The social dilemma, artists stop using social media!

A new documentary that people should see about how social media is disrupting even democracy. And I just take that message that the Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff says in the movie “Social media should be forbidden”. Is it anything right now that is killing the music, it’s social media! I have been wondering why I don’t get new songs? Okay, I’m over 35 and that means that your musical taste is set. I’m working in the industry, so I’m used to getting new music to me since it’s part of my business. So if I can't find new music how can a normal fan get it? Before I always found new music. Since the lockdown on Covid I realized that all these new good music came from outside. Everything I discovered was through showcase festivals where people had curated line-up’s where I could go around like a smorgasbord and just discover new things. On top of that a lot of great people that create new things and work really hard that could tip me off on great new artists and music they had found for me to just access.

During Covid I almost found nothing. Yes, I have been on several online events of showcase festivals. Many great done and you could see some new artists. The problem is that you are in front of a screen where messages pop up every second minute. The algorithms don’t like that I stay on the same spot for a longer period of time. Then it reacts by giving me the advice to see something new. Suddenly I see messages that somebody totally unknown posted a video on Tiktok. Why give me that advice? I don’t even use Tiktok in that way, it’s like Twitter – who cares about 60-sec video? Only people with attention problems same as Twitter, mainly for people that can only write a sentence and has a mind of a goldfish.

So why didn’t the system sends it to me? I didn’t want me to be bored seeing a live concert online. To be totally honest, the great events put together by great people were totally destroyed by social media.

It’s not just all that. I also miss all the chit chat you do with people that like music and comes with really great tip-offs of new things. I haven’t had a conversation like that since March and now it starts to take its toll. I REALLY DON’T FIND ANY GOOD MUSIC!

The algorithms can’t predict what my feelings are unless I don’t start to click on suicide links. So they can’t guess what I’m up for. If I spend yesterday just listening to Queen I don’t need another link to Queen music. I did that because I did a special show around them. It was work. Now the algorithms are bombarding me with Queen music or bad copies of Queen music. Not a good way to discover new music.

Also, the algorithms are best at giving me crappy music as well. Right now, we just handed over the keys to new discoveries to anyone that likes to cheat. So that dude that really is mediocre but has some money now can easily just cheat it’s way up with his music into a lot of places. This creates something I warned about already fifteen years ago. The brown wave! A wave of just not thought through mediocre music. On top of that, you have the platforms with music nagging on to the artist that they should release music at a faster pace. Soon musicians are releasing a song as a Facebook post.

That can never be any quality! Even Lenorado Da Vinci who was a genius couldn't paint a new Mona Lisa each week. Sure, he could do a decent drawing each week, but never a masterpiece. Why on hell do the platforms think that an artist today should be able to perform that? Even worse now since the artist also becomes interrupted by stupid messages that pop up when the algorithm thinks that the artist is bored but instead tries to find inspiration! That would be like having some ugly little orc sitting next to Leonardo Da Vinci and poke him in the arm while trying to paint Mona Lisa.

So here is the problem. You musicians out there. STOP using social media the way you do it now. The only thing you are going to be is an influencer that also can do mediocre songs from time to time. You will not be a musician; you will be an influencer. Unfortunately, an influencer is just a person doing content for a big machine, not art, just cheap fast content. The art we do right now is like calling Mc Donald's fine dining.

What is happening to me right now is that I’m fed with music that I already know and like and discovers nothing. I know there is plenty of great things out there that I should and need to hear, but everything is blocked by evil algorithms that just wait for people to pay them to show who pays the most. Okay if I paid and got to choose between the crap and the good. No, they just give me something and think that is alright. We don't need new outlets like Deezer or Spotify, Youtube, Tiktok. We badly need an outlet that shows us good music. Not having quantity instead of quality. Can someone please build that?

Now someone just say stop complaining and do something. I did! I started Cashbox radio where the algorithm can’t influence. The problem is that I’m robbed of my outlet to find new good music for the station because of a virus. I’m just waiting though, soon this channel will be open again, and hopefully, we can provide people with good music again.

I asked around and many people felt the same as me. No good music has coming theri way for along time.  My suggestion is kind of selfish, stop hanging on social media, go to Cashbox radio and we will present you with some new music among with music that you like and know. Finding tracks you have forgotten. Cashbox has the slogan: Radio as it used to be. We should have A way of escaping a bad algorithm choice. Use the app and then put your phone away so you can hear it not see the screen where the evil orcs are trying to get you to change to something new. That is my contribution to the situation. 

As soon as Covid is over, we just going to get more and more things rolling. And I will work more and more to get music out from the static social media.

I need some action.

 Last post I wrote was about numbers. I said there that numbers are different than statistics. I have a problem also with statistics in one way. You can get things out of statistics so don’t discard them use all the tools to collect whatever fact that is out there. Still have one thing in your mind.

