How to Interact with Music Medias & Bloggers
You’re an artist and you’re hoping to promote your work, so you or your promoter want to be in touch with some magazines and bloggers to see if they’re interested in covering your work. However, no one’s sharing your music/art… it’s an awkward struggle, especially if people don’t give you feedback and just ignore your emails. That’s why I—a semi-retired music media owner, editor, and journalist of 10+ years—am here to share how to interact with media representatives and bloggers in order to best network your way into professional coverage. Here is a list of ways to best promote yourself/things not to do!
Know Your Medias: First of all, the thing you need to know about (professional) medias is that they almost always have a process for taking on new submissions, and each media is likely to have a different way of functioning. Don’t assume that the same tactics will work with everyone—it’s worth your while to research your medias and your tactics should be different than if you’re reaching out to bloggers! Are they even interested in covering the sort of art that you’re offering? For example, sure, it’s okay to reach out to a metal magazine if you’re not a metal band but you notice that they also cover other genres. The magazines I’ve owned and/or worked with (Musicalypse and Tuonela Magazine) have all been pretty flexible, even if we have a mainly metal audience. So if you see that the media covers artists like Lady Gaga or Pihka Is My Name, you can feel safe pitching whatever music you’re making to the site. But if the site exclusively promotes metal music, your any-other-genre band is unlikely to get coverage on that site.
Do Some Research: With that in mind, do some research on who you’re promoting yourself to! Most webzines and bloggers have About and/or Contact pages that will tell you, among other things, how they prefer you to get in touch and in what way. If the magazine specifically says to contact them via a certain email address (which it almost always is), do that and don’t do something else! Reaching out on Facebook, Instagram, or any other social media, or looking up their email address and adding it to your mailing list without introducing yourself or asking if that’s okay will do nothing but irritate the media/blogger because you ignored their very specific how-to-contact request. If you want medias and bloggers to be interested in your art, you should treat others as you want to be treated and contact them in the way that they want to be contacted. A definite no-no is to just look up as many magazine’s contacts as possible and put them on a mailing list without contacting the site—that’s a good way to get marked as spam and forgotten; you wouldn’t believe how often this happens with small labels and PR reps, and they all get marked as spam. If you’re not sure or the site doesn’t say, it doesn’t hurt you any to ask how they prefer to be contacted. It shows that you care about their time and space and will make a favorable impression.
Behave Like a Professional: There’s nothing quite as frustrating to a professional journalist than booking an interview with an artist who is having a gig the same day, only for that artist to show up absolutely blasted and unable to answer the questions, or who spends their whole time making dumb/inappropriate jokes and snorting with laughter, which not actually answering any questions. While you are more than welcome to behave however you want on stage, don’t expect anyone to publish your sloppy drunken interviews or ever do one again if you don’t show up and act like a professional. I also had an interview once where one of the interviewees spent half of the interview scoffing and sighing, complaining about having to do so many interviews, and then went on to say that drugs are the only answer to the problems and stressors that artists deal with. It should go without saying that this is inexcusable behavior from anyone who wants to be seen as a professional and the only medias/bloggers who will allow it are just as unprofessional and are looking for clickbait. If you’re on the Drunk and Whiny Podcast, then presumably it’s okay, but otherwise, if you want to be treated like a serious artist, act like one. The days of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll are long behind us, so keep up with the times.
Share What You Ask For: There’s nothing more annoying to a journalist than to have an artist or label ask you for a review or an interview, only to then never see it shared anywhere. The excuses for this that I’ve heard often have to do with “the algorithm” and that sort of thing, but it’s a shallow excuse if you’re making a request of someone to use their time on you. If you ask medias or bloggers for reviews, live reports, or interviews and don’t share them afterwards, don’t expect anyone to be excited to promote you in the future. Music promotion is a 2-way street—bands gain new followers through media shares and medias gain new followers from band shares. Don’t expect medias or blogs to promote you a second time if you don’t shout out the work they do for you.
Keep in Touch (but Not Too Much): A lot of places that advise people in how-to-self-promote will tell you to make sure that places don’t forget you by staying in touch. This DOES NOT, however, mean that you should be in touch daily or that you should try to be buddy-buddy with the person in question (especially if you’ve never met). Last year, I had a guy messaging me on my personal socials, on my personal website, on Tuonela’s socials, and my personal email, all within a week (and I don’t think he ever contacted us via our preferred contact method, incidentally)—it was exhausting and annoying, even if he was being friendly… he seemed to be under the impression that I had nothing better to do than pay attention to him. This same fellow also checked in to ask me if I was done grieving the death of my son enough to pay attention to him yet. Needless to say, that crossed a line. I’ve also had people repeatedly send me notices for shows that I’ve told them I won’t be able to attend. None of this made me feel any sort of inclination to help out—in fact, it’s exhausting, presumptuous, and rude. Be respectful of the people you’re in contact with, as many music medias function on a volunteer basis. It’s also okay if you want to offer to meet up IRL to introduce yourself, but don’t invade people’s personal spaces or spare time. If you do want to make F2F contacts, consider looking into shows that they’re planning to cover and ask if you could meet them there, for example.
