You are a young artist and want to submit your music to labels, including us, here are some guidelines, we highly recommend you to follow, If you want to catch our attention. I really think this applies to most labels at least in the indie, rock, pop areas.
General considerations:
put yourself in our shoes.
We are
musicians ourselves; we’ve been in the same situation as you, we’ve been
teenagers making music in our bedroom and trying to attract the interest of
labels we love, we know exactly the frustration to receive negative feedbacks
or not any answer. Therefore, if we always try to answer, please be cool, try
to help us by making us the easiest way possible to communicate, follow, and to
not loose time doing it. These guidelines are here to help you make it easy
for the labels you want to interest.
1) Always listen to our music before
submitting
It seems obvious,
but you can’t imagine the number of music that is totally unrelated to what we
are doing. Even if we are interested in many music genres on a personal level,
take into consideration that building a label means building a following from key
opinion leaders, journalists, or just our clients. Releasing Jazz or Hip-hop would
mean we would have to re-do everything we are doing for the last 7 or 8 years,
looking for press contacts, radio DJ, journalists that can be interested in
your music, it’s incredibly time-consuming work, introduce them to us and the
music we release, to our brand, being known as a genuine and good provider of
artists for them. It generally also means different distribution networks,
and since we have an exclusive contract with our distributor, it means your
jazz record will be lost in the middle of rock, pop and indie albums, which is definitely
not optimal for you right?
It’s always hard to understand the editorial line of a label, so the best is to
submit your music to the labels that released music you like, or you’ve been
influenced by, going too large is like tossing a bottle in the sea and is
mostly useless.
2) Always submit unreleased music
Even If we
are mostly a vinyl label, digital is part of our revenues, if your music is
already on Spotify or Deezer, it will be considered as dated by these platforms’
algorithms. So if you want to attract labels, submit mostly (one song on a full
release is not really an issue) music that never was released. If it’s just on
bandcamp, no worry then!
3) Always contact us through e-mail
(Groover/Submit-hub are welcome too) and say somewhere why you’re contacting
us.
E-mail are
efficiency proved, we can easily manage our files, following the messages and
their historic, search through them, marked them as important or “in progress”.
Tools like groover or Submit-hub are welcome and cool because they give you a
standardized way to make feedback, but please NEVER EVER submit through
Instagram. Facebook is not recommended.
We
sometimes receive emails or messages with no subjects or just a link… that’s
super rude… if you are submitting music and want feedback, the minimum courtesy
is to write why you are contacting us ("demo submission"...)
4) Always submit stream link
Ideally use
soundcloud private links, which is by far the most useful way, so your demo can
be listened when we ride the subway going to our daytime work (because like
most of you we do have a 9 to 5 job, the label is done only on our free-time). Bandcamp
is all good too. But please NEVER SEND download links with MP3s and WAV, they
will be lost in my computer HD, the link will be broken within a few days, and by the
time I download them, I’d pass to another email and forget about it. So
Soundcloud is the answer, it’s generally free so go for it.
5) Please make a little description or
bio
We are a
label, not journalists, no need to have a full well written state-of-the-art biography,
we just need to know a few things about you: members, do you make concerts,
since when the project exists, where do you come from, did you already released
music and a small description of the music itself is more than welcome (indie pop
? indie rock ? shoegaze ? influenced by something, go for it we are interested
to hear)
In our
music niches, that exist for more than 40 years, originality, what makes you
unique, really relies on very small details, an interesting production, a
lovely voice, an ambiance, some bizarre instruments etc. Describing it,
including your influences, will NOT make us think that you are copycats, or
un-original, it will just help us to understand you and your art and gain some
precious seconds in our feedbacks or listening experience.
EPK,
Videos, Following data,… not mandatory. It’s not something that will really
have an influence on our choice at that point, later maybe.
Social
Networks links are welcome. I like to follow bands I liked or that I liked
enough to want to know more about them in the future.
6) 4 tracks minimum, full album largely
preferred
You may
read it on the internet somewhere or someone around you told you it was better
to begin with an EP… Well, in our scenes at last, that’s WRONG. As far as we
are concerned, since we produce mostly vinyl records, albums will always be
preferred (it may be different if you look for tape or digital-only release,
but I guess that if you write to us it’s because you want to hold that lovely
piece of plastic with your music, right?)
EPs are as
expensive as an album to produce, manufacture, promote, and generate much less
interest from key opinion leaders (most printed magazines for example never
review EPs except for confirmed artists), clients... Since
EP generally means smaller batch, they are even more expensive to make (/unit)
than albums and provide downsized margins, so why not just make it longer as an album, it will be easier
for you to create interest from labels, media and it will give you a better
foundation to explore your local scene and find gigs.
Also, EP
(or single) means your songs must be f*cking AMAZING, 100% killers no fillers,
ready to be blasted on the local college/AAA radio, an album can definitely survive more
space or experiments.
Finally,
albums show commitment from the band, all labels want artists that will assume
their music in gigs, in promotion, in their social networks, so you put all
your heart in your music, then show it to me!
7) After the first feedback
If I said no:
please be courteous, you may not agree with what I said or how, sending an
email to protest is not cool… We know you put all your heart into your music, that it took a lot of energy, pugnacity, and work to give birth to your baby, but when I'm criticizing, I'm talking about your creation, not you, It's never personal, take it like a way to improve as an artist. Being one means you’ll have a lot of bad
reviews, you need to accept it, whatever they’re wrong or not.
If I said yes
or seems interested or say that I will come back to you soon, don’t hesitate to
revive the conversation, I sometimes forget about it, we are receiving a lot of
music and even well organised it’s hard to follow everything.
It may seem long and complicated but the reality it’s actually quite easy: just make it the simplest possible for the label to make his review : e-mail +
short bio + link with unreleased music, that’s what you need to remember.
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