Music Business Blog by Jason Feinberg

Today we have a guest post by PJ Perez, an entertainment writer who is featured regularly on Vegas.com, in the Las Vegas Weekly, and runs VegasInsight.net (amongst a million other publications)…

How NOT to Get Your Band Promoted
By Pj Perez

Undoubtedly, the job of any public relations firm or press agent is to get its client’s name or event into as many media outlets as possible. Tenacity can be a boon in this area, but there is a thin line between tenacity and tediousness. One PR rep completely trashed that line this week, demonstrating “what not to do to get your band decent press.”

I received a call from an L.A.-based PR firm Thursday last week. The rather assertive voice on the other end of the phone wanted to send some press releases about a couple bands he represents that are playing in Vegas this week. I gave him the appropriate contact info and assured him we’d get the calendar on our websites updated with the show info.

The bands are playing as part of a three-day competition/festival in downtown Las Vegas, which means they received only a small listing mention on a larger page dedicated to the entire showcase.

The press agent called to follow-up on Friday. I let him know about the music festival’s pending listing on our websites, and that he could look for it over the weekend.

When I came into the office Monday morning, I had another phone message waiting for me from the same PR guy, claiming that he could not find the listing anywhere on the website. At this point, I realize the guy is nuts, but I don’t bother calling back, because I had more important things to attend to, like ensuring shows we actually sell are live on the websites.

He called again a few hours into the day, explaining again that he could not find the listing on the website. Now I realize he’s not only obnoxious, but he’s not that bright. A simple search in our calendar for any part of the name of the music conference/festival would have resulted in the listings for which he was looking. I nearly screamed after I tossed my headset at the phone.

Next time this guy calls up and needs press for his clients, I will be less likely to even bother. He did both himself and his bands a disservice by becoming a pest and obsessing over all the wrong things.

There’s a lesson here, and as usual, it has much to do with the delicate balance of power between public relations and the media. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

From this article at the Los Angeles Times:

“Among teens ages 12 to 17 who were polled, 69% said they believed it was legal to copy a CD from a friend who purchased the original. By comparison, only 21% said it was legal to copy a CD if a friend got the music free. Similarly, 58% thought it was legal to copy a friend’s purchased DVD or videotape, but only 19% thought copying was legal if the movie wasn’t purchased.”

I’ve been in touch with Mack Collier over at The Viral Garden, as he wrote a post recently about promoting music to blogs. Check out this post which talks about how my company is using blogs to promote the new Les Claypool CD. It’s interesting. There’a also a TON of useful info on his blog about other marketing and promo topics.

Underrated band on my mind at the moment – Murder City Devils. Just spent a weekend in Seattle to catch their official (one-off) reunion show as well as the announced-last-minute second show the next night. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the band and the shows since.

Here’s a band that everyone almost knew about. They were on the verge of breaking through to the masses when they split for personal reasons in 2001. What is ironic is that the impending success would have probably caused them to break up anyway. That’s not their style, and that’s part of what makes them so great.

One of the greatest things about this band’s history is the significant progression they made through a short 5 years. Their first full length is straight forward trash/garage rock, think the Stooges but more gritty. Their next one, Empty Bottles Broken Hearts, dove deeper, both musically and lyrically. After that, In Name And Blood (which many consider to be their best release) truly saw a development of an entirely new style. Sure, you can name the influences, but there was something above all that, something purely unique to MCD at this specific moment. [ Side note - I did some work in the recording studio this was tracked, and many times I imagined how amazing the recording process must have been. ]

Their last studio effort, the EP Thelema was an even further distinction of a unique musical vision. Bleak, haunting, fully depressing, yet completely inspiring.

From Allmusic:
In 1998, Murder City Devils, their eponymous debut, hit the record stores. The results were surprising enough to justify the group’s move to the catalog of Sub Pop. Working with producer Jack Endino, they kept on rocking with the album Empty Bottles, Broken Hearts in 1999, before entering an extensive tour that took them all over the U.S. and to Canada. Before the tour, keyboard wizard Leslie Hardy, previously with Hole, joined the team, thereby solving the organ problem, which was until then a shared instrument by Frudesco, Manny, and Galluci. Supporting the album on the road for almost a year, the Devils then decided to take a break.MCD entered the studio with John Angello in 2000 and emerged with In Name and Blood, an album that fleshed out the band’s Dead Boys fascination by depicting each member as the victim of a different heinous murder. The Thelema EP followed in 2001; it included some minor-chord textures and a folk-ish number called “364 Days” that was a significant departure from Moody et al.’s normally raging death punk. But the growth would be fruitless, as the Devils broke up a few months later with an incendiary farewell to their hometown crowd on Halloween night 2001.

It’s really hard to pick a specific place to start. Depends what you’re into. If you like your rock punk and raw, get their first one, Murder City Devils.

If you prefer the Misfits to the Stooges, get In Name And Blood.

And if you prefer something right in between, get Empty Bottles, Broken Hearts.

Check out this blog entry – Asi Sharabi has analyzed the top viral videos at YouTube and tried to make sense of the phenomenon. It’s quite insightful and gives some good ammo to companies like mine.

No Man’s Blog: YouTube trends report #1

Hello dear readers – sorry for my absence for the past week or so – went up to Seattle to see the reunion of one of my favorite bands of all time, Murder City Devils. More on that to come.

In the meantime, check out The Viral Garden, a well-written blog from Mack Collier that has brilliant ideas on viral marketing (something we do for all of our artists that generally sees great results). It’s an excellent way to market just about anything, especially music. Check it out, seriously.