Be Grateful and Show Loyalty: I know this seems self-explanatory, but do you know how seldomly writers and photographers are actually thanked for covering shows/albums/etc.? From personal experience, it’s very quite rare, at least outside of indie bands/artists. In this day and age, I actually won’t review anyone who doesn’t show a degree of appreciation for the work I do and I won’t write up anyone who doesn’t show kindness of character. I’m not picky either—a thank you and a share are usually enough. Sending me a copy of the album is an added bonus. Furthermore, I’ve also had many bands who love me for the coverage I do while they’re small, but have immediately dumped me for bigger medias when their own popularity grew. It’s worthwhile to keep note of who supports you and if you later on get, for example, a manager or a PR rep, ask them to prioritize the people who’ve been on your side from the beginning. I drop the artists who treat me like chopped liver from my watch-list immediately and won’t work with them anymore, because I like to be respected and appreciated for my work, and I appreciate artists who remember the people who helped them get where they are. Don’t throw people in the garbage who’ve helped you just because you’ve gained traction… that’s a sign of selfishness and you might gain yourself a reputation as a sell-out or an asshole.
Don’t Rely on Friends: If I talk with other journalists, one of the main things that every single one of them has said makes them uncomfortable is when your friends or acquaintances ask you to review their material. It’s not that we think you’re not talented, but we can feel very uncomfortably pressured to support you and be positive rather than honest. In my case, I always keep an eye on my friends’ bands, so if you’re releasing something, I’ll let you know if I want to write you up. That’s not always true of everyone, but at the baseline, you should consider asking your journalist friends if they are comfortable covering your material before you start pushing it on them.
Allow Time for Writing and Post-Production: If you’re looking for promotion, that’s great and you should definitely be in touch, but be reasonable with your timeframes. For example, if you have a show coming up and you’d like an interview to come out before to help promote it, don’t ask a week before the show. If you have an album coming out, don’t ask a week before release. Medias and bloggers are busy people and if we’re doing a lot of interviews in general, or if it’s album release season and there are a lot of interviews and listening sessions going on, as much as we’d like to, we can’t always make you a priority. So don’t ask for your interviews last minute if you have a timeframe wherein you’d like them done, ask for them well in advance. And certainly don’t ask and then ghost us when if we can’t comply with your schedule. We are people too, with our own schedules, and we don’t like being treated like means to your ends.
Know When to Promote: On that note, if you are contacting medias months after the release of your single/album, you’re already way too late. Since the modern music scene is endlessly oversaturated, medias care most about things that are current and relevant. Bloggers, I will say, are less picky on this front and may not have as many restrictions on when and what can be posted, but medias most certainly care. This means that if your single/album/whatever is already out, you’ve completely missed your window of opportunity for coverage from medias. Promotion work should always, always, always be done before the release if you want to make sure the medias care about what you’re putting out there. Old news means no clicks, so medias are unlikely to publish anything that’s even a week old (unless you’re like Tuonela and will cover underground acts for up to a year after the release, but this is rare).
Know What You Want: Medias like the ones I’ve run and worked for have always had several options for coverage, most of which are surely free of charge and a few of which might cost you a little. For example, a press release from your label/PR agent is usually easy to send out and if it’s well-written, it shouldn’t be an issue for most medias to copy and publish. However, if you’re just sending out material blindly and without any idea of what you want from medias, you’re unlikely to get anything at all. Most medias can offer news posts (from your press release*), as well as a potential for reviews, coverage, or interviews relating to the release (which will rely on a staff member finding you or your music interesting), exclusive premieres to share your release (usually) a day before the official release, and if you’re really looking to spread the word, some places will have paid advertising slots as well, if you’re so inclined. So be sure you know what you’re looking for from the media and be sure to include that in your request. If you just chuck a press release at us, we might not bother to read it, because we’ve received countless other press releases that day.
*it is your responsibility to make sure that the press release, regardless of whether it was written by you, has the information you want presented, how you want it presented, before it is sent out to the medias/bloggers—don’t ever complain about how you are portrayed in your press release to the journalists because you’re way too late and talking to the wrong person
Proofread Your Material: If you are hoping to look and sound like a professional artist, this needs to come through in your press releases as well. You wouldn’t believe how often we get emails that read, “hey I mak muzic album, u review flr me?” I can promise you, if that’s how you’re looking for coverage, you’re not going to get any. If you’re in (for example) a Finnish band and English is not your strong suit, get one of your English-speaking friends to proofread your material, or even better, hire a professional. We see press releases on the regular from bands whose band name isn’t even good English, and you wouldn’t believe the amount of work we have to do sometimes just to understand what a press release is trying to say. Since we are promoting you for free, that means we don’t want to do extra work on your behalf. Get your material ready for release before you share it with the professionals, or hire a professional to make sure you sound as best as you can.
Don’t Be Obnoxious: There are certain behaviors that will get you blacklisted with medias for behaving unprofessionally. Acting entitled to reviews and interviews is one way to do that. Name-dropping your famous friends to make yourself seem cool and important is another. Don’t, as I said before, ask people if they’re done grieving enough yet to work for you for free (yeah, I’m still salty about that one). Keep in mind that, as mentioned, we have a lot of creative people trying to find creative ways to get our attention. Sometimes this can be very annoying, which ties back in to knowing your media or blogger. Furthermore, befriending media reps just to boost your career is a bullshit move. If we’re doing work for you, rest assured that we will notice and remember if you kiss up to us and then ditch us later on.
I hope you’ve found this little write-up helpful! If you have any questions about how music medias and music bloggers work, feel free to hit me up via my contact form and I’ll be happy to answer your questions, and in the meantime, check out my Wordsmithy Services page to check out the services that I’m offering personally these days, like press releases, lyrics, editing, and pronunciation coaching!
You can also keep an eye open for the podcast panel I did on this subject at the Tuska Forum in 2024 by the Bleeding Metal Podcast, which is coming soon!
