There are two types of people/promotional email companies when it comes to getting your music to the right people. There are the ones that will email you offering an email blast to 5000 DJs, blogs, labels, executives, A&R's..etc guaranteeing you placement across the world for their extravagant fee. Then there are others who you probably found through social media due to their work through someone you know, but they never emailed you some ridiculous pricing scam.The way 80% of these people work is they buy blog emails from others who have created a excel spreadsheet. They upload the spreadsheet into their email listing and then start selling blog email packages. They never once reached out to a blog or created a relationship..they just have the email and will send it to the blog whenever you pay them. You are NOT guaranteed anything with these blogs.
So let us go into how to properly set up contacts. There are different ways through social media and email to do this correctly. If you're an artist doing it yourself or a newbie publicist or manager, it's all about being professional.
- If there is a specific blog that you want to be posted on, research their site. More than likely they have a submissions email. A submissions email can usually be found in their social media bio or on their contact page. These are fine to add to your contact lists, as they are open to the public.
- If the information is not public, do not take it upon yourself to pay or seek out a blog owner or a writer's email address and add it to your contacts without permission. If you found enough information about that person to get their email, you had enough information to contact them directly to introduce yourself and kindly ask permission if it is okay that you send out releases.
I promise you we hate being added to lists that we didn't sign up for. It's truly like a Jehovah's witness knocking on our door everyday delivering pamphlets we didn't ask for. Also, we are not your fan club, why are you adding us to these email lists? We don't even know who you are.
You're paying for a 3rd party email company monthly and you're not reaching the people who actually care. When you or your client releases music..how much time do you take in social media on the people that actually like, repost, share, retweet, etc? Do you directly respond to them saying "Thank You" and send a message asking if you can add their email to future releases? THATS HOW YOU BUILD YOUR CONTACTS.
You spending your time starting out stealing emails to major outlets praying that they will see it and post you or your client's music with no relationship is a waste of time.
I know we live now in a day and age where you can just tag 99+ people on Facebook and that's your press release for your single. But trust and believe there are so many people in this industry that still look for a professional release..if we're not for you..remove us...don't add us.
I have done two other blogs that can also extend into this one including social media etiquette for artists and How to Pitch w/o being annoying that can help you as well.
Just please stop spending your money on scammers who have no intentions on taking you to the next level. They just stole a bunch of emails and want your money. On the other end build your fan base correctly; if you want true feedback and want to truly grow your email list...do it RIGHT.
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