Question for Music Journalists: Is doing "professional" press materials worth it?

URLs help (as long as your website is accessible on my computer, which more and more aren't these days), but are never *better* than press packets, in my case. But yeah, they probably do save trees.

one page. simple. No one is going to take the time to read a 30 page bio with illegibly xeroxed press clips and pitiful 'discographies' - not when they have 150 others just lke it to wade through. OUR job is to write - yours is to send us in the right direction. And make good music.

What ends up happening A LOT is that some really bad music critics steal right from the one sheet, or even from older articles. Verfuckingbatim. You don't want that. I've seen it happen.

I was in a band that was referred to as "Francophilic" in no less than FIVE reviews.

If a band sends a thick packet, and the band seems interesting, I'll skim through it, very very quickly -- lots of times what's in there is more interesting than what's in the press bio that the label or publicist wrote. But the big packet will wind up in the recycling bin real quick anyway. And yeah, bad writers will crib verbatim, often without even listening to your music. So that's a risk, I guess.

xp

The reason why I like the URL approach is because a good website with lots of links to stories and info and so forth feels more natural to me than flipping through a presspack at this point. So perhaps it's down to personal preference there.

I've thrown so many glossy-papered bios tucked customized file-folders with all the bells and whistles into the trash. Remember, you want to get the person at the other end to LISTEN, so put as few obstacles in the way of that as possible.

College radio stations almost always have a press photo "wall of shame" area, don't they?

This seems reasonable and doable. Thanks very much to everyone for their input it was very helpful. Cheers.

More useful and/or useful advice: Do a little research to figure out what writers' tastes are, and send your CD to writers who might actually *like* you. I can't believe how few bands do that -- in the Voice, every one of our show listings is signed (with last names, at least), as are all the pieces in the music section proper obviously, and most of the writers tend to gravitate toward certain kinds of music. (And if you really want to do some research, search the Pazz and Jop ballots on the Voice website for writers around the country who've voted for bands somewhat similar to your own band. Then google the writers, and find out who they write for.) If you're a metal band, you'll generally have more luck sending your music to somebody who actually likes metal than to somebody who only writes about cabaret acts. It's really not that difficult!

There are and always will be. It's just nice to have days as well when you look at a pile of things and think to yourself, "Maybe I'll just listen to this one other album I already like instead, or nothing at all even." But such are moodswings.

send your CD to writers who might actually *like* you

Quite right. How in the world I ended up getting a slew of bad ska-punk bands a couple of years back sending me crap I'll never know.

I've done exactly that, and it works! We take the additional step of emailing every writer we're going to send it to before we send it to them. If there's not at least a chance they're going to open it and listen it, why bother sending it?

On the other hand, "professionally" produced robot-like p.r. packs
-- P.R. "by the pound" is annoying. Leaving long messages on the answering machine is annoying.

I don't have trouble picking good stuff out of the material that's sent. Or bad stuff which I also write about frequently. In fact, I recommend people to send me stuff they'll suspect or know I'll detest. It sees print and many people, like me, sometimes judge material to be to their liking if someone else whose tastes they know precisely from experience, hates a thing. In any of these cases, absolutely no p.r. is necessary. Just sending the music is fine.

Also, sending the CD with some semblance of final or sort-of-like final cover art is best. Like everyone else, looking at the CD sleeve,
seeing the pretty, nuts or nasty pictures, adds to the experience of the music.

they only let us recycle white paper here, so environmentalists might want to avoid multicolored stuff. but yeah, it sticks out, a little.

xp

---

Product Submissions

The best way to insure that your artists and releases receive coverage in the database is to send review copies of their releases along with any relevant promotional materials (press releases, photos, etc.) to:

Product Submissions
All Media Guide
1168 Oak Valley Drive
Ann Arbor, MI 48108
USA

We will add any CD submissions we receive to the database as long as they were commercially available in the country of their release. The decision as to which releases and artists will receive additional editorial coverage (reviews, bios) is at the sole discretion of our editorial staff. Please note that it takes 2-4 weeks for information to appear on our site after we receive material. Due to the volume of submissions that we receive, we unfortunately cannot respond to inquiries on the status of submissions.

Then you know you're reading the opinions of a moron or a really sub-mediocre hack. So, cynically, you can look at as a cut-rate consumer service.

Guitar mags, metal magazines, 'zines that review dozens and dozens of recordings are good for it. Many Internet sites purporting to be portals for the enjoyment of various genres compile content that's
chockful of it. The Amazon customer reviews...which are often good for comedy value and confimation of the observation that most Americans will just voluntarily burble and cheer for any piece of swill as long as they paid good money for it.

oops!!!

we don't automatically NOT send it if they don't answer our email; we use our instincts and our best judgment. but we've found that opening a line of communication can sometimes help make our cd jump out from the other 60 that show up on a writer's desk on a given day. at least we think it does; maybe we're wrong! but it's sort of our version of the hand-written note concept.