Statistics are only available on action taken. There won’t be any statistics if you don’t do anything. More or less no action, zero statistics. Or even just a small bit of action the data that comes in will be too little to draw any conclusions. And of course, if you cheat your data will be not correct either.

I think many today are not using the data that is actually out there. You should monitor a release and see what is getting any tractions Most of the time I mainly see artists just count interviews or anything where they can pose and be a star counting. They newer check if that interview is read or even lead to some new people getting to the music. That is so easy today, but yes vain is still big in many ways.

Another thing is that the artists are too fast to quit the marketing giving up reaching something. It seems they are mainly releasing a song just to be able to make a Facebook and Instagram post about it.

Then we have the big thing around statistics. Statistics can never say if a song is a hit or not beforehand. Since it’s only monitoring things in the past it has a very hard time predicting what is going on. If I have a song that is one year old and only has a couple of thousand streams the statistics will be quite boring. If I know though that my song will be used in the next blockbuster movie in the USA as the lead theme next summer I know it will be exposed to millions of people.

Here the statistics would tell us that this song is useless but with my other information the song is glowing hot and many people would jump on that train. This is why statistics really can’t predict that much of the future just the past. In reality, a song might just be a hit if millions of people would have a chance to hear it. Possibly also not be a hit if millions of people hear it. Of course, the exposure makes a possibility for people to discover the song and liked it. If the song is bland and not that attractive there still will be people attracted to the song but not so many would be picked up by the exposure.

Here the statistics could come in handy. Even if you get exposure to millions of people. How do you keep those that really liked your music? You can see in the statistics where they came from and you can try to get them to follow your channels.

The problem I have today is that people are talking like statistics can predict a future. Even with my music in that movie that is nothing certain. The movie itself might flop then fewer people will listen to it. The song is placed in a way that it’s just in the background and not that prominent. Nothing is certain until it has happened. The only thing you can rely on is that you need to do quite many things and sign up to get your data to be able to get something out of it. At the same time doing a lot of things with your music is the only way for many people to listen to it. It’s in the actions, not the statistics.

Fans or just numbers?

 You know what, your song might not be a flop just because it doesn’t have any numbers. The numbers just show how much marketing that has been done. The numbers don’t tell you if the song is good or bad. The numbers just tell you how many people that started it, don’t even tell how long they spent the time to listen to the song.

We have a problem in the music industry because too many people believe that they can find the next thing by numbers. Not statistics, you can actually get info from statistics. Only information on things that have been not the future, yet. I have seen new programs that can predict a bit of how songs will perform in the future from the statistics, but just if nothing major happens.

The problem is the number crunching. People just go in on Spotify and see that wow this has 12 million listings and automatically think it is a hit. To be honest you can easily get those numbers with a crappy song and put it in the right channels to get the numbers. The problem is that the fans are not fans they are just people getting shot in a drive-by music shooting in the different digital outlets. A victim of that someone managed to fool the algorithm to place the song in front of you and you click on it just to listen the first 20 seconds and realize this is so bad I just want o turn it off. Switch the channel to something else and forget about the song. The problem is that mistake is now a figure in the listing’s statistics for that song. Another way to lure the algorithms to show it to another victim of bad music.

So now you think I will tell you that it was better before. Not really this has been this way too many years. Before this was done by blowing up your sales in cheating ways. An artist in Sweden for example sold his new single for one cent in the ice cream trucks. Then reported the sales. One way to cheat the algorithms. At the same time Virgin used housewives in the 70: s and the 80: s. Gave them money to go down to buy the records they wanted in the charts. The phenomena are not new in any way. The problem here is that now it’s so easy and cheap that every average joe can do it online suddenly it’s easier to cheat than actually having a real career.

The thing usually then was exposed when the artist went on tour. Suddenly even the most streamed artist in the world could only get 500 people to a show in a major city. A good marker was if an artist could draw an audience on a live show if they really had any fans or just numbers. Now during Covid this function is off. There are no measurements at all. There are no live shows and no real audience. This has never happened before and the reactions I see right now is very strange. Okey a lot more PR is done for each release. The cheating is mainly through the roof. At the same time, nothing new comes out from the noise. No new artists are on the horizon. It’s mainly the old that we already had and are trusted that gets any attention. If any the noise is so loud so even that AC/DC gave out a new single witch people never thought it would since members have died and so on. Still, the noise was so loud that they were drowned. It passed me I found out by mistake that there was a new single out.

I just looked at the numbers. The song has been out in a month and has just passed 6 million streams. That is what an average joe rapper from Hackensack can cheat up to in a week. Okey the song will climb on if it gets traction. But my guess is that if they manage to tour again the song will reach quite much. Like I wrote in the beginning it’s all about marketing, the problem right now is that the number one tool is shut down and we don’t know for how long.

