Submissions

EMAILS

DO take the time to send emails individually to companies. It will make us feel special. If it is a mass email, we just won’t. ;)

DO find out who the contact person is. If you don’t have one/can’t find one, write something like “Dear (company name) team”.

DON’T – If you have to send a mass email, make the effort and put all email addresses into the BCC field. (We can still tell and won’t feel special – see above)

DON’T send us a one liner (‘check this out’ or ‘listen to this’ are classics …. Explain why we should check this out, explain who you are, etc.) and a link to a youtube video. If you send us an email with only one line and a link, they will be deleted.

DO stand out. Makes us smile. Put us in a good mood.

DON’T – Never send us mp3s or large attachments (> 5MB)! Those messages will be deleted immediately. [When your approach other companies, check their policies first!] As a general rule, links to music are always better, than sending emails with large attachments.

DO – Spellcheck! Let someone else proofread! We often receive emails without punctuation and full of spelling/grammar mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes, we know that. But when your message is full of mistakes and one can’t really tell where a sentence finishes, two things come to our mind:

1. The artists does not care.

2. If they don’t care, why should we?

DO make sure all links are clickable and that they are actually working!

DON’T – under no circumstances EVER - use one of the following phrases. (Explanation: We used to receive emails tailored for management companies, which were replaced by “ We are looking for management deal/record deal/booking agent”. Towards the end of 2014 bands started using very general expression like the ones listed below and we can’t even tell anymore what they actually want. We will still try and listen to all music but using phrases similar the ones below and your chances of a reply will be very slim).

“Let us know if you have any advice/opportunities/feedback that might help us.” – Why should we? How could we as a business benefits from this?

“If you see the potential, reply to this message and give us details of how you can help.” – Again, why? You approached us, you should have at least a rough idea how we can help you.

“This is an opportunity for anyone who hasn't heard my music to check out my stuff.” – Thank you so much. This particular musician didn’t even introduce himself.

“I’m looking for both your support as a company and also your feedback on my songs. If you can suggest any routes or opportunities that might help project what I do to a wider audience, I'd be very grateful.” – As a company we aim to earn money. This leaves the impression that you want our knowledge/contacts, which we gathered over the years, for nothing.

“We would really appreciate your feedback on our material and hope that you may direct us to any openings and opportunities to gain greater exposure for our music. Perhaps you might know someone else that could help, even if you can't help directly yourself.” – see above.

“All offers and expressions of interest from the music industry are welcome, including releases, music publishing and live performances.” – Still don’t know what to say about this one actually …

We could post at least 20 more gems like the ones above but you get the gist. Be specific, tell us what you want. Why we should work with you, what can you offer, what do you expect from us, etc. If you are not sure, feel free to contact us on our facebook page to clarify a few things first.

WEBSITE/SOCIAL MEDIA

DO – Make sure that your online presences are up to date before approaching music companies. If there haven’t been any posts/tweets for one year or even longer, it does not leave a good impression (artist too lazy, band does not exist anymore, etc.)

DO – Make sure all your upcoming gigs are listed. Nothing more annoying than finding out that a gig is happening in 10 minutes (not only for us, for your fanbase as well!!)

GIGS

DO – See Website/Social Media

DO – Invite us to your gigs. Offer a choice of dates! The sooner you invite us, the more likely it is, one of us can make it (two days before the gig is usually too late).

DO – Make sure you don’t invite us only to the gig that charges 8 GBP on the door when playing 3 free gigs the week before and after. This may leave the impression that you are just inviting us to get people through the door and money in your/the promoters pocket.

FOLLOWING UP/UPDATES

DO – Give us a minimum of six weeks before following up. Then ask if we’ve received your message.

DO – Send us important updates (new gigs, new video/song/EP etc.).

DON’T – Send the same email over and over again. This is not following up but spamming.

We aim to listen to all submissions (unless your email was deleted for reasons which we have mentioned above), unfortunately we cannot respond to everyone. But if we like your music, we will get back to you sooner or later. :)

Originally posted in April 2012. Updated in December 2015.