Promotion & Status

On 2011-01-26 20:28, Electricpollution-Records wrote:
Hi
I will hit you up with some ideas.

1. Send demos to festival arrangers, send a track that has good dancefloor potential. one track to start with, but tell how many you have and that it can cover a set.

2. Send demo tracks to netlabels, preferably those who are close to the style you create.

3. Make demo video when you play live or Dj, just make sure to make a nice setup and if you dont have crowd, try to make it look like you have one. at least try and look like you entertain.

4. Update your myspace and make personal promotion to festival arrangers and labels there.

5. Make your own webpage, preferably with flash and cool artwork.

6. make your own podcast. Also Dj others music and show your taste, if it talks to many you have a better chance to get gigs.

7. Make your own party.

On 2011-01-30 14:49, disco hooligans wrote:
I will also agree with Elysium (from the other thread)
...don't worry about making music that is outta fashion/has been done before.
Speaking for my self, I just do what I like without worrying about being unique for the sake of being unique.

On 2011-01-30 00:57, Mike A wrote:
Don't push yourself to others, just publish your own stuff, and if it's good - it will make a good buzz and people will find you.
The real problem is the "good music" part. Listening objectively to your own music and deciding whether it's good or not is an art developed over time. Be able to listen to something you spent the last 6 hours working on and saying "well this sucks" and click delete.
Once you got your own music finished (properly), the way to get the attention of promoters/labels/whatever is NOT by contacting them.
Being a label owner myself, I can testify that 0% (that's zero) of tracks I released on compilations were the result of people contacting me with their tracks.
You see, contacting a label is like hitting on a girl. The more you want us, the less we want you. Totally irrelevant to the actual music. No one would say it, but we label owners like to put on compilations tracks we found ourselves, being sort of like a prize and a showoff of "look how cool I am and what I found".

On 2011-01-31 18:39, wiseNevil wrote:
heya guys,

I really want to share my thoughts since we're (me & my brother- wisenevil) currently having this process.

We started to produce music in a proffesional way in the end of 2009, and since then we're working really hard on the promotion side.

Mike, I can agree with most of your points but not with all of them.

I'll devide it to 3 parts.

Singing Tracks OVER Emails - I think especially in nowdays, sending in emails is the only way. nobody have the energy to send a track over the post office, and check if its being receive and wait for an answer- especially when the internet is so central in our days and you got so many ways to communicate- facebook/soundcloud/youtube, and so on...

I also want to share that we currently managed to sign an EP which includes 3 tracks from our upcoming album, and another track in a VA in some australian psytrance label- no connections, no special cds, just emails with our music. and we didnt even release any album yet.

BUT!

I must say- the first times we sent the same music to the labels- nobody respond, in any way.

In my experince the way you introduce your self in the email is what that counts, in our first emails which we sent to like 20 different labels we wrote lots of stuff about us, and the track it self, and guess what? none of those emails got response.

And here I reveal our formula
When I sent short emails - most of them just with this subject- "please listen" and this text- "link to the track" I got much more respones- bad ones and good ones.

I basiclly thinks that all those labels doesnt have time & power to get over all those "spam" music related, thats why you need to do 2 things:
1. be short, dont bullshit, if they like it, they'll get in touch, if not- read point numb #2
2. send twice- for example, send them your first track, after a few weeks, send them your second one- maybe they didnt like the first one, or maybe they missed your email or they couldnt listen at that moment and they forgot and moved on.

so thats regarding the emails issues.

Shows-
In the shows side, its much different, the way I got their attention is by introducing ourselfs nicely, sending them A pictures from our last parties and 2 links of our latest tracks.
sometimes I wrote that we'll play for free for the first time, sometime I didnt and they said it...

most of the times after a few hours I got a respones- again, A good one and a bad one.
Also- I can see from my experince that i surely agree with Mike, I'm spending alot of time in parties, and most of the time I cant understand hows those artists/DJs got on the stand, but the problem in this side, that party orgs put most of the time their friends and artist that play alot.
I have a few examples in my head, but because its a matter of taste and because I dont want to offend anyone, I wont use names

Last part- Music
everyone got a different taste, maybe if this label or that label wont like your music its not sure its not good.
In my experince, first, make sure your music is well mixed, eq & mastered.
before 2-3 years ago when we tried to send our stuff, most of the labels didnt responde, but those who did said the same- "I really like the idea, structure & building but the way its produced I cant put it on CD's."
back then we didnt understand what the fuck is he talking about, but nowdays I surely do

GL to all of us !

On 2011-01-31 19:16, disco hooligans wrote:

Quote:

On 2011-01-31 18:39, wiseNevil wrote: ...Last part- Music...

If you ask me, the music is the first and most important part. Do that and the rest will sort it self out...and I am talking about making music that is good to you.

"Good music" is subjective these days. What is good music to the dark brigade is shite music to the prog brigade and vise versa.
Labels are after a certain sound that is associated with their names. So knowing what labels you send your tunes to, saves you and label A&R, a lot of time.

So after we got part the fuct that good music is subjective, it is important to put things into perspective, i.e. what is the goal for each producer and what kind of promotion one needs to go into, in order to reach that goal.

1) Is it to finally release a track?
2) Is it to travel places without having to pay for anything?
3) Is it to play the big festivals?
4) Is it to travel and pay the bills from releasing/playing psychedelic trance?
5) Is it to make whatever music they want without worrying about what gets released now days?

1 and 2 are easy. If they seem like a distant dream, you haven't been doing it long enough, so just be patient.

3 is harder, and unless you have been making music for ages, you're going to have to pull some connections to reach goal number 3.

4 is the hardest, looking at the "psychedelic trance music industry" some people do make cash, but its the people that were massive back in the '90s, or wrote trance music, without the psy in front, hence they are out of the scope of this conversation.

5 Is the easiest thing to do, you just do it


Speaking for my self, I do not like the idea of promotion. I don't like spamming people with my music, (although I have had my share of shameless plugs in this forum...and others ), its sort of defeating the purpose on putting more time in to make better music and generally I don't think its actually helping me as a person and as a producer, to "big myself up". If people like the music enough, they'll ask for it for their next release/give us a gig.

Simple as that.

Peace out.