Bios and fact sheets are both lovely, but the focus of any effective music promotional materials (unless you’re the Pussycat Dolls) is the music itself. At first blush, this sounds pretty straightforward – throw in a copy of the CD, and check it off your list. But as with everything, the presentation of your materials informs how they are received and consumed. So – two things to keep in mind:
Don’t waste people’s time – the people you’re delivering your CD to are (hopefully) very busy. Each additional click or extra layer of packaging they have to hack their way through to get to your music is another chance for them to move on to something else. Present your music efficiently, and perhaps more importantly…
Present the most flattering picture of yourself – I know, all of your songs are great. But pick your best, your Big 4, and lead with them. If the reviewer is really interested, they’ll check out the rest of it anyway. And get some external feedback before you decide which songs should represent your project. Your friends often have a surprising amount of objectivity (I know – after chatting with my friends, I decided to drop The Weather Forecaster in favor of The Businessman)
Some more ideas for presenting your music (think of these as being similar to the Special Features on a DVD):
Listening Guide – Make a ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’-style guide for how a reviewer should listen to your album. That way they can skip to your Big 4, get additional details about each song, and have a richer listening experience. You could even have different courses – the Experimental course, the Acoustic course, or the Deep Cuts course.
Audio commentary – Sit down and wax poetic about your tracks. What inspired them? What happened during the recording?
Sampler CDs – A sampler CD is a subset of the best tracks on an album, interspersed with those tracks’ audio commentary. These are incredibly useful to send to reviewers, or to to give out at clubs.
Here are the audio commentaries I recorded for Jamboree’s Big 4:
The Businessman
The English Teacher
The Prostitute
The Preacher
