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Coming to Canadian Music Week? Here are some tips on publicizing
your band for CMW (from cmw.net) by: Eileen Nonoyama / Joanne
Smale Planet3 Communications
Performing at any music
festival gives a band an opportunity to expose themselves
to a new audience. However it also, paradoxically, makes
a band easy to overlook. There are hundreds of bands playing
every night and one of the few ways to make your band rise
above the rest is media attention. Word of mouth is the
best way to create a buzz for your band, and buzz can help
you go from a half empty room to a venue packed to the reams
and a line-up outside. A good recommendation from a newspaper,
radio host, TV personality or online blogger goes a long
way in helping ensure that when people look at the festival
listing, your band name jumps out. A publicist's job is
to know who, when and how to contact the media (and there
are many companies out there that specialize in entertainment)
but not everyone can afford a professional so the following
is some basic tips on how to do it yourself.
Media Kit:
The first thing you'll
need (both on your own and if you take on a publicist) is
a media kit. The key basic components are a band biography,
a band photo and promotional copies of your album.
Your bio should be
relatively concise and easy to read. Be sure to include
the names of your band members, what you sound like, the
band's noteworthy press and tour history, your town/city
of origin and a brief history of the band. You're not writing
a novel, make it easy for a journalist to pick facts from.
Be sure to include a link to your website (we hope we don't
need to tell you that an updated website is essential).
In this electronic
age, your band photo(s) don't need to be 8x10's on glossy
paper. It's much more useful to have image files that can
be sent instantly on request to media. The image must be
hi-resolution (300 dpi is ideal) and of moderate dimensions
(at least 4 inches on the smallest side). Remember you can
always size an image down but there's no good way to increase
the size of a small one. JPG/JPEG files are the most universal
and easy to work with. Keep your band name in the file name.
It would also be a good idea for these to be available off
your site, but be sure to clearly mark them as hi-res so
regular fans won't download them and kill your bandwidth.
A copy of your CD or
a site where you can download tracks/stream audio is also
very important. Don't try sending MP3s to media unsolicited,
it takes up a lot of room in inboxes that are already overflowing
and will just get dumped. If you can afford it, make a good
recording with a good mix (and if at all possible, have
it mastered) and start the CD with one of your best songs.
Mark your best tracks so that the journalist can flip to
them quickly. Music journalists have a mountain of music
coming at them at all times, you need to make a good impression
quickly and easily.
Prepare an introduction.
A short personal message to a journalist telling them why
they should check you out. Include the most interesting
things from your bio and (very import) be sure to clearly
state when (date and time) and where you are playing. Make
things as easy for journalists as possible. The more work
it takes for them to find/listen/read about you, the less
likely they are to do so.
The Media:
PRINT There are four
daily newspapers in Toronto: Toronto Star, Toronto Sun,
Globe and Mail and National Post. They all have dedicated
music writers/editors who can be easily identified by reading
the papers. Thursday papers for the Star and Sun and Fridays
for the Globe and Mail have bigger arts sections but articles
will appear every day of the week. All four also have online
editions where you can look at recent articles if you're
unable to get the physical papers, but content online is
not identical and we highly recommend looking at all the
physcial papers daily for at least a month. Writers, like
all people, have particular tastes and you will want to
find the ones that are most likely to like your band.
There are three free
Monday - Friday papers in Toronto: Metro, 24 Hours and Dose.
The fact these are free, found all over the city and tend
to have multiple readers (a Metro left on the subway is
probably picked up and flipped through many times before
ending up in the trash) makes them important. Like the four
dailies, your best bet is to pick each one up and read through
them.
There are two free
highly circulated weekly papers: Eye Weekly and Now Magazine.
Since these are going to be found in almost every club involved
with CMW they'll be one of the most accessible to people
out at night. Keep in mind because both the weeklies tend
to decide their content much further in advance than the
dailies. If you've waited until the Monday before CMW it's
too late.
Toronto is a city with
a LOT of specialized and community media. There are local
papers such as the North York Post that is only available
in a specific area. Local community media will always be
interested in local content. If you're from North York,
they'll be far more interested in your band than one from
the Beaches. Look around in your area for the boxes (almost
all of these types of papers are free). There are cultural
publications such as Caribbean Camera, Share and Pride which
focus on the black community (Carribean Camera obviously
emphasizes those of Caribbean origin but not exclusively).
