me believe that your music is worth reviewing.

Post Review courtesy: When a blog has taken time to hype you - hype them -immediately. Twitter that shit! Please Facebook it. for the love of sandwich! Lazy fuckers.

-Told you this was a rant. Hope it helps!

PS: If you want to send material to I AM A LASER for possible review and posting on our site, email us at media@iamalaser.com

that was awesome

excellent rant!

i will be FORCING all my of students to read this from now on.

nice one!

d

Thanks for the responses! This really is part of a larger discussion on 21st Century Music Biz - which as we know, changes month to month.

I mean, I totally understand that artists just want to be artists -and some can if they have the good fortune to be on a label that has all the necessary media teams in place. But if you are an army of one, You can never neglect good old fashion networking, outreach, and elbow grease.

great post


especially RELEASE DATE!!! as a music buyer, if i dont see a release date, i stop caring about your music.

epic sauce all around! love the blog and these words of wisdom. cheers.

I like the sound of what y'all wrote, You make a very good point in that the artist should promote the promotion!

but I cant help but have a few question...

Just for the sake of debate,

Is it realistic to say a producer like me could have a "World Dominating Launch Date" or even just a launch date in general.

Shouldn't I have it for sale on like Bandcamp as I give it to you for review? If you do then decide to post about me you'd have a link to where people could buy it. right? probably gig away one track or something.

Is it realistic to say iTunes Addictech and Beatport are gonna sell my release starting on the same day??? If your the Glitch Mob yeah it can be done but what about for me????

I have an idea of how I'd ramp up to what your saying, but I think it would take some time before this happens. I could write my plan down but I dont want to bore ya... least not yet.

I think this is great advice for Ill Gates next slammer but I dont think its viable to me just yet, But what do you guys think?

I agree, nice rant and altogether pretty on point, I like the idea of ramping up the release and being good about following up and cross promoting and all. Also ive been reading and following you blog for quite a while, so I'm a little biased there.

But for the sake of argument, I can't help but step back for a sec and think about why people wouldn't want to send a blogger a release 30 days in advance.
I can't say I know for sure, because I haven't released much, but it seems like people might not want prerelease that far in advance because in the world of instant data transfer all it takes is a couple of keystrokes before that hot new release is sitting on a torrent tracker.

Not saying that justifies the level of unprofessionalism associated with the other points you mentioned, but I just felt like bringing that into the conversation.

Feel you on this -and the one rule you can count on is.... that there are no rules. Everything in the marketing side of the game is super hit or miss. There are corporations that spend missions to try and create a viral hit and get nothing while a kid in Nebraska can take some cell phone video of his cat and get 4 million hits.

As far as building a name as a producer and or performer, I think in the early days of your career it's really about relationships. Who you are aligned with can help in the promotions. I see a lot of remix EP's coming out these days and that might be the smartest solution for getting some more traction.

Say you compose a song and then give it to 3 or 4 other producers you know, or want to know (why not), to remix and then release all those tracks as an 5 song EP. Then you will have one or two songs that can be sent out ahead of the release as free hype tracks for the blogs.

AND...... I am fuming about this right now. When a blog takes the time to write an insightful review of your music and adds links to your store so that you can make money and then Tweets that they have reviewed your track - RETWEET THAT SHIT! Please!

I witness so many producers only retweeting their inner circles tweets. Nice one. Keep patting yourself on the back fuckers while all the blogs do the work.

Though I can't assign blame to just the musicians out there. 1: Because they are not marketers, so maybe they just don't get it. 2: Because the labels, booking agents, and band managers are equally to blame for not hyping shit up and building a real community of reciprocal support. Lazy fuckers -I'm not doing your job for free anymore! Everyone is an equal in this jungle.

–Yep - This is still a rant!

I've said it before but it bears repeating. This article is a gem.

Additionally I have to say be careful about who you release your music under. Some smaller labels and netlabels haven't really grasped the importance of PR and marketing and will unintentionally severely hinder your ability to get word out and start a marketing campaign on your releases. Be sure to establish a schedule with the label for the release. Or at the very least get them to tell you when the release date has been decided so you don't end up sitting around for months and then one day find out your single/ep/album(!!!) is live everywhere.

Just wanted to clarify where I was going with this suggestion, is.... That by reaching out to a posse to make a track you will have that many more people on your side, as a team, getting out there believing in the project and promoting it instead of the island of you.

If a song is solid aka a smasher, no one can deny that -even bigger dance labels who, if you send it to them, might catch the bug and want to get their artists to remix it. Then you're getting some hype and will need to negotiate a 50/50 split (or whatever).

Get your crew on and make your PR timely and noteworthy!

you should write a book.

I'm quite active on facebook with my fanpage, letting people know if i'm building something new and what to look out of. Jus sharing my passion you know.

