Last time, I mentioned that the music industry might not actually exist as a separate industry, at least for the purposes of creating a business model that you can use to market your music.

Sometimes, however, it seems like there is a sort of music industry—one that has as its customer base all the musicians, songwriters, composers, and other creative people. Based on the pitches in my inbox, it is akin to the once growing vanity publishing business that made “pay to publish” a terrible phrase (although it came from a noble tradition). And we don’t even have to look as far as “pay to play” to see the demon rear its ugly head.

A quick history (optional)

Actually it has been around for a long time. It’s roots are found in ads in the back of magazines where you could find advertising for “song poems” that could be made into greatest hits, if only you were smart enough to hire this company to put your words to music and create a record that they would then “promote.” (If you aren’t familiar with printed magazines, don’t worry about it. Just bear with me.) Your professionally recorded song would be sent to all the radio stations (which is how it was done). Of course, your song would stand heads and shoulders above the others on the air, because the song would be crafted by a professional songwriter (obviously otherwise currently unemployed for unknown reasons) and professionally recorded.  Well, of course they were professionals—you paid them, which made them professional (i.e., earning money from music).

Back to current events

These folks, because they preyed on songwriters, were called song sharks, and although the magazine ads are mostly gone, and the disguises have changed, the fact that they prey on the desire of creative people to get their music heard hasn’t changed in the least. The internet not only makes it easier for music to get to people, it also makes it easier for the sharks to pitch their latest revolutionary way of getting your music heard.

Unfortunately, it is hard to separate the sharks (some of which seem to have morphed into vampires, in keeping with entertainment trends; so let’s use the term song vampire for them from now on) from legitimate toilers in the vineyards of music. Music is not a single product, nor simple. There are not any canned ways of doing things that produce more than canned results. So there is a great deal of room for hardworking agents, music pitching companies, music libraries, and so on. But there are few rules to help distinguish the revolutionary new idea (excuse me, we call them “platforms” now) from the same old con in new clothing.

It’s all very tiresome. And to add to the confusion, some things work for a while, then succumb to their own popularity.

Conventional wisbits

There are two competing bits of conventional wisdom out there. The first, the older, is that you shouldn’t pay for anything. That was the advice offered in the song shark era. If your music is any good, then people will pay you for it. If there is money to be made from your music, then plenty of talented people will be willing to work with you to get it in the right hands. This seems dated now, but there is a kernel of truth in it still. But it conflicts with conventional wisdom bit #2: If you won’t invest in your career, why should anyone else?

The problem I have with this wisbit (i.e., wisdom bit—it is the moral duty of journalists to corrupt the language with more meaningless jargon) is that first, it doesn’t provide any guide for where to invest. I have untold thousands of dollars invested in musical instruments, training, computers, software, microphones, sheet music, more instruments… I will stop here, having made that point. None of this is what the song vampires are talking about. What they mean is that my not giving them money is proof that I lack confidence in my own ability, music and career. To that I say (along with many things probably left unsaid): “Bullshit!” What I lack, often times, is confidence in their ability to help me in any way. The fact that they got some punk rock group into a club in Des Moines doesn’t mean a thing about what they can do in getting my music to recording artists, placed in films, or even get me more money when I play the local coffee shop (Yankee Creek, every other Sunday morning, 9:30-11:30—hope to see you there) or a regional festival. In fact, many of the “services” make my life harder because it seems to revolve around my running my life in a way they understand.

That isn’t how it works in the corporate world. In that universe (world is too small a word) the PR person goes to the client (hat in hand, dressed up real nice) and gets a spiel on “what we do and how we do it” and then goes back to the office to devise a program that does what the client wants.

But the point here is not to rant about the ineffectiveness of much music marketing; rather I simply want to point out that when it comes to song vampires, you not only don’t necessarily get what you want or need, but that it might soak up time better spent doing something frivolous, say making music.

Soft sell ending

So if you have some ideas of how to tell opportunities apart from the invitations of song vampires, share them. But bear in mind that everyone seeking money from you is not a vampire, unless they work for a government.

In part one we talked about your theme, then in part two investigated using it to write a press release, or several releases. Now we need to figure out what to do with all that work.

