Elbows Music Blog Community

earbuddy

So I'm in the habit of sending out coverage links to my PR reps because they always ask for when we review artists they represent. I send one to a lady with a name beginning with the letter 'L' at Nasty Little Man. And she responded with this:

"why did you even send this to me? did you read it?

i agree w that commenter. thanks for playing"

The commenter that she was referring to disagreed with my writer's review of White Rabbits' latest album Milk Famous, and said, "I think I know why it doesn't stick in your brain..."

So now I'm wondering why do I even bother sending these people coverage links at all. They never use quotes from our site anyway, so I just assumed they were checking us off some kind of list, indicating that they got their artists coverage. Anyone else ever have an experience like this? What are your thoughts?

squashed

They are a business operation after all, they need to show result for the promo expense. link/coverage is the easiest.

If you agree to accept materials, to some degree you have an obligation. Whatever that is. Basically, don't accept anything unless you feel comfortable with it. (eg. generally you like the works from that label, and have favorable opinion.)

my take. don't accept expensive promo, CD/LP, etc. They add to band expense then sit collecting dust. For review, you can find almost everything online. Probably discounted ticket, interview, or anything your readers might want to read worth a lot more and better for everybody. for traffic, create variety of content so you don't depend so heavily only on new releases report.

Tim

Yeah I always think of it as a quid pro quo for access to the new music - although we only tend to cover music we like and so PRs, labels, bands, etc like our coverage.

That review isn't really negative though, whoever the PR is - it sounds like she was having a bad day for whatever reason so you got that response. If she didn't like it, she should have just ignored it really.

earbuddy

That's what I was thinking, Tim. It's not the first time that I've sent a coverage link for reviews (that were actually more negative) and didn't get that kind of reaction. It really threw me through a loop. If they didn't represent some pretty big names like Jack White, The Shins, etc, I'd probably say the hell with them.

squashed

It's just pr crew and stuff. If they know how to do it better, they should go do it on their own and shut up about it. stop pestering people who blogs. (but they can't. And there aren't that many good size bloggers.)

My opinion: it's band/music and readers first. I only do things from their point of view. What readers like, what band probably think/like/their voices, what I like, etc. pr crews come and go. They don't make the music, and they don't know my readers. And they should quit spamming my boxes.

There are too many good and interesting music to share & tell people than worry about what pr crew wants. I for one would do the usual... Get on my nerve and I am dropping every single items from my brain, forget about your stuff permanently and move on. Glitch hop, creative common, j-pop and dream free jazz here I come. ...lol It's good exercise specially when you reached a point where..well then, shouldn't be so prickly the other day, now you run out of easy stuff and really have to search the big scary internet instead ..

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