I got an email asking thoughts on music promotion.
Be careful to whom you give credit. An out of context comment is used as a testimonial and years later I receive this email asking if said company are any good.
I knew that I’d never be able to ‘take back’ the comment from the depths of the Internet so it’s a poetic justice of a sort to be able to say, “Who? Can’t remember them. Sorry.”
Now I do remember the connection.
“What’s been useful to a struggling musician on a limited budget for promotional purposes?” Not much.
Cdbaby has been wonderful as an avenue through which to arrange digital distribution through itunes and the like.
An offshoot called hostbaby has also been great in terms of ‘websites for the musically alive but technically illiterate.’
Sonicbids is a ruthlessly honest and relatively cheap way in which to submit material for film and t.v. placement.
They’re all companies - good though they maybe. The other source of long term ‘tips and pointers’ has come through Derek Sivers who started both hostbaby and cdbaby and is a font of knowledge and is also quite inspirational. I think you can find him through sivers.org.
That’s the worldwide stuff.
On a local level the Songwriting Society of Australia has been a wonderful human link and we have AMRAP in Australia who can send cds out to the community radio network.
Getting airplay, finding publishers and all the other ‘muckwork’ is, at best, difficult and, at worst, costly.
Ariel Hyatt of Ariel Publicity gets kudos worldwide for her insight.
The only other thing that I might know is that a non-exclusive contract isn’t hard to find but whether anything comes from such a contract I haven’t established as yet.
Not much knowledge for three cds and a couple of decades but cheerfully handed over nonetheless.
On another note - if any of you’d like the chords to go with the lyrics just email. I don’t put them up because my computer has a brainstorm over all the spaces and insists upon compacting the chords when I transfer the information to the web.