Many new artists get upset at having to pay initially to get press and media coverage while they don’t realize that if they were to sign a record deal, that is exactly what the label would do too. When you’re new on the scene, no one cares about your music, your videos, your concerts. You are just another voice out of millions trying to make it big. It will take you hundreds of thousands of dollars of investing in yourself AND years of repeatedly doing so to reach the notoriety level when you can actually expect free press. Here are 5 major questions that will help you determine where you’re at in current media meritocracy.
5. Do you consistently get over 100.000 views on each and any video you put out?
If you’ve just reached 100k on a video but all other videos are much lower in views, don’t expect blogs or magazines to care. For what they know, this might be your first and last successful song. Journalists need GUARANTEED CONSISTENCY.
4. Do the comments match the views?
And by that, we don’t mean comments bought off Fiverr or Social Authority. We mean real people, with real profiles on YouTube or Facebook, that are obviously real identities with lives and families of their own. If you get 1000 comments and every second of those comments comes from a person that JUST created that profile, has no other activity, lacks a profile picture, your comment section value is ZERO. It is very easy to determine whether your engagement comes from bots or real users. Real users have a profile picture, other channels they’ve subscribed too, channel creation date is older than 2 years ago, maybe even uploaded some videos of their own, they definitely created a couple of playlists, and have left comments on other videos.
3. Are your songs radio-material?
We specifically intend quality. If the quality of your music is subpar, even if you get hundreds of thousands of views and got thousands of real fans, publications will damage their public image by writing about your low-quality music or videos. Everyone in the industry is always trying to level up. You need to be an asset to a blog, not a liability.
2. Are all of your social media profiles in sync?
No, not literally in sync, but rather reflecting each other’s numbers. If you got 10k subs on YouTube and only 1k on Instagram, that is a problem. Work on all of your social media profiles to match in numbers. It is much easier for a magazine to take a chance on you if they foresee a great reception and exposure in numbers.
1. Have other reputable sources written about you in the past already?
Again, much easier for someone new to believe in you when you got a track record of past media coverage and legit interviews. It highly matters who wrote about you as well. You can’t expect Pitchfork for example to want to write about you when the only one to have ever reviewed your music was your nerdy neighbor on his cat blog. Always strive to get written about in trustworthy sources that don’t just put out content for dollars, but are rather selective in their artist choice and not everybody can get on it.
If you answered YES to all 5 questions, then you can pretty safely market yourself forward and expect free press. Otherwise, get your coins together and pay your way until you don’t have to anymore. Good luck!
Blue Rhymez Entertainment 