Responding to the Countless E-Mails
  • boxmusiqueboxmusique
    I'm sure you, like me, receive countless e-mails a day stuffed with various crappy remixes, releases or maybe just decent music that doesn't fit with the general style of your site. I was basically just wondering how you deal with all the correspondence.  Do you reply to them even if you're not going to post their stuff or do you, like I tend to do, largely ignore them? I'm just concerned that by ignoring most of these e-mails I may be losing quite a lot of possible return visitors to the site. After all, they're unlikely to come back if they don't get a reply.

    What's your opinion on this?
  • jason@indieshufflejason@indieshuffle
    I tend to ignore them, unless it's an eye-catching release from artists I'm already familiar with. The volume is just too high to possibly go through all of them, particularly as most of us have other full-time jobs.

    It got to the point where I was getting so many that we set up a submissions@indieshuffle.com email. Truth be told, I don't check that, though I believe my Editor still sorts through it. At one point, we tried to setup a weekly playlist that covered "5 from our inbox" -- but the girl in charge had to leave our team :-(

    So, long story short: we ignore them.
  • earbuddyearbuddy
    Since we're just starting out, my blog probably doesn't see as many band submissions as the older blogs here, but I still find it hard finding time to check out the smaller bands that send me their music.  If the music doesn't fit with the general theme of your site, then ignore them or send a polite email explaining why you won't be featuring them.  The band probably isn't a fan of your site but just happened to stumble upon it and hoped that you would feature their music.  So you're not going to be losing return visits.  If the band does fit with the theme of your site, then get them up by all means, establish a friendship with the band -- it could be valuable in the future.  Even if you don't want to cover their music, maybe write up a few questions and send them back to the band to answer.  Then just throw the questions together with a sample of their music to introduce them to readers.

    Bigger releases that generate the most traffic are always going to get most of your attention though.

    Nick
  • apocketfullofseedsapocketfullofseeds

  • MusicForMoronsMusicForMorons
    I'm not a big blog at all but I do get quite a few emails. I ignore most, unless I recognise a name/label etc or it's from a promoter I know. But I sometimes just go straight to a streaming link, and spend 10 seconds listening to something. I usually know immediately if I like something therefore I want to post it.

    When I first started out I thought that a lot of blogs got loads of new music through submissions but I think at the end of the day that isn't how it works for most blogs, it's them just surfing the web,finding it themsevles.

  • Sean RSean R
    I'm pretty much with Jason on this. At one time, I did try to politely respond to everything, but after 5 years it has become an impossible task. I just use rules in Outlook to shuffle music-related stuff into a subfolder, and try to periodically go through it. I wouldn't worry about 'losing visitors', as we're generally talking about PR folk. 
  • SGTMTSGTMT
    I try and trudge through the inbox about once a week but sadly I just delete most stuff without even a listen. I do try and give unsigned acts a listen and will always check out stuff from a select few trusted PR peeps.

    Just for fun I've set up this tumblr to give some of the tunes in my inbox a bit of profile: http://sgtmt.tumblr.com/
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