How To Make A Great Press Kit A Musicians Guide

Writen by Scott Richards

As an owner of an independent record label, I often get asked how to put together a great press kit. I have found that young musicians understand their music, but are often intimidated by the marketing end of the business. In this article I will help you figure out how to position yourself, whether you are a Latin female vocalist building her base, or an upstart garage band just looking for a break.

What is a Press Kit:

First of all, there is nothing magical about the term "press kit". All we are talking about is a little background on you/your band, some basic facts, good quotes about your music, a couple of good pictures, and a sample of your music. You will use this to send to newspapers, lawyers, radio stations, A&R reps, promoters, and anyone else who is willing to spend five minutes reviewing your material. Additionally, on the internet you will hear about an electronic press kit, or EPS. An EPS is the exact same thing as a conventional press kit, except it is downloadable as an electronic file instead of a hardcopy form which must be mailed.

The main purpose of the press kit is to generate interest in the artist and their music.

What to include:

Include a limited amount of background information on yourself. It is fine to say where you are from, but no one really wants to hear about every singing performance you did during elementary school. Sometimes less is more.

Talk about your music. Who do you sound like, and who does your music remind people of. The reader needs to be able to have a good idea of what your music sounds like just from your description. Be thoughtful and feel free to be a little funny here (but stay professional). Saying something like your band sounds like a cross between "Maroon 5 and Green Day after 20 cups of coffee" helps the reader understand. Remember, if you don't generate enough interest in the first minute, they will never listen to your demo.

Talk about what you are good at. What makes your band special and different from others? What skills and experiences do you bring to the table? Remember if you are looking for a record deal, you need to prove to your reader that you have all the right ingredients for them to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars marketing you. Launching a new artist is risky, so you need to help the record exec understand why you are a solid investment.

Include quotes and/or press clippings as you generate them. A good quote from a reputable source (not your brother-in-law) can add a lot of credibility to your press kit. It lets the reader know that you have already been reviewed and your material is worth listening to. Ninety percent of press kits unfortunately end up in the trash, some good quotes and positive reviews can create the momentum necessary to get heard, and who knows – maybe even become famous.

You can go with one page dedicated to a bio (biography), and a separate page focused on quotes about your music, or you can combine the two into what some people call a "one pager". My personal preference is to boil everything down to a tight one pager. My desk gets cluttered and papers get separated. If you have you quotes separate from your bio, there is a possibility that I could misplace one or the other. With the advent of digital photography and high quality color printers, it is even possible to include a small picture on your one pager to make it even more complete.

Make sure the overall language and tone of the press kit is consistent with your image. If you have someone help you write your bio, make sure they have heard you music and know what you are all about before they hand you something that might sound great, but isn't about the real you.

Include a couple of different 8x10 pictures that show off different features about you and your band. Include shots that would be appropriate in a news article, but also highlight your key assets from a visual perspective. Your press kit should look professional, but your pictures should reflect your style and music, so you pictures can be much more crazy and creative. Make sure you clearly label the picture with you name and contact information.

If you don't have good pictures of your band, one of the best ways to get some is to go to a modeling agency and ask for a referral to a good local photographer. These photographers are often willing to do some great work for around $300 for the whole package. Make sure you get an agreement upfront that you own the copyrights after the shot and get the high resolution digital images on CD (with a copyright release you can print these photos at any major retailer). A photographer who does work with models is very different from a photographer who takes family pictures. They have a much better idea of what you want, they will encourage your creativity, and they are much more willing to give you the copyrights.

A current gig sheet can also be useful showing where you have recently played and where you are playing in the near future. This can demonstrate that the music is current and has a following in the community.

And of course, your music. Send a high quality CD demo, preferably mastered if you budget permits. Avoid burning your own CD on your home computer with a stick on label – it looks cheap. There are many new CD duplication services on the internet that will manufacture you CD with a printed color insert, and on disc printing even if you only want a few copies (CD replication is for batches over 1,000 but CD duplication is for batch sizes as small as 1). Expect to pay around $5 a retail ready disc for 1-5 CDs, with prices dropping off for larger batches. Make sure you clearly label the CD and the case with you name and contact information. The worst thing in the world that could happen is that they love your music, but they have already lost the rest of the press kit and don't remember the name of the band.

What Not to Include:

Don't oversell yourself. Saying that you are the greatest band that ever lived, might be true, but it probably isn't. Be positive and promote yourself, but focus on statements that are credible. People in the music business hear hype all of the time, and for the most part are numb to it. Hype is good to use with the general public on things like posters (they often believe it), but your press kit reader is more sophisticated and will see it as cheap theatrics.