(btw, thanks for answering our email when we asked, chuck!!!)

i'd agree it's nice to include a handwritten note, in part because it suggests you actually KNOW WHAT OUR MAGAZINE COVERS! (usually) when we receive something totally inappropriate, it indicates that the person just went through a list of music mags and sent promos out indiscriminately.

i also tend to not like being asked how to submit discs. our address is on the web site and in the magazine--just send the thing.

Right - go to the website or pick up a copy of the publication, and write down the dang address. Do not *call* to ask me the address (or worse, ask whether we "review CDs" or "review shows" or "review indie bands" or "review bands from outside New York.") That happens to me at LEAST five times a day. And it does your band no good, believe me, since right off the bat I assume you've got shit where your brains should be.

No, they fill up your mailbox with spam instead. I'm especially fond of those who send you regular e-mail on their manifold wonderful acts but which do not actually ever send CDs of the manifold wonderful acts.

So their is sometimes an advantage to hiring a "pro" to louse up your career -- at least in terms of saved time, mental health and disownability -- rather than louse it all up by yourself.

It's unfortunate p.r. work can't regularly be offshored to people who live in closets in Bombay but who know English well. That would be a boon to the indie bands priced out of the service.

Somewhere, sometime, at some music-biz seminar, someone told a bunch of clueless bands to always send their CD in with a folder and business card tucked into it. It's gotten to the point where a folder is a surefire indicator the band sucks.

It's also kinda annoying when bands/publicists ask for comments or feedback on the album before a review has run (or after you've told them that you won't be doing a review). Just send it in, recognize the fact that you're one of a hundred CDs sent in that week -- everything from the new Eminem to stuff made on people's laptops -- and hope your music's good enough to rise above. Despite rock critics' reputation as cynical cranks, the fact is, every music writer is hoping to be amazed every time they put an unknown CD into the player. If your music has that effect, you will hear about it.

I was sent two recently and both bands were good. I know Chuck got them, too, and know he likes at least one of them. But tastes vary.

Also, the only people that need photos are editors. Writers have no use for pictures. Don't waste your photos. And I agree that the follow-up is pointless, unless you really distrust the mail that strongly.

Also also, spell check whatever you do send.

Also also also, do a little research to determine whom to send it to: guy or gal who writes previews? Guy or gal who does reviews? Calendar editor? Guy or gal who does interviews? Guy or gal who may actually be sympathetic the type of music you play, or purport to play? Guy or gal who writes about local acts?

Oh, and if you're going to bother to send all this stuff, make sure to include the CD! There's nothing worse than getting an inch thick dossier of pictures and praise with no music to go with it.

Not mandatory. No disqualifications here for spelling errors. I appreciate the moxie of rockers who dare to be taken for fools.

Also, does anyone have an idea of how likely a label will be to actually listen to anonymous demo cds? Is it better to start with reviewers/radio stations or just shoot directly for labels?

Hope that's not too much, but I just want to do anything to make my long shots a little bit shorter.

Jobs want to make sure you're really interested and not just resume blasting.

I'm going to the cd's themselves duplicated (burnt not pressed) on professional equipment with a nice label, but as to the packaging, I can't afford to have nice stuff made but I have access to a colour printer, so I was thinking of just handmaking them. I have a huge stack of photos of random pretty things as well, mostly pretty abstract.. I thought maybe I could print things like the cover and the tracklisting, and then hand-make the inside or the back cover or something out of said photographs, so it's different every time.

Thoughts from professionals?

... nice to know about presspacks, small and simple being good, too. anything that saves money is nice :)

lots of musicians dont realize that with all the page layout applications available, you can actually compress all the things usually put in a press kit [photograph, bio, excellent pull quotes] into one handy page.

no matter how much shit bands want to cram into their package, ultimately the music is going to be the lone deciding factor in what compels me to book a band.

shit i really hate:

- folders. am i going to be quizzed on this? is this a fucking book report?

- anything printed on vellum. BLEH. save it for your final project in graphic design, kid.

- cds sent in dvd packaging. a waste of money and space.

- promotional items, ie, bottles of hot sauce. what exactly does this sort of guesture mean? is your band bland? do i need to sprinkle some of this shit on you before a set?

ive done a little publicity work [sorry] but i keep things pretty simple. my favorite thing to do is to make the mailer look unique. ive bought colored mailers, spray painted, collaged, painted, etc on them. i know if i see something different in a pile of manila envelopes, im inclined to pick that one out and have a listen.

inside though, its very standard: a one sheet, cd and press clips. chuck is totally right on the handwritten note thing and even if it takes me all night, ill include one in each thing i send out. handwritten notes are kind of like grade school flirting, which i am totally down with.