One thing I will be thrilled to see is what happens when Covid is over and how will the live change the top lists.

Say no to play for free!

You always get artists complaining that people think they should play for free on parties, pubs and other things. Usually, with the saying, it’s good for promotional for you. I have seen artists ranting long things around how stupid people are, and that they are worth being paid, etc.

At the same time, I get this all the time. Okay, I’m ranting about it right now. And the reason for that is because I had several people talking to me about this problem that are professional people in the business. Right now since there is a lockdown and releasing music seems to be the only way to get something done it just comes in double than usual.

Just as annoying as people asking for an artist to play for free. As a professional, it’s equally annoying with an artist that thinks I should do them favors for free. I just got this message:
I’m releasing a new single next week. Though if you know some good outlets that I should send it to?

I’m working with PR. So yes I have full email systems and connections with people that are the people you are looking for. That though is my tool. As well as your instrument and songs are your tools on that free concert, mine are these built up lists of people and relationships.

It’s equally wrong asking for these contacts at PR firm. Same as the free concert you don’t really want to be the a-hole that says no. the gig will be fun but you know your work and all the time you have to put into it. Same here, I don’t want to be the a-hole saying, pay me. The truth is that these contacts I have paid for in both money and time digging into systems and going on showcases, talking to people. It’s just like your free gig. It’s a big investment and I don’t want to give it away.
When I talked about it to my PR friends that were nagging around it. I also reminded that they gave me free contacts and such sometimes. Though that was different since they did something for me, I could give them something back from my system. That was a trade. Unfortunately, they didn’t want a free concert by any of the artist that was asking them for contacts.

One of the persons was a manger. She had the reflection also that managers where more in the spotlight of this then my PR agency. When artist do contracts with managers they of course also get into the network. The manager uses this tool to spread the artist's music. The problem is that the artist just sees this as something that just comes along. There is no real value to the network that the manger has. Many times, also the artists treat the contacts badly. She had done a full interview for the artist with a blog. When the interview was released the artist didn’t even bother to share the links, they didn’t think that was important enough. In that of the back, of course, the manager didn’t look good in the eyes of the blog.

A reason also why you can’t just give away contacts. Suddenly someone comes back and tells you that the artist has behaved like an arrogant prick and is not happy, and you recommended them.
Another thing I also get a lot is people coming up with a whole album and think I should listen to them and give feedback. The same thing, what’s in it for me and why should I spend almost 2 hours for just a thank you.

Before you do this. Ask if you can hire people to do it. If you are low on cash what can you trade with? You don’t like when people ask for free shows. Don’t do the same mistake.

Several nails in the coffin for Spotify

Last week Spotify announced that they are putting down the program where artists could upload themselves straight to Spotify. No explanation was given or how they would deal with their partnership with Distrokid.
This was just the most stupid thing from the beginning so no surprise that it was closed before it even survived a year. I guess they wanted to be able to pick out some good artist straight from a new artist that would upload. The reality is that most artist that has something going is going through a label, most labels wouldn't use a distribution that is open for everyone since they always have the worst percentage and the worst service.

A smart service easily takes off music uploaded from the open distribution systems and gives favors to the more closed ones in the form of PR and exposure. And they do, but no one will ever talk about that. Services like Spinnup, Amuse, Distroskid, CD baby are made for amateurs. No control of the quality. Sure there might be one out of 10 000 that is good, still, the streaming services can easily ignore those few. So just by having their logo around your music easily tell us you are just another happy amateur putting up music like it is a facebook post.

The closed ones are better they put a higher standard on the upload and what should go with it. Here you have Universal, Sony, Kontor New Media, The Orchard, INgrooves and so on. You need to be part professional to upload to these services. with slightly better control over quality. And here they know out of 10 000 it's more than 5000 that is well promoted. Probably as high as 3000 is really good.

If you want good things exposed on your streaming platform yes this is an easy equation. So why did Spotify just open a stupid channel where they would get a lot of crappy music? A guess would be that in the future they would give these few good ones real benefits and then all artist would leave the other systems. The problem here is that is a utopia. The other services at least provide you to all services not just to a single one. So just to the most clueless artist would upload direct.

Here we can move over to the next pin in the Spotify coffin. Uploading just to one service is a doomed project. We can easily see that the music industry itself is going more against Youtube because of reach to potential consumers. Also, the whole game of streaming numbers is dying very fast. Right now you one see amateurs asking for Spotify promotion. Soon we will laugh about these numbers as we are laughing about My Space numbers. The service that grows most in the west is Amazon in an exact manner how Itunes became the biggest at the beginning of the century. Itunes was just opened so Apple could sell iPods and then iPhones. They integrated the technology with the store to purchase it. The consumer was more or less locked to their system and happy with it. Here Amazon has been smart, they go so fast because of the smart speakers that people buy. Well, people like smart easy solutions so Amazon is up 70% in their streaming service. More than Apple that just revealed they will take off Itunes download (thank god) and Spotify.

