Monday
Jun072010
June 7, 2010 Mistakes Artists, PR & Management Companies Make When Submitting To The Press.
First off, I’m not a writer so this article won’t be as eloquently written as some of the others on this site. With that out of the way, let me start by stating that I run a music based blog (Hoodgrown Online) and I also work at a venue that books a lot of independent musicians so I receive a ton of submissions all of the time for a variety of sources. My list below is an account of a few things that really irk me and that fact that hired, professional Public Relations and Management companies are making these mistakes as much as lone artists are.
In no particular order:
1. Sending press releases with the headlines typed in all capitals.
At this stage of the game everyone should know that you don’t type anything in all capitals. I, like most sites, newspapers, etc don’t post in all caps. My time is short, if you force me to have to retype your headline, chances are that I will simply skip over it for another that follows the rules.
2. Groups that have no group photos or group bios.
The venue that I work for books a lot of group acts. I’m in charge of creating the posters that promote these events. I can not tell you the amount of time I spend having to contact people because they don’t have a group photo and/or bio that I can utilize. Individual bios and photos of the group members are nice… but if you’re a “group”… you need “group” promotional items.
3. Photos that have the artists name and/or other writing posted all over them.
I’m constantly emailing people back asking for photos that don’t have any kind of writing on them. If you’re submitting photos/images other than an album cover… they should be clean so I can crop it as necessary.
4. Promotional materials that can’t be easily copied and pasted.
Too often I get promotional materials that I simply can’t copy and paste. I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve received bios as jpeg images or have been emailed photos that were image maps that I had to piece together like a jigsaw puzzle to make a complete photo.
5. No Hi-Res photos available.
If I’m putting together a poster for print, that little 72 DPI thumbnail shot of you on your website is not going to work. If you don’t understand the difference between web and print then find someone who does. A general rule of thumb is that web images are not going to be high enough in the resolution department for print.
6. Sending me to their Myspace page to hear download their tracks.
Different people may feel different ways on this issue, but personally, I will not go to your MySpace page to download a song that you want me to post on my site. Either include the mp3 in the email or send me a YouSendIt link where I can download it. Too many times poorly designed MySpace pages have either crashed my browser or slowed my computer to a crawl.
I’m sure there’s a lot more that I can come up with but these are the ones that are repeated so often that I felt compelled to write this.
In no particular order:
1. Sending press releases with the headlines typed in all capitals.
At this stage of the game everyone should know that you don’t type anything in all capitals. I, like most sites, newspapers, etc don’t post in all caps. My time is short, if you force me to have to retype your headline, chances are that I will simply skip over it for another that follows the rules.
2. Groups that have no group photos or group bios.
The venue that I work for books a lot of group acts. I’m in charge of creating the posters that promote these events. I can not tell you the amount of time I spend having to contact people because they don’t have a group photo and/or bio that I can utilize. Individual bios and photos of the group members are nice… but if you’re a “group”… you need “group” promotional items.
3. Photos that have the artists name and/or other writing posted all over them.
I’m constantly emailing people back asking for photos that don’t have any kind of writing on them. If you’re submitting photos/images other than an album cover… they should be clean so I can crop it as necessary.
4. Promotional materials that can’t be easily copied and pasted.
Too often I get promotional materials that I simply can’t copy and paste. I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve received bios as jpeg images or have been emailed photos that were image maps that I had to piece together like a jigsaw puzzle to make a complete photo.
5. No Hi-Res photos available.
If I’m putting together a poster for print, that little 72 DPI thumbnail shot of you on your website is not going to work. If you don’t understand the difference between web and print then find someone who does. A general rule of thumb is that web images are not going to be high enough in the resolution department for print.
6. Sending me to their Myspace page to hear download their tracks.
Different people may feel different ways on this issue, but personally, I will not go to your MySpace page to download a song that you want me to post on my site. Either include the mp3 in the email or send me a YouSendIt link where I can download it. Too many times poorly designed MySpace pages have either crashed my browser or slowed my computer to a crawl.
I’m sure there’s a lot more that I can come up with but these are the ones that are repeated so often that I felt compelled to write this.
Reader Comments (2)
Good stuff!
You have cleared up a lot for me here. I always knew that streaming music and available to download music had its different audiences but i have never differentiated between the two.
The delivery of MP3s is an interesting problem these days. Why do so many bands not even let people download their tracks on MySpace? But to me the way to go is to host your own mp3s & the clubs can post m3u files.