The PR job

Part of your job as the public relations person for your band or music is to find places that your message fits. Sure it is easy to see the big kids getting stories on themselves in the people pages, but until you are a name, that isn’t your goal. Your goal is to establish relationships with the media that cover what you do and, over time, give them a sense of your story. This is going to be a lot of work, but there aren’t many effective shortcuts.

In starting, you need to look at the media that cater to local and regional stories in your back yard. Because you are local, you have a leg up on other bands. That means you want your story to go to local radio stations, newspapers, regional magazines, and local television. One press release in that market might not make a splash. That’s okay. You don’t build an image overnight, just as you don’t make a career out of one CD (or shouldn’t want to).

When I was a magazine editor, often I would find press releases that I never used—even though they might be well written, they might not be appropriate. But the good ones (and the bad ones) make an impression, and when I was assigned a story on a topic I hadn’t covered before, those well written press releases could get me calling the folks who sent them to get ideas and information. Naturally, they got mentioned in the story. Similarly, your theme, expressed in a series of well written press releases, establishes you as an obvious subject for a certain kind of story.

If you have established a presence as a community focused band, and you send a press release out about a CD that is songs about the community, local television or radio might suddenly feel the urge to have you on the air. Local papers can disregard the press release in favor of a feature article. My letters and press releases on my music have gotten me coverage and an featured appearance on TV Ontario (my 15 minutes of fame), and features in regional publications. One multimedia magazine turned a CD press release into a telephone interview carried on the internet, and then used a song from the CD as background music for a slide show of photographs that were being featured.

Finding places to send your story

There are two great sources of information on publications—the internet and the publication itself. The masthead of most publications lists the editor names, often the areas they cover (such as CD reviews) and how to contact them. Sometimes features tell you exactly what information they want to consider you. And you should read the publications to learn what areas they cover and how they cover it (the angle). Make sure you fit. The internet can provide much of the same stuff.

For instance, if you think your story is perfect for the ROLLING STONE, under contact information, the site tells us:

That took about two seconds to find out.

If local tv is your goal, a quick search on, say “Television stations Nebraska” produces a complete list at states guides/nebraska. There, it tells you that the local affiliate for ABC in Lincoln is KLKN-TV . If you have a gig booked there, you can get the event announced on the community calendar by sending your press release to: Channel 8 KLKN-TV Community Calendar, 3240 South Tenth Street, Lincoln, NE, 68502, or fax it to 402-436-2236.

The challenge is to build up a core database that consists of the various media that get the message to your fans. You want the editor names, contact information and the kinds of stories they handle. All are not the same. Then you cultivate these people. When they run a press release, even just a tiny blurb, a thank you email is in order. EVEN IF THEY GET THE INFORMATION WRONG! This is networking at its most important. Editors get promoted or move to other publications and jobs, so treat them all right, and with respect. Your news is not the most important thing in their world, so don’t soak up a lot of their time. The easier you make their job (such as with a well written release with all the pertinent facts) the more likely they are to use it. Your job is to get better at that as time goes on. Editors, like everyone else, prefer to work with the willing.

Media depend on information—they are not hostile to your efforts. That is why they publish contact information. Collect it, use it, learn from it, and build relationships that will bring you visibility in a time when the information noise level is reaching absurd heights. After all, if you don’t make people aware of your music, they can’t know how good it is.

Soft sell ending

These three parts of the PR story are not all inclusive. They are highlights of my own experience on both sides of the PR world. PR will not make you a success, but if you are successful, it can let the world know about it, and that will grow your success—take it to a higher level.

So think about your PR effort. What can you do to make your music, your band stand out in the way you want to be known? (If you think any PR is good, check out Tiger Woods current problems.)

Also, I am very close to this subject. If you have more questions on DIY PR, let me have them. If I can provide a quick answer, I will. If it deserves another blog entry, then I will do that.  And, importantly, try to have fun with this. After all, it’s only life, and you won’t get out of it alive.

In part one we looked at developing a theme for your public relations campaign. Now lets look at how you put it into play. One of the most basic tools of PR is the press release. You don’t just write one, but a stream of them. Because this is true, your press releases should:

1. Be focused.
2. Promote the theme
3. Provide clear and consistent contact information.
4. Always have a newsworthy angle.

Making the campaign effective

Suppose for a moment that the theme you’ve hit on is that your band gives back to the community—is, in fact a vital member of the community (not just the music community). Now that does mean you have to say this in the same words in every press release, but when it is not part of the main message, it should underlie that. It is your angle or spin.

