We got a strong reaction to our article on using Hype Machine to find blogs who will write about your music. One thing we got a lot of messages saying was this:
“Easier said then done. Most bloggers don’t listen to their inboxes.”
Thankfully Todd and I live in Brooklyn where there is 3 billion music blogs here and we are friends with many people who run some popular music blogs. Here was some insight I got back:
- Everyone we talked to said they listen to 90% of what is sent to them. If there is something in the email that turns their stomach like it being a genre they don’t care about, the press release/email is too cheesy, the picture of the band looks terrible or something else really rubs them wrong they won’t even listen.
- Most blogs don’t write back when they don’t like something. They hide behind the idea that they don’t listen to everything but really it is just a nice way to reject things.
- Don’t go too big with the blogs. Sending to Stereogum and other big blogs is aiming high since they are huge and get too many submissions and definitely do not listen to everything. What they do is read all the smaller blogs and use them as a gatekeeper. Send to the cheesiest looking small blog that has music taste that would be into your music. Even if they don’t have a customized layout or they post infrequently it doesn’t mean that bigger blogs aren’t looking at them to find the next big thing to write about. Send out to anyone and everyone, after all it only takes a few minutes.