My 12 inches of opinion...
Jonhall5446 is dead-up right. Don't forget to give the club owner (prolly the manager, actually) a full press kit, and toss some CDs to a few bartenders and shit a few weeks before hit the manager up, hit the doorman off (if in your city), holla at him "in passing" next slow night you're around. See what he's on. Listen carefully. If it's an out of town club, a press kit & a few extra CDs should do. If there is a soul alive who you can get to vouch for you or your outfit to a club owner/mgr/booking agent, make it happen.
Add to that a little of this, and you'll be all to the good...
Check out some dj & record pool bbs's. some of them have lots of a&r, management, promo, & distribution-type people floating around. Oh yeah, they also have assloads of working club, radio, and bedroom djs.
For starters...
DJ Ran out of philly runs one.
technitions.com
Pool w/bbs worth checking
tjsdjs.com
Your shit can be all over mixtapes, mixhows, etc. Just make it dope, give it away, track as much of the product's activity as possible, and hump to utilize all the
concentrated interest you're getting
at one time. Remember, we're all sheep. If you bang, you'll get burn, trust me. Plenty slick remixes & original joints hit the airwaves that way to turn cats on to someone's production and/or rhyming skills. Neva know who'll call/buy a ticket/cop a cd/pass it along. Just get your shit out, and let djs work for you by blessing them with your shit. For example, the last batch of mix CDs i did, i got 2500 out. Not alot, but enough to do what I needed it to do. Of course, people copied their CDs for their friends, and then
their friends emailed me for their own copy of the cd. I had people from South Africa, Australia, The U.K., and the States emailing for a copy of the cd someone they knew had. Random people, fair enough, but that's 2500 or so that check for my shit (and many have subsequently recieved more recent stuff, too). Some have ended up helping get gigs and press as a result of their interest (directly or indirectly getting gigs at their school, getting plugged into a local shop that likes my stuff &
wants to sell it, etc) Even scrapped up a request to do a remix for a major's popular-yet-fading r&b diva, & several cats asking about production - not in the tens of thousands per track, but not fifty bucks, either. Whoo-hoo. But hey, they know my name & my work, they check for a kid now and again, and they even put me in the mix for additional production work. Ain't that what you want?
If you only wanna do hip-hop, the same rules apply, just target hip-hop pools first (all FEW of them). If your shit is nice and you plug with some decent djs, everyone'll know what's up soon enough.
Plus, as the level of professionalism &/or focus goes up, so do the monies. Hopefully then, the caliber of work (in a perfect world) pushing a song you did goes up a bit, as NOBODY wants to lose money. So get your shit out to people who are doing things and make shit happen (shit like breaking records).
The back-end is
only as fly as the front end.
And, don't forget that many of those jocks in pools and close by are not only club, mobile jocks, but also commercial radio jocks...
College radio/College Music Journal (CMJ).
See which universities have what shows and when. Shoot em a few CDs with one shot & feedback sheet included. CALL THE SHOW whether or not you get the feedback returned, develop a casual business relationship with the
DJs and the PD - just to make sure you stay plugged in to whomever it is doing your format radio shows, and to stay abreast of dj and administration changes. They are all just college students, after all. Offer to do drops for 'em. Ask em to do drops for your next compilation or whatever - make sure they spit the station's call letters & the name of the show, if it has one. I know, I know, shout-outs are supposed to be all fun and games, but this is business. Them cats ain't your friends, and you ain't there's, despite all chummy talk and "one love," and all that shit. Don't forget that. Tell em exactly what you want em to say. They can do additional shouts, however, get at least 2 with exactly what you want said. Offer the same business courtesy to them. Make yourself available to do live or recorded phone interviews and shit.
Don't forget that everything rotates based on semesters, grades, getting laid, and all that other shit when it comes to current personnel. You can find resources (or pointers to them) online re: college radio stations, formats, and specialty shows. Excellent way to get booked at campuses if you're dope & industrious enough to help make it happen - from college radio you go to the student orgs. that bring talent to the school - hit
them w/press kit - i got mixed feelings about sending press kits to the djs or program directors on college radio.
If you got the product, give the stations some extras for giveaways, as well as a few for the sticky-fingered djs who work there - like 3-5 or something...
Oh yeah, if random djs shoot you their addresses via email, make a form feedback sheet & email it to them. Most will reply. Then you got more tracking info to add to your pie, and cool press quoting "DJ Who-He-Is?"
If you got a few hundred bucks and product manufactured, you can also hit up a market-specific promotions company and let them hit off other working stiffs and industry folks at the same time. It's really pretty cheap, actually. That's still
more pub for you and yours all the way around the block. If you're seriously interested in that PM me & i'll get you more specific info about the couple that I kinda dig...
Get your wax (yup, wax) or CDs to record pools in batches of 50-100.The pool directors will tell you exactly how many pieces they want or need. This doesn't have to be a huge up-front expense, especially if you're only working with CDs. Pick pools by regions of the country to minimize active expense. If you don't go everywhere at once, do your best to overlap your PR from market to market. I mean, at week 7-8 of the 10 week tracking period, drop shit to the next region, including feedback from the region you're already touching. Suddenly, your percieved credibility & ability go up 10-fold cuz all the pools in the southeast or wherever are knockin' your shit. Other PDs & jocks will want to listen to
that. Pools will get feedback from their djs, you will get published right alongside any other act that's charting within the pool (if you chart, too) - labels see this, djs see this, people hear this. "Suddenly" people are familiar with your work in various markets - maybe you can book some shows!!! While the pool director is tracking your joint, ask him if he's familiar with the clubs or whatever some of his djs work at. If your song is getting love, you can probably make a connection and maybe get gigs that way, as well as recognition from other labels' reps and whomever else is touched by tracking & feedback. Personally, i think including a press package in product for pools is lame. For the PD, i still wouldn't do it unless he was gonna pass it on to someone who could do something with it. Only give what they ask for. If a dj wants to get you booked, he'll contact you and make it happen. If a pool has an active forum, service em with your shit & ask the pool director if he'll put up a sticky for a 10 weeks (if you can get that many, that's a decent amount of time to track wax), so djs can put feedback up on there (more hopefully positive press for you to quote - take lots of screenshots before it's gone), and you can turn on anyone else who reads the thread with whatever contact presence you wish. Plus, you'll have a stack of cats co-signing for your shit and make some new fans all over, too. If the PD uses email with many/most of his jocks, get him to send the feedback form of yours to them & get the replies FROM THE PD. That is, not directly to you.
Whether you drop a track or the whole joint to them is another question to ask yourself based on what exactly you're trying to do.
Encourage DJs & everyone else to download the tracks to audition & play.
If you want some stuff to sell at shows that isn't available for download, then only put up 2-3 tracks & let people contact you however if they want one. If the general public stumbles or gets sent to your site, you can sell the full length from there if you like. Free to the worker bees, Fee for the working class, feel me?
I could go on, but you get the idea...
Hope that helps.
Oh yeah, you could send me 2 copies
...
djfd
