Jon Nolan!
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Promoting your band / a cool article... - 2007/01/11 20:01
hi guys,
here's a cool article someone posted on another mssg board i frequent. some good points in here!
Jon
http://www.startribune.com/457/story/930483.html
Band promotion: 101
Let's start the new year with a few lessons on how to publicize your band -- and how notto do it.
By Chris Riemenschneider, Star Tribune
Last update: January 11, 2007 – 2:05 PM
Ultimately, the best advice you can give a new band hoping to get some press is the old Army slogan: Be all that you can be. In other words, even if you don't call us, we'll call you if you're too good to ignore. Or, more important, you won't get any ink if you aren't any good.
There are more than a few exceptions to those rules, of course.
That said, plenty of bands could use more help. Sometimes it's amazing -- in a dumbfounding, head-shaking, one-toke-over-the-line way -- how musicians in this town can go about things. Even some really talented and otherwise intelligent players are clueless about the basics of PR. Things like sending their CD before a CD-release party, or including song titles and artwork when they do send it.
Sometimes, even the people whom bands hire to do the promo work for them do a bad job. Like a recent invite for an in-studio party -- which arrived via e-mail the day of the event, two hours before start time. And then there's Prince, who hires high-dollar PR people to basically deny everything and tell us nothing.
Here are some random examples of mistakes/misfires that I hope can be turned into useful lessons. Or at least good laughs.
Press releases
Wrong way: From Chooglin', who got a nice spread from us despite this utterly useless mailing. Is that a Sharpee they used, or a crayon?
Right way: The one I got from Roma di Luna lists gig info, a contact number and a website. There's a nice little photo. There are even a few paragraphs with background and album details. No record label or computer geek was involved in the making of this release.
Websites
Wrong way: The old Hockey Night site, www.hockeynightmusic.com. Sure, it's eye-popping, but it's about as navigable as an acid trip. One more reason it's a good thing the band has a new record deal in the works. In the meantime, the guys changed the site so that any click on it takes you to their MySpace page.
Right way: Any site that includes a bio, a gig schedule, sample audio tracks and at least one or two high-res photos for download. So yes, MySpace pages are more than OK. Just don't post sexually suggestive responses to 13-year-old girls who write in to your band.
Band photos
Wrong way: The headless shot of the God Damn Doo Wop Band's three singers is actually a genuine piece of art, but newspapers and magazines aren't art galleries. No matter how cool you think it is to have an edgy press photo -- see also: blurred faces, or a picture of the members' backsides, or of everyone's shoes -- they're useless and have all been done before. Even the most alternative alt-weeklies have layout designers or photo editors who will veto these kinds of photos every time. And they'll make fun of you.
The Doo Woppers got away with it because, well, they really are cool -- and because we also dug up a photo of their faces to run with this one.
Right way: Haley Bonar seems to get her picture in our pages about every other month, it seems, because: a) she performs a lot nowadays and is really good, and b) our designers and editors love her photos.
CD cases/covers
Advance albums on a burned, 33-cent Imation CD-R from Office Depot are absolutely fine to drop off (just slip in track titles and any liner notes). What gets me are the finished CD cases on sale in stores with little to no info on them. Spinal Tap's final "Smell the Leather" cover was a joke, folks.
Wrong way: A great example comes from the otherwise promising new duo To Kill a Petty Bourgeoisie. Or at least I think it's their disc. The band name also doesn't appear anywhere on the spine or back.
Right way: All the CDs on Martin Devaney's (low-budget) Eclectone Records label come in terrific packaging, including recent discs by Big Ditch Road, Mark Stockert and the Mad Ripple.
A few other basics
• "Music Editor" is a great catch-all name to write on packages to print publications, if you don't know specific names. Street addresses are usually printed on pages 2 or 3, or online under "Contact us." (For the record, ours is Newsroom, 425 Portland Av. S., Minneapolis, MN 55488.)
• "Music director" usually works for packages to radio stations. Also send to "Local Show" for the ones that have 'em.
• Journalists aren't paid to write blurbs for your press releases or CD jackets. So don't ask for any. Anything that appears in print is fair game, though.
• As for those blurbs, don't mangle them or suck the life out of 'em. We already have editors to do that. And don't reconfigure them to make them sound more positive.
My favorite misuse of something I wrote was by Chris Koza's old band Katnapping. I made fun of them for throwing a CD-release party at the 400 Bar without even having a title for the CD picked out yet. "Stardom awaits," I wryly wrote. They cut out those words (minus the sarcasm) and used them front and center on a press release. Touché.
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