2:59

Kinds of A&R are right on the money with their look at the “dirty little secrets of modern music journalism.”

The average music site will receive upwards of 50 press releases a day. In a given week, they will be introduced to approximately 30 new bands, all of whom are ‘the next big thing.’ From the PR companies they work with, they are expected to print every press release and all of the tour dates, post the songs and videos from the acts and then review the album… Writers are being bombarded by people demanding exposure, most of them not worthy of it…

Music press mailing lists and spam hocking impotence pills all started to all bleed into each other a few years ago. I’m looking at my “Mailing List Inbox” and there are currently 153 unread emails in it. I don’t even put them there, the cold robotic heart of my Mail rules do. I’m quite sure I’ll never read more than 2 of those emails either, if that. I don’t even feel bad about it anymore.

Want to know who does it right? 1-2-3-4 Go! Records. Springman too. Heck Newest Industry had a huge number of stores published on Punknews and they’re not even a domestic label. What have these labels done right? I can guarantee you it had nothing to do with press emails.

These labels looked at the site, saw the style of stories we wrote and submitted stories in a similar style via the clearly marked submission link. They registered usernames and submitted under those. When I see a story from “Avi” I know it’s from Springman, I know it’s probably not frivolous, I know not to delete it, and I know that it’s going to take minimal effort to write up. I’ve never met Avi, but in my mind he’s an alright guy. I want to help him out.

The names in the Mailing List Inbox? Not so much. You start to see patterns, you see that half of these PR firms are more interested in building their own brand than actually communicating anything of substance. I know PR companies by logo and colour scheme rather than the bands they represent. The amount of pure narcissism at play is astounding. If I have to scroll past your logo and masthead to get to the meat of your PR email, it’s already a strike against you. Not to mention the obvious fact that I never signed up for this mailing list in the first place, and I’m sure there’s no unsubscribe link.

Of course, to do what Springman does you need a human being with a little bit of time and the drive to form a relationship. Of course that means you’ll have less time to carpet bomb every zine and blog out there, but the “see what sticks” approach just creates too much static. We tune you out.