FAO up and coming music producers: Sending an email with your name as subject and your Soundcloud link as the only email body text is not a demo. Its lazy and one could easily infer that you put just as much energy and interest into your music. If youre going to send your music to labels, heres some ideas: 1) Do your research. Make sure the label youre sending your music to would like to hear it. Ive been sent so many demos from rock bands, Southern rap artists, vocal electroclash (is that really still a thing?) producers/bands... Dont blanket the world with your demos, dont play the numbers game. One of the greatest resources on the net is discogs. Find the artists you like that make music somewhat similar to yours, find the labels they work with, contact them personally. Which brings me to... 2) Send an email thats personally targeted at the label. Be nice, be friendly, dont be too wordy but show that you have a serious interest in being on the label. We all like to feel special. Imagine receiving an email written directly to you, asking you for music. Wouldnt that make you feel better than just some cold email writing nobody in particular asking for music of any kind? Its kind of a golden rule, I suppose. Be polite, dont run on about your expectations from the label, how amazing you are, so forth. *IM* embarrassed for the people who send me demos telling me that theyre making the best techno in the world. Humility is rare, wonderful and to be perfectly frank Ive found its usually reserved for those with actual talent. I also recommend just writing a quick email about yourself and the music. No long bios, no wordy diatribes about the state of dance music or your aspirations for fame, who youve shared decks with, so forth. If you have your bio and info otherwise available online, provide a link, or consider typing up everything into a text document and uploading that to link to. Just two to three sentences could work just fine for the first contact. 3) Send three tracks, maaaaybe four. If you have more and feel that the tracks REALLY need to be heard together, as a package, then say so and give a nice reason why. Most people running dance music labels are running DIY, out of their home, wearing MANY hats at once. The ones that arent are even more busy and inundated with exponentially more demo submissions. Pick your best works, engineer them as best as you can and arrange them in an order you think works best. Once the label hears them, they will tell you things like Wow these are great. We love the first two, do you have another couple we could hear?, or Lets do these two first tracks. The third doesnt fit but we could do a remix on the B-side. If you send too many tracks at once, many people may just not even take the time to pay attention. Its overwhelming, just as a super wordy email would be. People just shut off before starting up. Now this is SUPER IMPORTANT: ONLY SEND LINKS TO 320kbps MP3s. Dont attach tracks to your emails. Never, ever. Youll only make the recipient hate you right away. Lots of labels use mail apps like Apples native Mail or Outlook. Comes with having your own URL and so forth. Nobody wants their email frozen for 5-20 minutes downloading Mr. I-Just-Found-Out-About-Internets emails. Soundcloud links work best if possible. 4) Make your tracks private, theoretically and practically. I dont want to know that 324 people have already downloaded your demo tracks on Soundcloud. Thats 324 lost sales, and unless its part of a little promotional strategy to help your potential EP, youre better off just sharing them everywhere on a bigger scale and making new music to submit as a demo. 5) Name your tracks with great care. Make sure to include your artist name on every track. Track3-newbassline.mp3 will just get lost and well just be wondering who that amazing track is by for ever and ever. Well send it to our buddies and say Dude, who made this? I have it on my hard drive and have no idea. Wish I could release it! and that doesnt help anybody. You dont have to go nuts with the metadata, just make sure the filenames include your name and that you include your contact info somewhere. If youre sending a link to a zip file of tracks, rather than Soundcloud, then I suggest including a little text file with your real name, email address and pertinent links (soundcloud, facebook, et al). 6) Give the label some time. Dont freak out and write a million emails after three days of not hearing back. If its been a month, then maybe send a very polite little nudge, like Hi this is Stacy Technoladyperson. I sent you a demo a few weeks ago. I know youre quite busy, but as I really admire the label I was hoping to get even a little feedback at your earliest convenience. Thanks! This is where that initial personally targeted email also works in your favor. We all like to know that our labels and our A&R ears are actually appreciated. If you show care, youre more liable to receive it. Truth be told, most labels these days dont even answer 95% of the time. Dont take it personally. Non-responders are a pet peeve of mine to be perfectly honest, but in the end nobody really owes us anything. What I may think of as basic decency and professionalism, may not be the same as the next guys take on it. Dont get mad, get productive and move forward with new music, greater enthusiasm and determination. Theres more for sure, but this is a good list of basics, and about all I can handle at this early an hour with no coffee! :) Best of luck to you!
Posted on: Tue, 21 Oct 2014 06:17:18 +0000
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