December 5, 2011 Do You Really Need A Music Review?
Should you really go through the trouble of setting up a press kit, finding good music blogs, and submitting your music for a (Possibly negative) review? The answer is a big, giant … maybe. It all depends on the kind of music promotion you’re seeking. So many artists will spend untold hours blindly sending EPKs out to hundreds of music blogs thinking that the resulting publicity will cause their popularity and career to skyrocket. It’s a bit naive. (Some might call it stupid) The reality is that the vast majority of music reviewing websites have a dedicated, but extremely small readership. Most of the traffic to these sites comes from other musicians looking to promote their own music, and other music industry professionals. Simply sending all your music out will not by itself do much to benefit you, even if you are reviewed by several blogs.
However, this doesn’t mean that reviews are worthless. Anytime you are releasing an album, EP, or an important single, you should submit it to several quality music blogs within your genre. The goal here is not to sell your music, but to draw the attention of the above mentioned professionals. It is quite possible that your music will be noticed by one of the above mentioned music industry pros. A good A&R rep from a record label or publishing company will always check out a blog before submitting music from an artist they represent. Read that line again. Good A&R reps from quality labels and publishers read blogs. This means that you should only send out your best music for review. If the A&R guy or gal checks out your review, and the music is substandard, you just lost your chance. Wait until you have something worth reviewing, and submit it to reputable blogs only. You never know who might be listening.
Matt Hundley is a West Coast musician and blogger. You can find his music review blog at www.IndieReviewer.com, and listen to his music at www.MattHundley.com.
Reader Comments (2)
Nice article. Music blogs are starting to get so common that they are just turning into noise that is filtered out. The last week I spent going through all the blogs on Hype Machine to see which ones I should contact about some new releases & it was really interesting to see some of the trends in blogs since my last major blog search (a couple years ago). One thing I found really interesting is there seems to have been a huge shift from writing about the music in a way that describes the music to having the music right there to play (via Soundcloud or YouTube - which means get some songs up on those sites) with the text kind of being an accessory to the music listening. Another thing I noticed is that blog entries have started to have a lot more visual elements, which oddly often had nothing to do with the band (given that the band doesn't have naked skateboarding girls in it) so I must assume that it's getting more important to have fun & visually interesting images included with the files you send out for review instead of the standard band shots & album cover. A third thing is noticing the clamoring to get news/music up first with it seeming like most reviews are so far in advance an album will be old by release dates (plenty of reviews for records released in 4 months, which makes sense to give that lead time for a physical reviewer, but for a digital I feel like you should have that disc ready to go at iTunes & Amazon before the review).
A few points I'd like to address:
Music bloggers rarely write negative reviews. Why would we? Would you take the time to write 300 words about a piece of music you don't like?
Sending bloggers your music is virtually free and takes very little effort. Write a polite paragraph about yourself, upload a .zip folder of your stuff to dropbox, and start emailing people. Or, for $15 bucks you can use Review Shine.
Of course, being a music blogger, you probably know that already.
cole
http://www.colcifer.com