Publicists/Labels to Blogs

At Melophobe we receive hordes of emails each day from publicists trying to get our attention. Nearly all of them fail. Why? Because the deluge is too much for any one human to read, compounded by the fact that inevitably the emails are sent to every member of our team. This “throw everything at the wall and see what sticks” approach is strangely reminiscent of spam (although we signed up for most of these emails at one point). It’s a low-conversion method for getting your information out to the music blogs.

There’s got to be a better way. We genuinely want to develop relationships with publicists. They genuinely want relationships with us. How can we raise the discourse from its current pathetic state of them mass emailing us and us bombarding them with requests for passes so we can cover their shows?

Blogs to Publicists/Labels

Blogs want access to the latest music and passes so they can cover concerts. As a blog, Melophobe’s strategy is to email people at the PR company or label until we find somebody we can work with. Once a relationship is established, we generally try to stay with the same person until they inevitably leave for the next job. Time consuming and not efficient.

Understandably, publicity people need filters to sort the blogs that can generate real exposure for their bands from the blogs just interested in the latest freebie. Tools like Quantcast, Compete and Technorati(?) are blunt tools for guestimating a blog’s influence but it’s unclear if PR people even take the time to look at this information. I suspect they respond to the most aggressive people who want passes. Again, not efficient.

Blogs to Bands to Blogs

MySpace? Horrible. Twitter? Better. For those bands not on Twitter though, it’s pretty difficult to get a genuine connection with somebody in a band. This is unfortunate since we’re trying to promote their music and they probably want to talk to us.

Email seems like the only solution for all these problems so far. Is there a better way?