Including too much of your personal history can make you seem like an amateur with nothing meatier to talk about. Your reader wants to understand your music today, only your psychologist needs to know about every little detail of your childhood.

Don't include anything that makes you look too desperate. You want to come across as a quality professional artist. Remember, you make great music. If your band is called the Chicken Heads, then it might be cute to include a rubber chicken in the box, but otherwise I would stick to the basics – bio, quotes, gig sheet, pictures, and music.

How to Package It:

Include a professional looking, personalized cover letter targeted at the person you are sending the press kit to. Your message needs to be different if you are sending it to an A&R rep at a label seeking a record deal, versus sending it to your local newspaper for a review in their music section. Be brief and to the point. Also, be clear and state exactly what you would like from them.

Put it all together in an organized package. Since you are most likely mailing your press kits, make sure that the CD does not bend the photos, and that your kit will arrive looking the way you intend. You may even want to test a press kit (send it across the country to a wrong address, and then it will come back to your return address) to evaluate your packaging.

Your Music Is Art, But Your Press Kit Is Business:

Remember, be professional. The person you are sending this press kit to probably gets hundreds of them, most of them are garbage (and that's where they end up too). Your music can be crazy and wild, but your press kit needs to be more business like. You are asking someone to spend their valuable time reviewing your material. You may also be asking them to enter into a high risk expensive financial relationship with you. The person you are dealing with is in the music business, they need to make a living. The only way they can do that is to deal with real talent. By presenting a professional package you give them confidence that you are dedicated to making great music, and not just messing around.

A Word About Unsolicited Press Kits:

Avoid wasting your time and money sending a press kit to someone you have not talked with already. Always call and make contact first, ask who you should send it to and what their process is. If possible, have someone who knows the person act as an intermediate and make the initial introduction (this can work wonders). The music business is all about contacts, create and leverage your network. After sending your press kit, call in a couple of weeks and follow up to make sure they received it and got a chance to review it.

Example:

To see a good example of a press kit, go to Legend Vega's website at http://www.legendvega.com.

Scott Richards is the president of an independent record label, 3JVL Productions, Inc.

Want to hear great music?
Visit Legend Vega's Official Website
http://www.legendvega.com

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Interested in pictures of beautiful models?
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A Pr Question For Chinese Managers

Writen by Robert A. Kelly

As the practice of public relations in China continues to mature, it seems appropriate to ask whether Chinese business managers – tutored as they have been by European, North American and other PR specialists – continue to apply major public relations emphasis to print and broadcast communications tactics. In other words, do they still see PR through the lens of simple publicity, as many in the West still do?

Or, do the best among Chinese managers -- as is also true for many businesses in Western economies -- realize they need true behavior change among their most important outside audiences leading directly to achieving their managerial objectives?

And, do they then take steps to persuade those key external stakeholders, who have the greatest impacts on their organizations, to their way of thinking, then move them to take actions that help their departments, divisions or subsidiaries succeed?

Let us presume that you are that business manager in China, and that you are well aware of the high-impact fundamental premise of public relations. Namely, "People act on their own perception of the facts before them, which leads to predictable behaviors about which something can be done. When that opinion is created, changed or reinforced by reaching, persuading and moving-to-desired-action the very people whose behaviors affect the organization the most, the public relations mission is accomplished."

Managers who employ such a PR blueprint often see results such as prospects for their services or products starting to do business with them, fresh proposals for strategic alliances and joint ventures arriving on a regular basis, specifying sources starting to look their way, increases in visits to show rooms, and existing customers beginning to make repeat purchases.

If this approach to public relations appeals to you, before that PR blueprint is first employed, you need every member of the PR team assigned to your unit to agree that it's crucially important to know how your outside audiences perceive your operations, products or services. Dig deep to ensure they REALLY accept the reality that perceptions almost always lead to behaviors that can damage your operation.

With that understanding achieved, It's time to activate the PR blueprint and begin monitoring and gathering perceptions of those key external stakeholders by questioning members of that very important outside audience. Ask questions like these: how much do you know about our organization? Have you had prior contact with us and were you pleased with the interchange? How much do you know about our services or products and employees? Have you experienced problems with our people or procedures?

Fortunately, the PR people assigned to you are, by definition, already in the perception and behavior business, so they can be of real use for this opinion monitoring project. While professional survey firms can be brought in to handle the opinion monitoring, that can be expensive. But whether it's your people or a survey consultant asking the questions, your objective is to identify untruths, false assumptions, unfounded rumors, inaccuracies, and misconceptions.