The third nail in Spotify coffin is that it becomes more and more clear that most of their numbers are built upon bots, not real people. They didn't manage to block out the cheaters. Their system, in the end, is full of crap that is promoted in a sketchy way. The only thing that succeeded with was to prolong the crappy EDM music that still hangs around even though people stopped listening to it.

Will Amazon do the same mistake? Probably not. They don't care to promote the music. All they care is to deliver what the person says to the speaker. My guess is that these top lits will be more accurate then the ones we have right now. Yes, we will find out that many people listen to crap music in their secret world (and prove that people actually is not listening to crappy EDM, more to Spice Girls). The problem the industry will have is how do we reach people to get them to say my artist name and song to the speaker?

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Promote everything, not what you think i cool.

Right now in the summertime, I get post after post around the artists build up in front of a summer festival they think is cool. Actually, they are pretty annoying after the 5th message. Already with the first, I know that you will play on this festival that you think is cool (which, in reality, is not that cool, it was cool like five years ago).

This is the mistake, the once the artist usually thinks is so so interesting is actually the one you should promote. The big cool festival that you are playing on already have their support and really don't need the bands to support in that way. The ones that need it the artist mainly ignores and but that is where you would see an effect.

What you should do is promoting each event like it would be the biggest thing since sliced bread.

Have everything in order

I just fixed a release where I got the wrong master files. Okay no big deal, but this happens almost two to three times a month that we get the wrong files. People are into much stress to get things out that they really don't have their things together.

Now I got a mail from an artist that wrote. I skipped the English bio just filled in a Swedish one we are in a hurry, does it matter?
Of course, it matters. What should I send the international bloggers, a Swedish bio and they can google translate?

Before you even start to upload and start building your PR campaign get everything in order. Look over your social media, update the bios make everything perfect. this is when you have gotten the right master,. The most amateurish mistake is to plan the whole release before anything is recorded and finished. Yes, I know you want to get things out to your listeners, but stress everything will just make it that fewer people are getting a chance to listen to your music and it will be full of mistakes.

I feel more and more people don't know what is needed for a release. all they think is that the song is recorded.

The same when the song is released. Suddenly everybody just stops to work with the PR. All should be done before the release they think. In the new world, you have quite many things to update people with before the song is dead.

Try to have a real plan and give your music a better chance.

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Why isn't there a Grammy for best PR team?

You always get that the artist is the genius around the whole thing. Still, in most cases, they would have been nothing if it wasn't for that perfect PR team.

I hear it all the time, artists coming up to me saying they have done the best song ever and it's produced by some dude you never heard of in your life. Okay, it could be a really good song. But I know so many good songs even brilliant songs that never reach the big audience. To build that perfect storm that a good song needs to become a classical song, that is down to your PR team.

That is why I'm so surprised that there is no award for the PR team. We can give titles to so many people that really don't mean that much. In many cases that producer Grammy, well without that team it wouldn't go anywhere. And you give to mastering and mixing and even background singers and worst of all so many small genres that don't really count. Yes like my five Grammys on children's music. No, I don't have them on display.

I guess this is the reason why the artist is putting so much money into the recording and not realizing that it doesn't matter if you make the best recording if no one is able to hear it. “If I only had two dollars left I would spend one dollar on PR." is a famous quote from Bill Gates. For the artist, it seems the motto is if I have two dollars left I pay three to make a recording.

Yes, many times the bragging is that they recorded in Abby Roads Studios. Yes, it is a nice studio and can do great things. Still, If you bring in Eilert Pilarm to record there it doesn't matter. He is still Eilert Pilarm with any fancy equipment.



Before you say something. This guy actually was the artist of the year in UK 1999. He was the most booked artist in Sweden in 2001. He is probably more famous than most of the songs that come out from Abby Road, not all but a majority. Yes PR is the killing name in this business. It's not enough to have a fancy studio a good song and a famous producer. It doesn't mean a thing. You will be beaten by a mediocre song badly recorded but a very good and smart PR team.

I usllay ask for the PR team when people present stuff for me. 99% of the time I get a big question mark in the presenter's face.

It's strange that the best PR teams are quite anonymous. Most artists have a lot to thank these teams. In many cases, the artist has no clue who they are and what they have done. I usllay ask them when we bump into them on the Grammy Award, few know the answer.

The new industry that is ongoing I guess Bill Gates will quote "If I had two dollars left, I would spend 1,90 dollars on PR". A lot because in the PR game you get what you pay for.