So you do a CD and decide that you will donate the money from downloads to say a cancer fund. First you need to do two things—contact the people you will be donating to and see if they will give you permission to use their logo. They might want to hear the CD before they approve you using their image to promote your own.

So if all is well, you want to write a press release that focuses on this specific project and its benefits. Don’t tag the donation part at the bottom of a press release about your CD release. The news here is that you are releasing your new zydeco punk CD to benefit left handed animals, or whatever.

Some organizations even have press people to help you promote the announcement, and might even promote what you are doing.

The point here is that you need news and not: “Yet another CD release party.” Even if you aren’t doing it to promote charitable causes, there is always some kind of hook you can hang your news story on. It can be that the music is seasonal, the lyrics reflect current events, the person who wrote the song or sings it has some human interest angle, any number of things. My advice is to look at news stories about bands in the magazines you read and see what the hook is. Most stories only look at one. In a recent story in ROLLING STONE, for instance, an interview explores Rod Stewart’s “return to his R&B roots.” There is other stuff in it, but we don’t care.

The hook will be important in two places in the press release: the headline and the first paragraph. Both should be right to the point. This is not the place to explain or give background. Suppose you have a band call ARS GRAVITAS (please don’t), and you are providing music for a locally produced video. Then your headline could be

ARS GRAVITAS DOES MUSIC FOR VIDEO

If you live in the mythical town of Littlebit, Missouri, and the video is about that place, then make it

ARS GRAVITAS DOES MUSIC FOR LITTLEBIT VIDEO

For the local and regional papers and magazines, you would then have a lead graph (first paragraph) that goes something like:

Which raises the point that you might want several versions of your release targeted at the various publications. Through the wonder of word processing that is simple, and well worth the effort.

Keep in mind that the press release is about the news item. This is not the place to mention that you grew up writing parodies of Lawrence Welk songs. That goes in your band sheet. Keep the press release short—one page is optimum. If there isn’t room for the whole story, that is okay. This is really a teaser. A reporter who wants to do more than a blurb (which is your first paragraph) will contact you.

Which brings me to the most important thing you must do. Put your name and contact information at the top of the release. And then, the last sentence (a separate paragraph) should read: “For more information on ARS GRAVITAS and the whole zydeco punk movement sweeping American (and parts of Eastern Peru), contact Billy Joe Whatshappening at…..”

The Envelope Please

What goes in the envelope with the press release? Most often, nothing at all. If it is a news event, such as talking about the fact that your band played at the opening of the local KFC, send a photo. Don’t send a CD (you can provide links to music samples with the contact info).

I also want to note that CD Baby, always a friend of the indie musician, recently posted their own summary of PR and marketing at http://diymusician.cdbaby.com/2009/11/music-publicity-101/

It’s fun to see the different approaches people take.

Now this is how we start. There are many permutations and options, and space precludes getting into them all, but I’d love to hear how you promote your theme, challenges you face in getting your story out, or PR successes that you’d like to share. Next time we will talk about sending materials out—what, where, and how. In the meantime, get creative and get writing.

I started to write a blog on how to write a press release, and realized that to fit everything in, I needed to break this into three parts. This one will cover what many of you might not realize is an important first step—establishing your PR message. (The next parts will talk about how to prepare the message and get it out there effectively.) While marketing messages can be about your latest CD or big gig, public relations is more theme based. This lets you ensure that you communicate a single idea that underlies everything you say about your music or band. And developing a good theme that will carry you over time requires thought and research. If you do it right, the marketing messages are going to provide a constant reinforcement of the overall PR theme.

Research? Sure. Do you really know why your fans like what you do? Can you state it in a single sentence without being silly and saying “cause we are good”? If not, you haven’t got your theme.

What is a theme? The theme is basically the story of your band. It sets out the thing, one thing, that makes your band different. Not unique (bad word anyway), just different. If another band playing similar music is in town, why should people spend their hard earned money on your gig? And right here comes the first difficulty.

Become an outsider

I am going to assume you don’t have the financial backing to hire an outside PR person. If you do, that can be a big help, but since you don’t, here is how to put on that person’s hat and become a PR person looking at your band from the outside. You must find important things that are of interest to your audience, not your mother or the rest of the band.