But which of the above "negativities" is serious enough that it obviously must become your corrective public relations goal because, unattended, it will lead to seriously hurtful behaviors? For example, clarify the misconception? Spike that rumor? Correct the false assumption? Fix those inaccuracies? Or yet another offensive perception that could lead to negative results?

With your public relations goal thus established, you can assure you'll achieve it by picking the right communications strategy from the three choices available to you to show you HOW to reach your goal. Change existing perception, create perception where there may be none, or reinforce it. But be sure your new strategy naturally compliments your new public relations goal.

So what will your message emphasize when you address your key stakeholder audience to help persuade them to your way of thinking?

Select your best writer to prepare the message because s/he must put together some very special, corrective language. Words that are not only compelling, persuasive and believable, but clear and factual if they are to shift perception/opinion towards your point of view and lead to the behaviors you have in mind.

Happily, the next step is easy. You select communications tactics to carry your message to the attention of your target audience. Making certain that the tactics you select have a record of reaching folks like your audience members, you can pick from dozens that are available. From speeches, facility tours, emails and brochures to consumer briefings, media interviews, newsletters, personal meetings and many others.

Keep in mind that HOW one communicates often affects the credibility of the message, so you may wish to deliver it in smaller meetings and presentations rather than through a higher-profile media announcement.

You'll soon feel pressure for signs of progress. And that will lead to a second perception monitoring session with members of your external audience. Employing many of the same questions used in the first benchmark session, you will now be watching carefully for signs that the communications tactics have succeeded in altering the offending perception in your direction. Remember that you can always accelerate the program by adding more communications tactics as well as increasing their frequencies.

This bears repeating – successful managers everywhere generally use every public relations weapon they can lay their hands on, and that includes strategic, rapid-fire print and broadcast tactics.

But those same competitive managers also know that above all, they need an aggressive blueprint such as this one that will deliver planned behavior change among their most important outside audiences leading directly to achieving their managerial objectives.

Please feel free to publish this article and resource box in your ezine, newsletter, offline publication or website. A copy would be appreciated at mailto:bobkelly@TNI.net. Word count is 1045 including guidelines and resource box.

Robert A. Kelly © 2004.

About The Author

Bob Kelly counsels, writes and speaks to business, non-profit and association managers about using the fundamental premise of public relations to achieve their operating objectives. He has been DPR, Pepsi-Cola Co.; AGM-PR, Texaco Inc.; VP-PR, Olin Corp.; VP-PR, Newport News Shipbuilding & Drydock Co.; director of communi- cations, U.S. Department of the Interior, and deputy assistant press secretary, The White House. He holds a bachelor of science degree from Columbia University, major in public relations. mailto:bobkelly@TNI.net. Visit: http://www.prcommentary.com

Public Relations Vs Honesty

Writen by Nick Arrizza, M.D.

Those whose business it is to do PR have invested greatly in their craft. Those who buy PR services need them to convey to their audience what they want them to hear. The audiences who are subject to the PR strategies allow themselves to be sold or not based on the effectiveness of such campaigns.

In effect PR is part of the fabric of our lives.

My question is: whatever happened to simply being open and honest?

Well that would put the PR people out of job. It would make the consumers of PR feel exposed and uncomfortable. It would make the audience of PR dubious about the credibility of those they are listening to.

So it seems that everyone wants to live in the fantasy that PR can create rather than live in the truth of what is really going on.

What does that say for our tolerance for the pain that goes with the truth? Well clearly it says that it is extremely low.

Is this a good thing?

Well some will say that feeling no pain is definitely desirable.

If that's the case then suppose that you are in the middle of the street and a truck is heading right for you. Is it your preference to "pretend" that this is not happening to you?

You see that is essentially what it means to "quench" the sadness (i.e. the pain) that you would be feeling knowing that in the next moment you will get mangled badly.

So isn't it better to feel that pain? Doesn't it inform you of what actions are worth taking? Isn't that what is going to enhance the quality of your life?

I think you'll see that the answers to those questions are obvious.

Yet if you look around you you'll see individuals trying to "quench" all sorts of pain with drugs, alcohol, sex, over work, the internet, computer games, sports, food, etc...

Are we so afraid to know the truth about our situation?

Isn't that the place to start if we stand any chance of steering ourselves in a direction that will help restore humanity and the planet to its rightful state?

Out of fear the pain of the truth is made unconscious by many individuals daily. The consequences to them of doing this creates a tremendous amount of stress and illness.

At the end of the day there is no PR that will make that feel or appear OK.

Well OK, there are some who advocate that there is "good stress".

I suppose if you believe that you'll believe anything.

