Pitching

Just some random thoughts on pitching music to bloggers

Obviously, you need to have some reasonably good music… everything else is just a waste of time if you haven’t.
It doesn’t actually have to be great music, some big hits have been pretty mediocre. It helps no end if there are hooks though, something that will stick in the listener's head after only one or two listens!
One of the hardest things, especially if you’re unknown, don’t tour, don’t have contacts, or don’t have a promo budget is to actually get someone to read your email in the first place.
If you don’t get an answer, don’t take it personally. The likelihood is that your email never got opened, or if it did, then your opening few lines probably failed to connect, or you were pitching something that wasn’t a good match for the recipient.
I work at both ends, I pitch for my record label, and I get pitched to for my blogging. I’m only very small scale, but even I get swamped with (typically hiphop/rap), impersonal/I am the greatest rapper you ever gonna hear, emails - that have obviously been sent out to every blog on some big massive world-wide list somewhere. If an email even has a whiff of being impersonal or part of a big email blast, it generally goes straight to the trash.
At the moment, I’m sitting with 1,600 unopened emails in just one of my blogging accounts. That’s just too many for me to even contemplate reading, never mind my listening to the actual songs. So. I’ll basically just scan through my email list and I’ll only open the ones that somehow manage to catch my eye…
For example, in the screenshot below, are some of the emails that came yesterday (just for Get to the Chorus). The one with the red flag is the only one I opened - because I saw that they’d mentioned one of my actual playlists, The Loch Ness Monster, in the email snippet. That meant it was probably personal & specifically aimed at my blog, not just a mass mail shot. At the very least they’d taken the time to check out one of my playlists. All of the other emails there are just background noise really, as there’s nothing in any of those first few sentences that’s caught my attention. They’ll probably never get opened - unless I have a couple of weeks free sometime lol. Seriously - it does take a lot of time! I've had five writers involved with Get To The Chorus, but they all dropped out, because it's really quite hard work. I can sometimes write a decent song quicker than a decent blog post!


As for replying to emails… I tried it… it takes forever… you try to let people down gently… you offer constructive criticism… you upset people… they call you names… it’s not worth it
I used to get so frustrated at not getting replies to my own pitching - but now I understand. And I no longer take it personally.
Of course, if your emails are being opened, it could actually be that no one is liking your music. Perhaps, more likely though, it’s because you aren’t giving the blogger a story, something they can run with and easily turn into a good blog post! A good story makes a good read! When I started pitching for the label, I pushed one of our bands really hard for 12 months solid, because I really believed they were world class, yet I got precious little coverage. But once the band found a story, everything changed and people became interested very quickly. And now, that very same band are just about to support Bob Dylan & Neil Young at Hyde Park.
So, I think that bloggers are generally looking for…
1 - Music that’s in their preferred genre / style
(ie, if they’re into indie bands - don’t send hip-hop) - add one quick spotify link to the track you’re pitching.
2 - A short personal paragraph about you and your release.
The shorter, snappier, and more concise the better. Bloggers have limited time (they have jobs/families/other things to do) and tend to move on to the next submission pretty sharpish if nothing grabs their attention.
You need to tell the blogger about your release and yourself. You need to paint a quick picture, an arresting and immediate mental image, in one or two short paragraphs.
You’ll need to tell them… about the song & why it fits the playlist eg; it’s about my friend who died (music to grieve to), it’s a protest song about cops shooting black kids (music to fight evil) it makes people want to dance (music to shake a hoof)
You’ll need to tell them about yourself. Don’t make wild cliche claims like ‘burst onto the scene / taking the world by storm / next big thing - especially when you’ve only got a dozen followers on Spotify) (p.s always have a BIO on Spotify and include where you’re from/based). You could also include a little snippet that they could possibly use for a catchy headline (Danny Goring - The Blinding Light - It came to him in a flash / H found his song title on a road sign / if Frank Turner did country music, this is what it would sound like / close your eyes and hear a new Frank Turner. All, slightly naff possibly, but they do give a blogger something to work with ie, they reference the fact that Danny sounds like Frank Turner and/or reference the cover art)
You also need to reference soundalike’s - artists who you sound similar to (but definitely not artists who you merely like, or admire, or who you may want to sound like) This is to give the blogger an immediate ball park idea of your sound/style/genre, and may dictate whether he/she is going to actually listen to you. It’s more important than you think. When I listen to SubClass, I'm put in mind of some eighties bands that I just can't put my finger on at the moment. If SubClass included some 'soundalikes'  in his submission that would save me a lot of time and effort trying to find those bands, and if I didn't find them pretty sharpish, I might give up and move on. So again, it’s more important than you think.
3 - A link to an EPK, or a one sheet, including a list with links to all of your social media sites & include at least one good classy image, and definitely the lyrics if it’s a song. Press quotes, blog quotes. That paragraph about you again. Good EPK’s will have one small concise paragraph, but will also have a link to a larger, in depth BIO. The EPK is a good starting point for you to create a brand, or a look… at it’s simplest by using a coherent colour scheme, font style etc etc
Read as many bogs as you can, over a period of time. Don’t burn yourself out doing it though.   Do they match your genre, branding, style?  Are you a good fit with the artists they write about, and also the blog’s writing style too?  If you get a slot, make sure to make the most of it.  Don’t just simply retweet or like. Make a big deal out of it. Share it with your fans, friends or whatever you have at this stage.  “Check out this kind review we got in this blog!”  Then two weeks out, mention it again, a month later, mention it again. 
Then, when you’re ready to put out your next track, you can safely get back to that blog with a high confidence that they’ll be willing to feature you again - as you’ve been so supportive. As a blogger, one of the worst things is that you spend a lot of your limited time doing a great write up for someone, who then doesn’t bother to do anything with it. It’s probably more productive to build a decent rapport with a few blogs at a time, rather than scatter-gunning every blog you come across.
Use any good quotes from bloggers in your social media, on your website, and definitely in your EPK. **** Going back to No.2 above, remember that these quotes may well have initially been suggested by you to the blogger ****
As far as Music.to is concerned…
The main two things are
Pitching to the right playlist, where your music will be a good fit
Convincing the curator, that it’s a good fit by writing an interesting, informative, full, friendly submission form! The process is even spelled out on the music.to website - but it’s surprising how many people have obviously not read the guidelines and have just cut & pasted their standard braggadocio BIO into the form.
The list below shows (roughly) the most recently active music.to curators - the most recently active are at the top of the list.
So, I’d suggest working from the top, look at each playlist/curator and judge if your music will be a good fit or not. If not, move on to the next, don’t waste your time. If you think it fits, fill in the form and try to convince them to add you.
Quite a lot of the music.to curators are inactive for lengthy periods, due to all sorts of reasons - so I’ll update this list every month to show who’s active…
Also, bear in mind that most blogs don’t have a massive reach, so they’re not gonna make you superstars overnight. But, every little helps, and once you start getting those quotes for you BIO, who knows?


Oh, and if anyone pitches to mine (music to navigate a life) the song really has to be about something, or some event, in a persons life that is universal to a large number of us (first love, breaking up, your pet, depression, coming out to your friends/parents) Also, because I'm not a proper writer, I tend to look kindly on submissions that have a lot of info that will help me draft something worth reading - a story, or a hook, if you will.
And, one last thing... a lot of the better bloggers are now only accepting submissions via Submithub. It streamlines the process for them, but your hit-rate will be pretty low (depending on your status/popularity etc). An alternative is Soundplate; a little lower down the foodchain, but your hit-rate will be higher!