So, say I get a CD that I like, but for various reasons mentioned here, no review gets published. But it left a qood impression and anticipation of the next release, an opportunity for growth. It's serviced by OilyPhlogiston PR. Then the band shifts labels or the label decides to have another PR company, SuperDuperExcrement, serve the second CD and the latter has a different list of people to send it to. And those who may have been favorably inclined toward the band's first kick at the can aren't all on the list this time.

Continuity is broken. Opportunity to build on good will lost.

!!!!Roger Fidelity in loving the french SHOCKAH!!!

1) Even if music writers may not care about your supposedly well-written bio, it is worthwhile for venues, as I've found many venues will excerpt our bio and put it on their web-site. (Not that I think anyone will see our band based on the bio alone, but it at least makes us look like more than "the crappy opening band" when we're not at the top of a bill). But as far as getting them professionally written. See, most of the people doing PR are what we call hack writers, and unless you shell out big money, you're not going to get something much better than what you could do yourself or have an out-of-work English major friend do for you.

2) For those people asking the questions of the writers, one thing I'm not clear on is: Do you actually have an occasion for sending your stuff to a music writer? Is there a show you want them to preview? If you're sending a burned CD, it seems kind of unlikely to get reviewed as an album, unless you're really pushing it that way, making it easy available for purchase, etc.

Um...that's a good question I guess....I was thinking that if I gave out a demo to people that write up the show preview blurbs and do live reviews that they might be more inclined to come check out my band? Along with an offer to put them on the guestlist of course so they wouldn't have to pay?

Is this a silly line of reasoning?

This works for newspapers, particularly those with dedicated weekend features sections that cater to the local bar and concert scene. Invariably, there will be those people who do weekend roundups and depending on the size of the metro area, they can often be easily cajoled or manipulated into giving one a graf of ink or more, even running a pic.

Big metro with sophisticated entertainments and a myriad of acts in town and from out is much much harder to crack. Podunk place in the provinces with a newspaper committed to showing that it's not a podunk place, easy meat.

As utterly inaccurate as the address label was, the actual release was "emo-folk" from "legendary singer/songwriter Marc Alan Brown", who is also apparently the person to blame for wasting a $1.06 in postage.

Well, as a matter of fact, I'd much rather get the hilarious experimental prose epic about the fictional lives of band members - which anyway gives you info about the imagination and social style of the band and its promoters. Mahjongg and Electric Six sent brilliant promo sheets full of lies and fibs and cut-and-pastes from totally unrelated performers. I reviewed both bands. But there are no rules here. I wouldn't want promo sheets to conform to a pattern any more than I'd want to listen to only one kind of music. Photos, typeface, anything is part of self-presentation. And why pass by any opportunity for art?

That said, I usually stick the promo sheets on one pile, the CDs on another, and only look at the sheets if I'm struck by what I've heard.

I was in a band that was referred to as "Francophilic" in no less than FIVE reviews.

-- Roger Fidelity

That's true. Accordingly, always assume that what you say in the bio is going to end up in some or even most of the reviews, and write them accordingly.

If you're going to assume this, assume that you should pay a p.r. company to do the work. And that your CD be distributed and marketed sufficiently so that all the minor 'zines and pubs that use people to write reviews for free or fractions of pennies on the word will get copies. Because that's where the reviews that parrot press releases are primarily seen.

That and newspapers, mostly local to the artist, where they'll have the best chance of getting into the entertainment section to support a gig. They're they'll be dealing with people who just need a sentence or two to fill a local listing, tens or a hundred or so a week. And, if they had any pride it was long ago beaten down by the grind and necessity to JUST GET THE WORK DONE AND INTO THE PAPER BY DEADLINE.

Anyway, when I see press like this, it's an automatic signal that people are copying from promotional materials. Now while this may not be as easy to discern by people who haven't done music journalism for years and years, I suspect that many consumers, particularly those who do assiduously read all the submarket, genre niche and fanboy publications also recognize it in some way.

Bare essentials and not even: A sense of humor works for me. So does nothing. The presence of thoroughly annotated biographical materials doesn't win any professional points. Nothing does, actually. Just send the music, even wrapped in a re-used mailer, if necessary. No harm, no foul. Parsimony can be viewed as a virtue.

I've had reviews that stole from previous reviews that I didn't include in any sort of press kit. Thank you, Google, for making one AMG reviewer's life a little easier that day. And thank you, AMG reviewer, for keeping the same wrong song name as in the original review, to make your plagiarism that much more obvious.

What puts a package on the fast track to oblivion in my case is starting the one-sheet with "In a world of manufactured pop divas and generic teen-pop ..." or some other dismissal of the very 21st-century popular-music scene that you are trying to be a part of. And acts whose bios start out with something like this are almost invariably the most predictable and generic acts (usually rock bands) of all.