It is very important that one person be the PR person for the band, because this only works if there is a single, consistent story.  You can all discuss the idea and contribute to it, but one person should have the responsibility for maintaining its presence and consistency in all that you do.

The PR person has the rough task of finding an objective story. And it might not be the obvious one, or rather, the obvious story might not be the best for you.

Mastering two audiences

What makes PR tricky is that there are two audiences and they are layered. If you don’t get through the first layer, the second layer will never hear of you. The first audience layer is that of editors and music reporters. You need to develop a message that will make them feel that your band, your music is newsworthy. If possible you want an angle that will let the writer present you as a discovery.  Remember, the writer has an audience too, and they want interesting information on breaking trends and ideas.

So what does an editor want? He or she wants to know why you or your music, preferably both, are different from the other bands flooding the mailbox with PR and CDs. To this end, do yourself a very big favor and banish words like “best,” “hottest” and “new” from your vocabulary. These are superlatives that other people should use, not you. Editors are even more tired of them than everyone else. And by the way, even if you have the only punk band ever to use harpsichord and zither, you are NOT a unique punk band. Breaking the mold is great, and a good story hook, but “unique” and “punk” or any other genre, are incompatible terms. If it is unique, it isn’t punk, and so on. Pick your poison.

You probably want to go with a genre, and not make up your own. Typically, a punk bank using odd instruments is of greater interest than a Zydeco/Punk band. Not always, but an odd category is, in general, a harder sell. For one thing, many publications specialize in certain genres and you don’t want to give them an excuse not to run a story on you.

Keep it human

To reach the second layer audience, the readers of the story, you need to make sure your story has human interest. Even if you are doing modal jazz, readers are going to relate more to your human struggles than technical musical information. The fact that you play everything in Lydian scales is less interesting than the fact that you make your living running a dairy farm and got hooked on jazz when you learned that the Windows audio logo is in E flat.

But the question that must be answered is: “why do you do what you do?” So you do all the lead breaks on kettle drum and didgeridoo, so what? The thing that might be interesting is why you do that.

You will need to find a sounding board, because quite honestly, we all bullshit ourselves real well. Maybe you want to go where Miles Davis feared to tread, but are you truly doing that now, or just working toward it. Editors and writers of any experience survive by having well developed bullshit detectors. To get passed them, you need an honest story. It doesn’t need to be a madcap tale. It can be that you formed your band to pay the rent when your parents lost their jobs and you found a home in the blues. It can be simply that you make music cause you love it, or don’t know how not to. That is the underlying story. Then, the story behind the latest CD or gig becomes an episode in that bigger saga. The human interest builds over time, and the audience impatiently waits to hear what will happen next. In the best sense, it becomes a living drama.

And drama hooks audiences, both at the screening level and the readers.

But do remember that this story is one that, if it works, will cling to you, follow you everywhere, so it better be one that is true and that you want in the minds of fans and everyone else.

What stories have you created before, and what has worked well for you? Or perhaps, what challenges have you faced with your public relations campaign?

Much of the material I read in books and online about public relations and music does a bad job of separating the elements of pr from marketing. They are different specialties although they can often overlap in terms of their short term goals. You need both.

The Big Difference

Marketing is the art of promoting something, such as an event—a release or a major gig (such as opening for a big name band). Marketing professionals work with advertising agencies to create compelling copy and graphics. Marketers ensure that street teams get posters up in prominent places before the gig, try to get you a guest shot on local radio or television before the gig, and make sure the event is listed in every event calendar on the planet. That’s a lot of work.

Public relations is, as the name implies, controlling your relationship with the public. It does this through getting articles about the band into magazines and newspapers, newsworthy events listed, and ensuring that whenever an editor writes about the “top ten all female swing bands from Duluth” or “up and coming metal bands that use accordion” then, if your band fits, your PR person’s job is to ensure that you are  prominently mentioned. PR is less event driven and more about building your presence in the cultural consciousness. Sometimes this is called branding, but I object to that term strenuously in the music world. Musicians are dynamic; brands tend to be static. Coca Cola doesn’t change, because when they tried it didn’t work. Bands change as the members learn and grow, and respond to challenges from their fans.

So really there are two things going on here. They require different skills, no matter what the glib come on tells you. Successful companies in other markets, like technology, specialize in marketing or PR, or at least have different people with different skills doing the two jobs.