But my twitter (artist twitter) is as good as dead I'm not too familiar witht he medium... onyone got tips for that?

really good read and a good starting point to develop a marketing strategy
I will say another really good, smart thing to do is:
Say you have a bangin' epic track and you feel you need to get it out quick (like before 30 days)
Send it to The Biggest Blog you know first, before anyone else gets it and say the following:
"I think this track is really important for the following reasons _____ , I'm holding off on sending this to other blogs for a few days because I'd really like to offer this track exclusively through you guys because i really respect what you've been doing

Cheers
Dj Yournamehere



also: be prepared for disappointments, not every blog is gonna feel everything and some may love while others loathe
in fact if you're making music worth a damn some people are probably gonna hate it


SPEAKING OF:
@IAMALAZER -> i was just looking at frite nites promo list and you guys aren't on there -> you guys are cool and should be on our promo list so we can be swank together, pm me

Exactly! I see more and more artists following this trand lately. Hate to write reviews with a link to 1 min snippets. A downloadable teaser track or two (remix or original) in good quality will always attrack more listeners. I peresonally prefer previewing music on my personal player than on the web.

Heading out to Coachella right now - but I want to keep this discussion going. Good stuff! Tag you back next week with more thoughts.

This is a great post full of great information. Props.

btw - i do dig the blog and you'll be added to my promo list for future releases/cuts.

Hmmm I have a whole lot to say about this; in fact I have thought about doing a class to teach artists how to best take advantage of new media and market themselves online. Because overall you guys and girls are not using the tools out there available to help you, including blogs.

While most artists would like and could desperately use a manager, the fact is that most of you cannot afford it, and if you learned a few strategies, you could use your time spent on marketing much more effectively. For example, there is a certain time of day when people are reading Tweets and a certain time of day they are re-Tweeting them. If you want your messages retweeted, you should aim for certain times of day.

As a blogger I am hit up about 25 times a day to promote for free for various artists. Sometimes it is some crap trance producer's people who email me & want me to interview Paul van Oakenfuck; other times it is Edit. I would absolutely love to do nothing but write my blog and dig up artists to promote and share their music with the world; unfortunately I like to eat and pay rent etc. So my blog goes to the back burner while I write articles for the fucking DMV.

One point I would like to make: when you are asking a blogger for press, you are asking someone to work for you for free.

So when you hit up bloggers to promote for you, offer something in return. I am not saying money, but how about a note of appreciation? A sentence of thanks? An invite to your show? A fat joint? An exclusive track? An "I LOVE DF5K" post on your Facebook profile? A PBR and a smile, for the love of god? My blog gets anywhere from 700-1200 hits per day and my work has value, so just remember that the blogger you are hitting up on the other end is a person who is doing this for no pay, mostly. At least I am. And kind words of thanks and appreciation go a long long way when you are getting hit up to work for free 25 times a day. In other words, I can be bribed with big bags of weed Let the bloggers know that YOU know that their work has value and you will get a much better response.

I usually just ignore most of the generic "Hey (INSERT MY NAME HERE), gimme some press!"- I don't have time to read the emails, much less listen to the music, write a thoughtful review and post a blog. If it is obvious the email went out to 8000 other bloggers then I am not interested.

A few other tips:

GET ON TWITTER. If you are not on Twitter, you are neglecting one of the most powerful and most inexpensive tools for musicians today. Figure it out; use Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to make things easy. Tonight. Get on it!

- Also when sending your music, find a few words to describe it. Again I am inundated with so much music, anything that just says "please listen" gets trashed in favor of the music that says "funky hot electro-crunk slipping fetishstep" or WHATEVER. About half the music I am sent has no indication whatsoever if it is dubstep or glitch hop or techno or honky tonk or candycorn gospel rock. I don't have time to wade through it all, so those get tossed in favor of more creative requests.

- NEVER send out music to ANYONE (except your MOM) and say: "This isn't quite finished yet, I'm not really happy with it and it needs a few tweaks here and there, but can you guys tell me what you think?" No, I can't. If you are not proud of your art, do not send it out. One part of being an artist is knowing when your work is done. And until it is, don't send it out to the world.

- Give your pre-release material to bloggers but be damn careful about who you give it to, because although I think bloggers in general are more respectful of art than mainstream media peeps, shit still gets leaked. Except by me . I never, ever leak which is why artists like Boreta and Kraddy send me their unreleased tracks (yes you should be very jealous of my iTunes right now oh my DEAR GOD).

This may be the one point I disagree with W on because although artists used to send out unreleased material 2-3 months prior in the past, in the past you couldn't press a few buttons and share that music with the entire world. Things have changed now. With the immediate distribution available on the internet this is a much riskier endeavor and I understand why artists don't want to do this. That said a friend of mine who just released an album balked at sending it to any bloggers & sent it to mainstream media instead- and it was leaked.