Le Metropolitain focuses on the Toronto Francophone community,
Xtra! and Fab focus on the gay community, etc. Chances are
if you are of a specific community, you or your family will
already be familiar with those publications. Even if they
don't seem to cover music, it's worth trying. There are
three university campuses in Toronto: University of Toronto,
Ryerson University, and York University. All three have
campus papers, in some cases multiple ones. Like community
papers, they do prefer to have content directly relevant
to the school (are any of your member current students or
graduates). There are also many colleges in the Toronto
area, some of which will have their own papers.
If you are very enterprising
and plan well ahead there are also monthly publications
that are worth targeting such as Toronto Life, Word and
Exclaim!. But these publications tend to decide their content
very far in advance. In Toronto Life's case, you will have
had to submit a simple club show listing three months in
advance. Chances are, by the time you think of them it'll
be too late. However Exclaim! does have concert reviews
and it never hurts to let them know about your show. There
are genre specific publications as well, which vary in frequency
of publication. If you play genre specific (metal, punk,
folk, etc.) you should be aware of these already.
RADIO There are many
radio stations in Toronto but as anybody who's flipped through
dial knows, few of them play indie artists. Your chances
of getting on a station that only plays Top 40 is very,
very slim. If you are a rock/punk/metal band you can target
The Edge. That station has an Indie night and radio personalities
who are more likely to be supportive of independent bands.
Even if they won't play your music, an on air mention from
a sympathetic DJ can go a long way. There are other genre
specific stations, and again, if you're in a particular
genre you'll already know them. There is also talk radio,
don't be quick to discount their power. Stations like 680
News and CFRB have huge amounts of listeners and getting
them to cover you before they do the weather and traffic
is no small thing. AM is not dead. Campus radio will be
the best bet for independent bands. All three universities
have a radio station that broadcasts across Toronto. They
all have segmented programming with a different host almost
every hour. Check out the websites or listen to them over
long periods of time and chances are you'll find shows/hosts
that may support you. Some colleges also have radio stations
but their range will be much smaller.
There is also the CBC.
The morning and afternoon drive shows will have entertainment
content and are much less rigid in their playlists than
commercial radio. The two best shows for independent music
are Brave New Waves and Radio3. Both are not Toronto based,
and being national programs won't want to be Toronto-centric,
but if they like your band they'll play you and may mention
your shows.
TELEVISION There are
many different TV stations but only a handful will actually
be of concern to an independent band: CBC, CTV, City, Global,
OMNI, Sun TV and Rogers. If you want to end up on the local
newscast that night, you'll want to send a very brief document
stating Who, What, Where and When to camera assignment at
each station the day before or of the event. If you want
advance coverage you'll want the various show producers
for those newscasts. Some of these channels will also have
lifestyle programs (Breakfast Television, Rogers Daytime,
Ishtyle, etc.) that you may be able to get your band on.
Keep in mind, the more popular the program the harder it
is to get on, and the further in advance guests are booked.
There are also four
entertainment driven programs with Canadian mandates. eTalk,
Star! Daily, Jam Showbiz, and ET Canada need Canadian entertainment
stories every day. While they are also by their nature devoted
to people with star power, that doesn't mean they'll ignore
independent artists.
MuchMusic is the obvious
channel to go to. Independent bands naturally tend to get
overshadowed by the Top 40 ones and if you don't have a
video (a high quality one on Beta tape, not a home video)
they are less likely to cover you. However they are music
oriented and have a Canadian mandate and you will never
know unless you try. Much More Music and Bravo! both have
more mature demographics that may also be worth trying if
your music is appropriate.
WORLD WIDE WEB The
internet is now an indispensable part of many of our lives.
There are countless ways to promote yourself online. It
would take a book to talk about them all, and by the time
you got that book published half the sites will be gone
or abandoned. Things are constantly changing.
There are no shortage
of E-zines out there, Chromewaves.net, Iheartmusic.net,
Torontoist.com are but a few. There are also countless blogs
out there some of which are associated to mainstream media,
but have separate content. Eye Weekly, CBC Radio3, Carl
Wilson (Globe & Mail)'s Zoilus, etc. Just about every band
also has a MySpace now, and should know the potential that
holds.
There are also message
board communities to consider, from the various YahooGroups
to the Wedge board at the Much Music.com site. However,
these communities tend to be hostile to "spammers" who join
and post about their band and nothing else. Take part in
general discussion, even a little, before flogging your
band.
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