I want to focus on PR.

Successful PR

The things you need for successful PR are: (1) a good press release; (2) a consistent hook (at any point in time—remember this is a dynamic so it will change over time); and (3) a lot of time.

There are places that have good material for putting together a press kit. Last time I mentioned electronic press kits. You can also go to Electronic Press Kits Online to put together a power press kit, for example.

But you should read How to Write a Press Release to get a handle on some basics. You can also get help finding places to submit it there.

The harsh reality is that, if you want effective PR you need to either hire someone who works in music pr or have someone within your group take on the massive learning and workload. Sending out press releases will do some good only if they are sent to the right people. How do you find those people? Research. Google can come to your rescue, but it won’t do the work. Here are the basic steps to establishing your editorial contacts:

1.       Identify the key publications, both print and online, in your genre.

2.      Identify the names and contact information of the editors who do (or assign) CD reviews, stories on upcoming music and so on.

3.      Contact those editors. Ask them what they look for.  Is originality enough, or do they only cover bands who can fill clubs. As a former magazine editor and editor-in-chief, I am going to give you a tip critical to your success.

Do not send them anything that is not in line with the kind of thing they use.

Violating this rule not only wastes their time, but marks you as an amateur. Your future submissions will get looked at last, if at all.

4.       Follow up. Ask if what you sent was appropriate. It isn’t possible for editors to always tell you for certain if something will be used, but they CAN certainly say whether it was on target.

5.      Repeat as necessary.

Now you don’t do all this just to send out a press release that says you had a great time playing the club last night. You need more meat. Read the published stories and then do one that is more interesting (to your fans, not the band).

While doing all this, collect anything that gets published about the band, its music, its kind of music, and clubs that feature that kind of music. Read it all, looking for what the editors thought was newsworthy. Look at the image that the bands featured have. Is yours different? There might be a story in that. The atypical metal band that wears suits might be interesting.

This is the beginning of your pr effort. I’ll summarize the rest of the steps into: “Learn as you go, and keep the effort constant.” To create an impression in the minds of the readers, you first have to create an impression in the minds of editors and writers that you are newsworthy and easy to work with.

If this is all too much to contemplate, consider working with a professional agency. You can find a number that claim to work in the music industry at Record Label Resource . If you can’t afford to work with one of them, consider finding a college student majoring in PR who wants to get into the music business. (Contact any college that has a public relations school and talk to the department head.) They will learn as they go, and you will profit from their efforts. You might even get a new fan.

If you have had any experience with public relations, please share it with us. If  you have any questions about pr, I will do my best to answer them. And, in the next blog, I will look at a press release designed specifically for musicians–what should be in it and how to focus it to get maximum attention.

To promote your music, you may want to use press releases as a way to get your music in front of reporters, editors and music writers who will put you in some of their features and give you free publicity.

PR is great because it’s free compared to the thousands of dollars one would pay for an advertisement. It’s free because you don’t pay to actually see yourself printed in a newspaper or magazine.

If you’re looking for something new, I recommend you adopt a good and consistent PR strategy. By that I mean you set a regular date to write up a press release and shoot it out to hundreds and thousands of music writers. Do that once or twice a month and within a couple of months you’ll probably have lots of features about you.

So maybe you think writing is easy. But you’re asking…

Where do I find a list of reporters and editors to send it to?

The answer for independent musicians is Beatwire. Founded by my friend and musician Mihkel Raud, Beatwire is the most effective way to get press for independent musicians. And you can trust they’re good at what they do because that’s all they do. They only serve independent musicians.

http://www.beatwire.com

Whether it’s a new CD, an upcoming tour or any other music-associated event you want to announce, there is hardly anything more rewarding than a positive response to a well-written press release.

Major record labels shoot hundreds of press releases every day. Now, you can get yours out there. Just send them your press release and they’ll do the rest. Your news will be delivered to the desktops of over 10,000 music editors at daily newspapers, magazines, news agencies, top web sites, radio stations — every place you need to be promoted.

http://www.beatwire.com

I rarely make recommendations because these day’s the web is filled with so much rubbish. This one however is a gem and I don’t make anything from sharing it with you… just a good feeling that you’ve found another great tool.

It’s easy to come up with a music PR strategy. If the time is right, I would jump at it right now – regardless of whether you

have something to sell or not. The exposure you get is worth it.