Music Publicity – Why and When to Hire a Music Publicist

As every independent unsigned artist or band knows, it’s difficult to market and promote your project and get the awareness you need with little promotional experience and when you are on a shoe-string budget. Inexpensive or free self-promotion techniques can be effective to a degree but most times it’s just not enough to bring the awareness to your project that you need, or to lift your independent music career to the next level.

To some degree, there are many methods of doing your own music publicity that can be effective.

On your own you can do things like solicit feature articles, CD reviews, and interviews. To do this on your own, you need to create a database of all your genre related web portals, and music media outlets that feature artists in your niche and music market. Contact each one, preferably by email, or by physically mailing out your press kit or online link to request a feature article, interview and review of your record. You must be extremely patient. The process can take many months. These outlets receive hundreds of submission a week. They won’t accept all submissions or review everything but if your promotional package, music, and image, stand out you have a good chance of being selected. Check out each media outlet or website submission policy prior to submitting. This is important. If you don’t follow their guidelines, this can cause them to reject your submission. Your chances then can be slim to none. If guidelines allow, follow up in about a month.

Doing your own publicity can be an extremely time consuming endeavor for sure. But if you do it systematically, a little each day, you can get the job done. However, there may come a time when you have done all that you can do and the time is right to hand off some of the promotional publicity work to a seasoned professional, a music publicist, with major industry contacts. But you may ask – How do can I afford this?

Well I have some good news for you.

Fortunately, there are a few good music publicists out there that work specifically for unsigned and independent artists and they do not charge an arm and a leg to do publicity for you or your band. When you’ve reached a point in your music career when you believe you’ve done all you can do, it may be time to consider getting a little help from a well connected music publicist.

A lot of very serious independent artists who are lucky enough to have a few dollars to spend on promotion, marketing, and music publicity have found that hiring a music publicist to do all this can alleviate a lot of frustration. Not only can they spend their time on the all important creative end of their career… writing, touring, and development, a good music publicist has a lot of music media connections right at their finger tips and can assure far more features, quotes, and reviews. In essence they get your material in the right hands.

Finding the right music publicist for your particular project may however, not be as simple as you may think. Be sure that the music publicist specializes in your genre of music and they have a proven track record of success. Don’t just pick one out of the blue. A good music business or independent artist consultant should be able to recommend the right one for your particular scenario. Artist managers and consultants work with music publicists on a daily basis and they know the ones that are effective. Be cautious, get a word of mouth recommendation and make sure you are not just throwing your money away.

©2009 Ken Cavalier All Rights Reserved

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