Alright, so we've been planning.
Intensely.
A lot of said planning involves around increasing out blog presence. What is a blog presence you say? Why is it important? How does one achieve it?
Sigh. We're still mystified. We'll not really, but we'd like to keep an aura of humility until we achieve success. We want bloggers to write about our songs. Music blogs have become such a solid source of new music in the last two years it absolutely astounds me. My introduction to electro music can be founded sheerly on Palmsout's Remix Sundays (RIP). Palmsout would take remix submissions, as many as hundreds a week and post about 20 tight ones in a big zip file and it would be like church for deejays on Sunday. People really get music from blogs. And frequently.
In the instant gratification music generation, blogs are perfect, new, different music, every day. And from sources you can grow to trust, and that have a smorgasborg of tastes to choose from. Silver Medallion wants to be in the mix. It's not simple, you don't just send emails and magically appear. We had been forwarded a great article about how to send an appropriate email, can't find the link currently, but it explained things like don't mass email, include two songs and video if possible, tell the story behind the songs, don't attach files link them, include pics and more info, and basically make the email an all inclusive experience. Labels and PR agencies specialize in this now, so the indie artist has to make their content professional and stand out. I believe our first email was "The Soundtrack to Paris' Pending Lobotomy" or somesuch to make sure we stood out in the inbox.
When we first sent out things to the blogs we worked hard and picked about 200, got emails and sent out some blasts with Slave and Centerfold. We got about five posts, nothing special (numberswise nothing special, actually, each one was special to us, and we thank the posters with all our hearts), but this time we've come back with a revised formula. Hype Machine (hypem.com) is a blog aggregator that collects statistics from the 4000 most popular mp3 blogs and charts as wella s catalogs that data. We put our intern on the task of cataloging all 4000 blogs with emails (Lisa, you're a star), so that we now have the master list for blasts... We've also been waiting until we had very relevant material to make things happen. These blogs aren't going to go for our pop songs, they're going to latch on to our more electro material, that's just the nature of these things. Blogs today are damn near an extension of remix culture, it's all about having versions the normal people can't have, a new standard of indie-snobdom, but one that's well worth it, Death to The Throne's Lykke Li remix will blow heads in your college dorm in the midwest, and might even get you some lettuce from the indie girl down the hall.
So we've been preparing. The focal point of our new blog campaign is a new original track by Death to the Throne aka Jimmy from down the street. One of our producers (Centerfold and Camera) is immensely popular on the blogs, probably because he's AWESOME (don't let it get to your head little man, you still dj at Rogue) and Carnegie is rapping on his first original track. The big thing about this is everything prior that has got him this buzz is remixes, so many blogs won't post him for copyright purposes, where as the first original track from a name like him will get solid play. And since it reads with Silver Medallion we've got a solid intro. With that exposure, people will be waiting to hear from us so we've got a combination of material produced by him, material with other hot electro artists (Daze of Thunder), material with ridiculous video (Monchichi), and indie mixtapes (Dubstep mixtape with Havoc'n'Deeds) waiting in the wings to be blasted out at appropriate intervals. And with all of these blog's myspaces also in our database (interns are amazing!) we're in super good shape to continue to promo.
My main wish is that we had itunes (still a few weeks to two months out) to really capitalize, but free is amazing as well to build the buzz so I'm not really sweating it. Once we establish a presence all that it takes to maintain it is new, creative material and with unlimited studio and video we won't have a problem there.
And that's our relationship with the blogs as of today.
