Over the past few years, a lot of new ways to make your tunes heard by music bloggers and freelance writers have come up, with SoundCloud clearly leading the pack today. However, both blogs and artists/labels are still using emails a lot to discover new music or make their music heard, resulting in hundreds of emails flooding music bloggers’ inboxes every day. Lots of amazing music is often hidden beneath a pile of emails that are not even close to being relevant to our blogs, which makes it very hard for us to dig up the real gems. Unfortunately, a lot of artists, labels and PR agencies make it very frustrating and even harder for us to spot the music that’s really worth writing about by making thoughtless mistakes when sending their music to us.
I am aware of the fact that there are similar posts out there, with tips and guidelines on how to make your music heard and get the message home – for a good example check out this article by Tim from The Blue Walrus. There are also lots of great articles on how to fail at promoting music online (thanks to Tiana from Ride The Tempo for tweeting that article my way), written by frustrated bloggers. However, here’s a very subjective and personal list of DOs and DON’Ts when it comes to contacting music blogs about your music. Many thanks to Josh from Goldroom, Mel from Melismatic, Lorenz from l0r3nz music, Hot Biscuit and Lance from Remix86, Surrounding Sounds, Tracasseur and everyone else for telling me their points of view, adding some aspects to this list that I probably wouldn’t have thought about.
Reading this list (that mainly consist of DON’Ts, to be honest), one might get the impression that we music bloggers are an elitist group of musical snobs who think of ourselves as aristocratic tastemakers who graciously lower themselves to posting about your music. Even if that might be true to some extent, we still do not have any illusions about blogs needing artists just as much as artists need blogs.
If some of these “rules” might sound harsh to you, please keep in mind that we’re confronted with people making the same mistakes over and over again on a daily basis. All these guidelines below are rather common sense than definite rules made up by music bloggers. Obviously, following them will not guarantee to get your music posted to the front pages of every blog you email – they are just a guide to help avoiding common mistakes that upset us and therefore will lower the chance of your music getting the attention it deserves.
Step 1: The Subject Line
We get hundreds of emails on a daily basis. Needless to say, we only pick out the ones that we think are important to us. The subject line of your email is the first thing we see, and it’s also what makes us decide if we actually open your email and read it. Be creative, descriptive, brief but on point – and respect a few simple rules:
- Addressing us with our blog’s name (or even better: our own name) in the subject line drastically raises the chances of your email being read.
- Another magic word is “exclusive“. Every blogger loves exclusive content. Only use it if you really have exclusive content for us, though: If we open an email that is promising us exclusive content only to find 142 other email addresses in the CC, we’ll feel fooled.
- Using these ∆ or these ▲ in your email’s subject line will make us think you’re a 14 year old kid (or even worse, a hipster fashion victim), rather than a professional artist or label executive. Same goes for these: ♥ ♪ ♫ ★ – and whatever else was cool 10 years ago.
- Putting the genre in the subject line makes it a lot easier for us to pick out what is actually of relevance for our blogs, instead of wasting lots of time going through the endless flood of emails. No need for bizarre sub genres here – just tell us if it’s electro, metal or hip-hop.
- Pro tip: If it’s that time of the year again, don’t put the word “Christmas” or anything related in the subject line when emailing music bloggers. Trust me: just don’t.
[Continue reading after the jump!]