The single that went nowhere!

You need to get all your team members to work in the same direction. That is like the movie director, their job is to get all in the team into the same vision. And yes there are two ways, either by being nice or by fear.

If you don't get the team in the same vision they will start losing interest in the whole thing. If you just tell them bad things and scream at them they won't like your vision. If you are too nice you might lose power and they will suddenly bring in their own vision. So yes it's a balance.

In the end, you have to have a sense of when and where you say stuff. I was working on a single release last year. The artist, as usual, was not that good on providing the assets I needed so I had to improvise to just make things happen. The assets were simple stuff, like the metadata to the song, a simple English bio, and a new press picture. Not really the hard stuff.

In the end, I had to write my own bio and had to find a picture online to have something to send to the press. It's hard to just send a damn link with the song saying, this is a great song (yes we get those emails a lot from aspiring artists in the demo section). So I put out the first things and was really feeling I could get some results from it.

The suddenly the artist wrote a mess. The bio had a spelling error and a small info part was not correct. The picture was kind of old, he had a new hair color now!

And you just lost the feeling for this project. Nothing about, thank you for writing a whole bio from nothing and even have to find the information online. No, I got something wrong, a small thing which was not even important. Since the lazy artist didn't provide a picture, of course, we will just take one. If you need the right picture, then for f*ck sake give the right info to us.

No, it was not fun to work with this single. The work I had done of course needed follow-up. But the taste in my mouth was not good. Suddenly it all felt boring and there was no joy of working with it. I just gave up and actually didn't put any more job into it.

Of course, the release was as usual. I don't think the artist ever knew that I just stopped. Of course, I did the basic stuff, like upload and send the press release that is needed. But to be honest that is just the basic. When a single really hits off it's because you go that extra mile. In fact, you need the whole team to go that extra mile. The artist killed my feeling to go that extra mile. I stopped doing the extra emails that are personal to friends in good positions that can make a difference. I stopped coming up with smart things around the release. In the end, the single went nowhere. Like it said many times the doors in this business is closing very silent.

PR is a trade.

I should learn some PR you can hear artists say time to time. I guess that is kind of stupid. Sure you should know the basics so you know what kind of PR you are buying and what to expect from it. But the PR job itself an artist can never learn. Yes, they can but then they are not artists they work as PR agents. To be both I have a hard time to see, usually the people that say they usually suck on one of the two.

To be a PR agent is a trade. You pay for the knowledge or contacts. The contacts you can never pick up as an artist. To keep the network alive you need to send stuff all the time. As an artist you can't release a new thing a week to keep the network up so it doesn't matter that you have the addresses, you still have to work the network.
Another disadvantage is that if you send as the artist people doesn't really want to tell you the truth. To the PR person, you can actually say that you didn't like this song. That is much harder to tell an artist so they tend to tell some small white lies and that is very frustrating.
Another thing is that you also send the same stuff. If you went into a shop that just sells cookies you can be happy, but if you look to buy fruit you are not that excited. same here the people want different things to be excited about your send outs if you just do your own stuff it's like selling the same thing all the time.

Then the knowledge. I guess that comes with the send outs, You learn from each send out. You also are updated with the receiver and knows what they like and what they need. Same here you can learn it but then you are more a PR agent than an artist. In the end, you will do more PR jobs for other people than yourself and you are just doing music as a  hobby.

PR is a thing that cost money, yes. Even fro the PR person they have to invest in systems to push things and small as and so on. I think that many think that if you learn PR you get it all for free, that you only pay for the time.
That is NOT true. PR will cost however you do it and here the saying "you got what you pay for" is really true. You probably need to spend money in the PR game in different ways. Paying that radio person to push the song, at the same time buy some stuff from Submission Hub at the same time do that free show in the capital city to get some press. In the end, if you try to get all your PR free you are just using the same channels as many other people it becomes impossible to get through the noise.

In the end, no you can't really learn PR better to let the PRO:s do it but have a piece of knowledge what PRo:s to put it on.

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Do some PR for your release!

No, it's not just to get the music "out there". Yes technically it is that way, you can release your single in 24 hours and get it online (technically I can do it in 3 hours, but that is another thing). But what is the point?

You see more and more that the services use more algorithms to pick up what should be on the playlists, And not just the algorithms, I see many of the bloggers and tastemakers also want to have a build up before the release.

Quite frankly your singles success will depend on how much and what kind of PR you are doing. The more and broader you will do it the more your release will succeed. this is actually not any new science. I would be that Coca-Cola is not the best soft drink in the world. Still, it's the most sold and they are masters of doing PR in many levels and things. By that they are the most sold soft drink, the best well that is totally another debate.