Dr. Nick Arrizza is trained in Chemical Engineering, Business Management & Leadership, Medicine and Psychiatry. He is an Energy Psychiatrist, Healer, Key Note Speaker,Editor of a New Ezine Called "Spirituality And Science" (which is requesting high quality article submissions) Author of "Esteem for the Self: A Manual for Personal Transformation" (available in ebook format on his web site), Stress Management Coach, Peak Performance Coach & Energy Medicine Researcher, Specializes in Life and Executive Performance Coaching, is the Developer of a powerful new tool called the Mind Resonance Process(TM) that helps build physical, emotional, mental and spiritual well being by helping to permanently release negative beliefs, emotions, perceptions and memories. He holds live workshops, international telephone coaching sessions and international teleconference workshops on Physical. Emotional, Mental and Spiritual Well Being.

Business URL #1: http://www.telecoaching4u.com

Personal URL: http://www.telecoaching4u.com/Spirituality_And_Science.htm

Free Marketing Tip 1 Public Relations

Writen by Debbie LaChusa

I have spent over 20 years in the marketing industry, but most of that time my focus was in the area of paid marketing avenues like advertising and direct marketing. When I opened my own small business marketing consulting firm eight years ago, I realized that while all those paid marketing tactics were great - meaning they worked - I also realized my ability to utilize them was limited.

Why? Because like most new small business owners, I didn't have the money.

I was just getting my business off the ground and I needed ways to get the word out that didn't involve a lot of cash.

That's when I turned to Public Relations.

What is Public Relations? It's the act of sending out information to the news media about your business in the hope they will write about your business in their publication. This gives you free exposure and very often it has a lot more credibility than advertising.

Here are 10 steps to help you use PR to market your small business:

(1) Identify who you are trying to reach - who do you want to be reading about your business so they will contact you for more information about your business?

(2) Look for media (newspapers, magazines, radio stations, television programs, and websites) that these people are reading and using.

(3) Make a list of all these publications/media.

(4) Research every publication/medium on your list. Become familiar with them. What news do they cover? What is their writing style? Do they have a regular column or section that covers your industry?

(5) Find out if there is a writer or reporter at each publication that covers your industry.

(6) Contact that writer or reporter and introduce yourself. Let them know who you are, what your area of expertise is, and offer yourself as a resource for stories or if they have questions or need information.

(7) Learn the accepted press release format and writing style and start writing releases about newsworthy events in your business.

(8) Create a plan to issue press releases on a regular basis to your media list. Just make sure the information you are sending is indeed newsworthy.

(9) If you do business on the Internet, considering using a service called PR Web (www.prweb.com) This will get your release out quickly to many sources on the web and can start to generate awareness of your business to a broader scope of media.

(10) Look for opportunities to use your expertise to write columns, or special features for the publications on your media list.

Public relations is a great marketing tool for small business owners and independent professionals. If you are committed to learning how to use it properly, and you use it consistently, it can get you and your business incredible exposure at little or no cost.

(C) Copyright 2006 Debbie LaChusa, 10stepmarketing

Debbie LaChusa created The 10stepmarketing System to make marketing your own business as simple as answering 10 questions. Learn more about this unique, step-by-step system and get a free 10-week Marketing E-Course when you subscribe to the free, weekly 10stepmarketing Ezine at http://www.10stepmarketing.com

Financial Planners Make Sure Reporters Comprehend Your Topic

Writen by Ned Steele

Don't assume that a reporter understands financial planning. If anything, assume the opposite until proven wrong. See if you can't develop a couple of questions for the reporter that delicately explore their subject-matter knowledge. Freddy Newshound may cover personal finance, but he's no expert. He may have started on the beat yesterday and not know a T-Bill from a municipal bond.

Fill in any necessary gaps so that the reporter can grasp the significance and context of your story. Making assumptions about a reporter's knowledge base is risky business.

You can also enhance the reporter's understanding of your topic by avoiding industry jargon. You'd be amazed at how much of it creeps unconsciously into our daily language. Save it for professional peers – except for an elite few trade press reporters, the media will be confused by it.

Near the end of your interview, recap and gently probe to ensure the interviewer has understood your main points. Many of them are adept at making it sound as if they know what's going on. Sometimes they don't. Judge too, by the questions they ask, whether they are absorbing your information properly. Trust your instincts – if you fear the reporter may be misunderstanding, act firmly and proactively to set the interview straight. It's better to do this now than when it's already on the air or in print.

Ned Steele works with people in professional services who want to build their practice and accelerate their growth. The president of Ned Steele's MediaImpact, he is the author of 102 Publicity Tips To Grow a Business or Practice. To learn more visit http://www.MediaImpact.biz or call 212-243-8383.