Elbows Music Blog Community

Are you UK or US based or elsewhere? Might be able to narrow down some labels/PR people at least.

Also, have you taken a look at bandcamp.com for your website (or at least the streaming/download part)? I have found it very useful when bands use them, and I know a few bands who use them and have found it pretty easy. I'm not sure how much customisation you get, but the streaming and choice of download formats is great - just a thought. Also, whilst I hate MySpace with a passion, having one up is the norm.

Are you doing live gigs at the moment? Getting on the bill with similar bands can be very useful.

I'd love a listen so when you do send stuff out add me to the list please.

PS - no offence intended but does 3 songs count as an EP? Surely that's more like a single? Can you call then AAA sides? (yes I know singles are only 2 songs on vinyl, but on CD they can easily be thre).

#4 is such a good recommendation...



worked wonders for Those Darlins....

I hope my last reply didnt sound terse, that wasn't my intention at all.

Everyone has brought up some good points, which I totally agree with and will surely use. It's a weird situation asking the tastemakers what makes them tick :)

I was planning on uploading my songs onto my server not only in MP3 form, but also .wav files, so people can freely remix them. If anyone does it, I'll put their mp3 version up on the site. Interesting idea or no?

I guess this is the plight of every independent artist, maybe I'm asking questions that can't really be answered, but I appreciate your insight in steering me in the right direction.

Do you have a link to the music?

Bond's point four is brilliantly put.



Basically, it's a tedious, tedious job, but unless you have a label dupe willing to do it all for you then you are on your own. 



I'd add a few things: make contact with anyone and everyone who writes about you and thank them for their coverage.  Even one-line emails will cement these relationships.  Bond mentioned signing up for every last site out there, and he's right.  If there are others in the band it might be worth giving them responsibility for, say, the Twitter feed or something like that.



I tend to maintain two lists - a contact list and a spam list.  The latter is made up of people and sites I've never had personal contact with, but judging from the things they cover I am pretty certain they would like what we release.  You can't send everyone a nice personal email - it just isn't practical - so this kind of spam is a necessary evil.  Just look on the Hype list for active blogs who post music you like and either get in touch, or just add their email address.  The former is a list of people who I've had a conversation of some sort with, however tenuous.  I never send anyone anything if I don't seriously think they will like it, or at the bare minimum have an interest in our label, because it won't achieve anything except making them unlikely to ever read any of your emails ever again.



For the spam list I send a bare-bones email with all the download links for one-click, hotlinkable mp3s, the full album download, MySpace and so on.  The actual text is kept to a bare minimum, and beyond bolding a couple of titles there is no formatting, because I personally find that pointless.



For the contact list I tend to email everyone personally.  I don't always add anything extra, but I'd rather not just fire out something thoughtlessly in case i have something extra to say to them, and I think this probably solidifies the relationship (or at least I hope it does).



A quality list is worth much more than a long list, in both cases.  So if you add a print journalist, for example, it's always worth emailing them first, to make sure they're expecting stuff, to check on the format they prefer and to reinforce the message that you're serious about this.  This works with labels too, although the fact that there just aren't that many of them should naturally keep your spamming instincts under control.  I'd be wary of just sending stuff out to labels without at least a paragraph's worth of personal email explaining exactly why you chose them, in particular.



Most important, though, is to garner a couple of fanatics.  Every band I've ever spoken to has mentioned the fact that the best thing that ever happened to them was finding a couple of borderline-mental fans who would just talk them up at any and every opportunity.



Sorry, rambling at bit, but there might be some useful stuff in there.  You can bet your arse that behind the 'effortless' rise of Beirut and Wavves and so on was some poor fucker spending hours and hours and hours sending and replying to emails, indulging boring fuckers like us in conversations they didn't really want to have, indulging some no-name teenage blogger's delusions of grandeur after two months of posting and generally just surrendering themselves to the ghostly glow of a computer screen for hours on end.  There just isn't an easy way, sorry.

As I said, Satan is your only hope.