Yes, I know you can't do the PR as Briney Spears or Kate Perry. These are massive campaigns. No, what I mainly see is that most artists actually don't do any PR. They seem to think that a Facebook post will do it, or even worse a paid facebook post. Yes, you have to work for it around a release. You have to hit up all the people you have meet in your career, all the people you know and in some way or another be able to present this new music you have done. Yes, you will get 2% answer on it.

Of course, this goes easier if you have been smart collecting these people during the way and been small communicating with them. Here is the first mistake the artist do, they don't collect fans. No the followers on Facebook are not yours, you in fact only reach 10% of them with your posts. And you can't control how Facebook is flip around posts so they won't appear in the right time and place. In all words forget Facebook as a good PR channel, forget Instagram as well. You would probably be more successful in picking up your phone and call twenty people and tell them to talk about your new release.

I tell my artist to have all their release ready 10 weeks it goes live. Yes, 10 weeks. That is the time you need to set up all channels you have to be on before the release. You are not able to do the work faster than that.

Then also look into some PR that cost money! Too much people try to take all the free routes. Well, they are nice but it also gathers all other free routers. And in the end, you won't get anywhere just because every tool you use is for free.

And save mone6y for it. May I ask how much the recording cost? Calculate to use 50% of that sum for PR. Or actually, double it and use the rest for PR. Did the recording cost a million dollar (which probably Kate Perry cost) well then you have 2 million dollars and spend the other on PR. In Kate Perrys case they probably spend 10 million. But hey that is later. Did your recording cost 10 bucks well spend then bucks on PR. In the ned, I can tell you that 99% of the reason why your release flopped is PR. Even with the worst song, you can do a great release with PR.

- If I only had two dollars left I would spend one dollar on PR - Bill Gates

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PR companies that don't know PR!

I was just in on a page for a PR company. Okay, this company doesn't do PR for music but still, I have seen the same on these pages as well. In this case, they invited me to some party with a presentation of a company that I want to know more about. They send out this flashy email but forget to tell where the party is and witch time, just the place. No links either. the only thing you have to go on is their homepage, so type that in.

Then you come to a flashy page with really no content, just flashy pictures, and the only thing is a link to their Instagram. On Instagram is no info, in the end, you find some sort of email.

This is really common for the PR agency that their own shit is really not informative or in a PR way really sucky.

I'm thinking to get over to just e-mail on the blog. The latest changes in Facebook have made it impossible to have links to a place outside their system. So bye bye facebook and I will build my own database.

Then I got an offer on a course to learn how to be good on e-mail PR and newsletters. Of course, I checked it out. If I'm gonna do this I want to be as good as possible on it. What happens is that this PR girl sends me a newsletter a day. And with really no content that is relevant to what I asked for. So how should I trust her advice when she can't do it good her self? Well, I just unsubscribed and thought what was wrong and will now try to do it better myself.

The problem is in the song most of the time.

It's not hard to find someone to do the radio plugging and take the money. The hard part is to find the plugger that actually get it on the playlist, said the artist.

I bump into this quite often. The error of no success is someone else's. I would rather think here that it's the song that doesn't hold quality enough for radio to play. In 98% of the cases that is where the error is.

Or that the story is not strong so the song can compete with songs in the same level. Well, it's the same problem that it's not good enough, just good to compete but failing in execution.

In all cases, it's not the Pr firms error. You can probably give an unreleased unknown great hit by Elvis Presley to any PR firm and they will get the song on rotation on most radio stations.

The problem is the attitude here. The artist is never wrong. All that they create are great. They are just misunderstood genius all of them.

I can prove that wrong also. Over time most artists get tired of their old masterpieces and the last record is now a piece of crap in comparison with the new they just wrote.

As fast as possible is usally the wrong answer!

Suddenly they come and have a song ready, usually a song that should have been ready two months earlier to fit the schedule.

Why is it delayed? Well, the graphics person's rabbit died and he couldn't do it faster. The recording engineer had to go on vacation with his girlfriend and couldn't do it faster and the mastering took time since they hadn't got the right files. All reasons that I really don't care about.

Since it is already delayed most of the chances the PR team dug up is all gone you ask for a new time.

- Do it as fast as possible since we are delayed!

- Well, the delay is your own fault, also there are not real PR options so it's better to push this.

- But we need stuff to market on social media!

- It's the middle of the summer you should be touring and making shows?

- Yes but we where recording so we didn't have time to book the shows! So now we need something to promote.

This will really be an expensive facebook post. Making a song to make a post. Well do a song every post you make, no kidding there is an artist doing that with quite many followers. Still, this is the typical hobby level that you see and probably why bands don't make it later on. When you work in the pro-industry up further a realize is not just put out. It's weeks of preparing and doing stuff, waiting for the right moment and so on. The problem is that the artist is used to just throw things out without any thinking and when it takes the time they become like 5-year-old kids that can't get candy.