However there is no way as an artist I would send out unreleased material to bloggers in a wide sweep 2-3 months before release date unless I did not want to make any money on it and just wanted my music to be exposed. I know this is the way things used to be done, sending out pre-released material to press, but these days you just have to be extremely careful who you send it to. You must build relationships. Make friends. Get to know your international bass music community. Reach out. Increase your online presence. Email people and say hello before you start asking them for shit.

What else? THIS IS NEW MEDIA. THERE ARE NO RULES. You have to figure it out yourself, or hire someone to do it for you which is what several record labels and organizations do with me.

The old rules are gone, the game is changing, and it is one of my goals in life to figure out how artists can make money off their creations; as a writer this includes myself. We are not going back to CD cases and BMG, but I am not down with the whole "hey let's just give all our art away for FREE! all the time" Artists deserve to be paid. We have to convince the masses who spend $4 on a latte every day that they should also spend money on music, on paintings, on writing. How we are going to do this, I don't know. But we will; I have no choice LOL this is my path in life and I also like to eat so I am going to figure out the new rules and make them work for artists!

Maybe I SHOULD teach that class....

AND THE NUMBER ONE MISTAKE THAT ARTISTS MAKE: thinking just because you are talented that you will be successful. You need talent to back shit up, of course, but nothing but hard work is going to get you there. Success rarely just "happens." You must be prepared and willing to work your ass off in order for your music to break through the resounding haze of beats out there. Stay up until 6AM every day if you have to. Get the fuck up at 6AM every day if you have to. That's what I do, and you know what? I am not fucking stopping until I no longer have to pay for a box of Bandaids with pennies which is what I just did because my broke ass sliced the tip of my pinky off. Every time I type 'P' I wince. LOL.

Keep your chins up artists. Surround yourselves with crews of talented, positive people who are doing their shit and making things happen. Another mistake artists make is to hole up like the moody hermits they are and not be involved in their community, thinking again that all they need is talent to succeed. Making your living with an artistic profession is a privilege, not something that talented people deserve just because. There are WAY more talented beat makers than there is room at the top. AKA: Keep working.

And most of all, believe in yourself to a ridiculous level. Because if you don't think your music is the shit, why should anyone else?

OK THE RANT MAY BE OVER BUT THE RAVE IS ALWAYS ON!!! WOOT WOOT!


“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race” Calvin Coolidge

Dayumm Shilo! You just dropped the nicenesss!!!

Once I get some more tunes in order I'll be cramming your inbox, but it's all out of love!

Thanks again for this post Shilo and I'm sure we'll see eachother around sooner than later!!

This, this, and this.


I also want to add a few things. I am a blogger, but I am also an artist, and of course still and always learning about how to operate in this community. The information I quoted above is pretty much the same conclusions I've came to without having the benefit of being able to read this (although, still learning a lot).

Some others things I would like to mention:
Saying thanks goes a really, really, REALLY long way in my book. What DoubleYou said about pushing your own promo is a big deal (i.e., retweet that blog post bitch!), but if I don't see a retweet NOR do I get any kind of thanks or even a nod of the hat, that makes me think you're a douche and that I won't want to spend my time trying to support you in the future.

Artists, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE post id3 tags for your tracks. Not only that, but please rename your track something like "artist_trackname.mp3" or whatever. You wouldn't believe the amount of tracks I get that aren't labeled at all, and they usually get trashed.

We are blessed to have a perfect sized community, I think, and it's growing pretty rapidly. As Akira Kiteshi said in the Bwomp interview: "Treat everyone you meet in the industry with respect, be it a promoter, another producer or a fan. You’re no different to them, and you’ll meet the same people on the way up as on your way down!"

/rant

This is a goldmine of great advice!
A question for the bloggers - do you ever read/touch emails that have mp3's attached?
Doctor Krank, you said you prefer to listen in your own player as opposed to bandcamp/soundcloud/whatever (fair call, the stream rate sucks...) - so would you prefer a 'preview' to give you a taste so you can determine if its worth going that extra step?

Yes we have new music out and the marketing side of things is an interesting/dynamic beast we have yet to conquer.

Oh and by the way - Doctor Krank YOU FUCKING ROCK!
I say that of course because of his support for us... he was the first guy to put our music up on his blog (totally unprovoked btw which for us was even more awesome)

Thanks everyone! One of the best threads I've seen here. MOTION TO STICKY (not sure if I have the power to motion something but fuck it.....this shit is gold)

Thanks Shilo, and everyone, for your hefty response! Woooop!

Here's what I want to propose: WE ARE THE ANSWER! There have been several mentions in this thread of teaching classes and or writing a book. What we have here is actually an opportunity to collectively create a online how to ebook. This is like so Web 3.0!

Collaborative intelligence compiling all the bullet points and chapters thus setting the standard in an ever changing music culture/business/distribution landscape.

Hmmmm, what ya think? Could be fun.