PERSONAL:
Oh, I got my new shelf up where I put all my silly stuff I find on tours. Yes if you read the blog of my birthday where I bought a present in form of a puking elephant, here it is. Actually, the whole office is full of kind of rather strange memorabilia. Yes, there is the hand-carved mask with Bob Marley. We bought it in some strange market somewhere? The crocodile with the hats a Ramones skateboard. The skateboard is part om my Ramones museum, the hats are from different showcase festivals. The Viking helmet has a special story from SXSW when we found a whole stash of liquor and got a real party that ends that we take pictures with the police in Viking hats. Southern Comfort is from The Great Escape party and the cowboy from Midem. Yes give us a hat and we will do crazy things. And in the roof model planes and of course riding with Crazy Frog. The planes are presents to people who spoke on early Trigger things, yes you see me do the T when we meet people from these early conferences. We are a discussion to change the office so I'm really thinking about how we would bring these strange things on?

Who can you trust? The PR firm that f**ks up your track.

I can get annoyed that artists are going through processes and not trusting anything. They act like they live in former eastern Europe and a spooked by everything.

Last week I spoke to a friend that was hiring two PR firms. These PR firms are one of the more famous ones and have a long row of famous artists that use them. My friend had been in long discussions with them and they had made a plan for his new release.

I meet him at a convention and he asked what I thought about these two PR agencies. I told him that they are famous ones and seems to do a good job. My friend then explained their PR plan and each step they will do, and it was full of mistakes. Not just mistakes, rookie mistakes that a PR company should guide their artist not to do.

First, they released the track in the middle of the week, saying it was less competition? Yes, it's a reason for that. Friday is the official day in the world to release music. Most lists, programs, and other things updates on Friday. To release on another day then that is getting a guarantee that the track doesn't get any attention at the streaming services like Spotify, Deezer or Apple. Have less chance to get rotation on radio and less chance to be written about on blogs. Simply since you mess up the process of publishing things for these tastemakers

I asked if they were not doing any PR against the streaming services. The answer he got was that Spotify is not that important. If the track goes well somewhere else it will gain traction.
That is just bullshit! You get a much tougher job if you don't present the music to them. And most sources like press and radio usually don't affect the listeners on Spotify. So it's a must that you do these steps to even have the slightest chance to get anything out of this single. I guess they tell stuff like that since they don't know how to market to these sites.

I asked if he had gotten the codes from the distributor to send to the streaming services? The PR agencies had never asked for any codes, which means they couldn't have been promoting him to the most important streaming services. In reality, they haven't even tried.

Not just that they asked him to release in the middle of the week. They asked him to release it and then they would send out to radio and media since they needed the Spotify link and could only get that after a release.

I was baffled, you can get that link beforehand. More baffled that they were totally crashing my friend's release. Not even a rookie trying to do PR would have done a worse job, and these claimed to be top of the line. Working with the biggest stars in Sweden and all, still, they had very little knowledge how to make PR in the new digital landscape.

I'm not that surprised though. I got an artist I work with myself, hiring a famous PR firm that claimed to be the best. They were expensive and got a few things for him. In a test, I told the artist that if he gave me half of the budget I will try to get a better result. He did and my in-house PR team with minimal effort got three times more result then this PR firm. Especially on streaming services, but also much more on international blogs.

So I apologize all artists, you have all rights to be suspicious. When the most renowned firms fuck things up like this, who can you really trust?

The PR is ignored and that is the elephant in the room.

When you have meetings with artists they can spend hours talking about a certain sound or how they want the audience to connect with them. Also the look on photos and videos, that can take hours to discuss. Most are just small shitty details that have no relevant info on it.

They never talk about how to get this to the audience? In most cases that just happens in their world. Also, all these things around what it should look like and sound like must fit with the PR is never discussed. In many cases, they just leave that to the label or just ignore the problem.

Ignoring the problem, of course, leads to nowhere. And then you are like yesterdays post that releasing is not taking you anywhere. Leaving it to the label could be very dangerous. They might use their own PR people inside the company and those could be overloaded by other stuff. Or they hire just low budget people or just do a send out to media and call that PR. In the worst case, the material doesn't fit them and they will just ignore doing some special PR for it.

That is why I don't get it why the Pr discussion is never a topic? To really get these ideas the artist is burning for to an audience that is the key. Instead, it's just counted how many blog posts they get (never how many that actually read those blog posts) or if it gets Spotify streams (never what kind of streams it is, empty or someone really listening). Or most important, like I wrote if the material they make actually fit the campaign. There is no use of printing T-shirts if you are not touring. There is no use of a big fat video if you are not having PR in countries where it could be shown on TV or you have the marketing budget to get it big on Youtube.

We have quite many releases right now and I did a little test. When the songs came in and I looked at the schedule I gave 3 dates to choose from. All working fine. Of course, all of them took the closest date. Some not even asking if it would work for the PR, some actually did ask if it worked with the PR. But the critical question what kind of PR was never asked.
In reality, the more time gives the PR things to do more properly, so choosing the closest is not that smart. Sure we can do the basic in the shorter time, but these extras are usually not done in the shorter things. The most critical question of them all, no one informed me about what kind of PR things the artist would do. In the end, I mainly think they are doing a blog post and if I'm lucky they will bost that post on facebook.

The PR is ignored and that is the elephant in the room. It's not getting easier that people talks about "my music are not a product" shit.

Releasing music won't get you forward.

Releasing music is not like a lottery. The more you release is not getting you closer to get an audience, buying more lottery tickets might get you a bigger chance to win, even though it's already is small but releasing music is not in that way.

Okay, I can understand that after the latest single that didn't take off it must be tempting to go on to the next one. And it could if you did your PR homework. Unfortunately, most artist just focuses on the release. The PR work will contain the same as last release, and that didn't go that well so hoping that the music is good you need to change on the PR side.

No don't change PR team, that is not what I'm talking about. The error usually lies closer to home. If you really did all that stuff that is needed for a release I doubt you are that keen doing it again two weeks after release. It's the same as when you spent a week in the studio, you are not so keen to go back two days later to do the whole thing again with the same songs!

PR work done right is exhausting, and done right it takes at least two months to follow up and do it right with videos, lyric videos, tags and all other stuff that is to be done.

In the end, don't treat the release as a facebook post. It's the PR work that is taking you forward not the release of music.

PR Agents, is it really worth it?

I was speaking with one of the record labels we are working with. We discussed a new release and what kind of Pr work that should be done.

- I really don't want to hire Pr agents in all the territories. In fact, I want to use them as less as possible. It feels like they just take the money and actually don't get things done, said the label.

And yes that is the case many times. I just studied a friend's release. He is giving out a record more for fun. But he hired a PR agent. Sure the record is a hobby project and they don't expect massive exposure. They got recommend to a pr firm but a friend but called me up to check references.

This Pr firm is mainly one person. It has been there for years has some big clients but really don't do any bigger noise for its clients. Still, I can't say it's bad but you probably would get more and cheaper services if you combined ads and some smaller services where you can send to blogs.

The biggest thing is that the firm also has some management work. When you do management it's usually when you really like a project. So for, hat you go with all your resources. The problem was that even when the PR firm has a favorite project these bands never got any real good exposure. To be honest it was what the label was talking about. No real results.

I told my friend that, but he felt he didn't have any choice so he went on.

They released a single really getting nowhere. Spotify around 3500 streams two mounts later is not that good. A think a student radio show had the song in a list for a week.

Now they album came. All that I can see on media is an outlet where you get covered as soon as you do a pressrelease. Funny thing is that I don't find their pressrelease in the official channels. In reality exact why the label feel insecure to hire PR.

There is a lot of these PR agents out there. In reality the good ones has booked gigs with labels all time so the ones that are open for single projects are usually not able to create any things that really matter. What we give for free service to our artists on the publishing side is better than what a expensive PR agent can provide.

Are you doing a release or a facebook post?

Right now that is a good question? Seems like most people don't realize that PR takes time. When we work with record labels they usually get up to 10 weeks before to make all the PR stuff that is needed. Okay if you are not famous 6 weeks is enough.

When I get people telling us that they need the stuff on Spotify the next day. They really know there will be no what so ever PR done around that release. The only thing they really do is making something happing so they can do a Facebook post around that they released a new song. if you are lucky they also sponsor that damn post. Still, it's a very expensive way to make Facebook posts.

The funny part is it's almost people that think they are professionals who do this. Most amateur at least uploads a week or two ahead. The fast ones are usually studios and other people claiming to know how.

These people are mainly the reason why the music industry is mainly going from an industry to a hobby.

It’s a difference to be a superstar then an indie band.

When I discuss PR plans and strategy’s with artists this always comes up. The artists want the same benefits and stuff as a superstar, but make the same effort as an indie band.

What they seems to miss is that is totally different paths to get to different goals. You really have to be clear where you want to go. No you really can’t mix the paths.

What people don’t really get is that they believe that the road is to be an indie band and then move up to be a superstar. Sure it happens, but in most cases the paths never cross. The marketing are really different so you have to be really clear what the goal is and how to get there.

The worst is when they start to mix the paths, thinking that you can get the results of a superstar of the budget of an indie release. Thinking they get the same freedom as an indie artist as a superstar.
Both paths has their really great moments but you have to be clear witch to take.