Paying to Promote

S

Seafroggys

Well-known member
So one of my bands has just release an album, released on CDBaby, Amazon, itunes, yada yada (link in sig), and we were approached by a UK magazine to do a review. Cool, that's awesome. Then the rep approached us with offering things like an interview and a track or two to appear in their CD sampler that comes with their mags for a fee.

I'm instantly against the idea, having to pay to have an interview and paying money to have our songs appear on a CD that people are essentially paying for. It doesn't sound scammy, as this is a legitimate magazine, but it just screams bad idea to me. The singer is pretty keen on doing it though. It something like 50 pounds ($83 for us) so it wouldn't be a huge waste of money, but in order for it to work we'd have to make at least 9 album sales off of this. Which is feasible, but while I'm proud of the production of the album (I did home rec it), we'll be competiting against a bunch of other people who could have better music, so if 1% of the subscription base (which is 5000 according to them) make a single purchase, and there's 10 bands on the album, all things equal that's 5 albums sold.....we're at a loss.

Obviously the point of this would be just to sell albums, touring/live playing in the UK is out of the question...hell, we can barely fill a small bar here in Portland.

So, thoughts? Am I correct in thinking this is not a great idea and that we're getting a bad deal, or is it worth it because its really not a large sum of money?
 
I think it's such a small amount of money, it might be worth it just to see what happens.

Mags are business first, art last. You gotta pay to play in this world. I'd personally tell them to fuck off. I hate the idea of someone else making money off of me if I'm barely making it myself. But yall need to make that decision as a band.
 
I wouldn't. The way it works is the zine is making money on the content (you), so really they should be paying you. The world is getting twisted in so many ways, this being just one example. Since when did the artist become a paying client?

If you really want to promote, find a real promoter. It sounds like this zine has their head up their arses. They're simply using you as a supplemental revenue stream. I think the real 'tell' is that they contacted you. In sales that's a cold call. And it (almost?) worked.

BTW, 5,000 is a puny number.
 
Yes everything is fucking backwards. ALL, and I do mean ALL of the power has left the creative entity and is controlled by the business side of the equation. Bands pay for gigs now. How fucked up is that shit? Bands happily play for free all the time in a desperate attempt to get fans. It's because the universe is over-saturated with billions of crappy bands all trying to get in on some action. Too many bands, not enough talent, and the listeners don't have enough attention span. Even if you hit them with something good, they'll move on to something else in very short time.

Paying for promotion isn't the end of the world though. Real promotion. It's cute and sweet to think that facebook and youtube are valuable promotional tools, but they aren't. They're bullshit and no one cares. This mag thing sounds silly to me, but you do what you think is best.
 
If the singer thinks its a good idea, let HIM pay! 5000 subscribers is very small, and your odds of selloing any albums are too low to make it worthwhile. Who buys magazines these days? People waiting at the airport, maybe. At the local Barnes & Noble they have a huge mag section and you can grab one, go have a Starbucks coffee, read the magazine and put it back on the shelf when you are done.

Like Greg says, this whole 'pay for gigs' that is prevalent today has really fucked up everything.
 
i would suck it up and do it. you gotta spend money to make money, and being in a published magazine is a good look. think about the big picture.
 
I think 5000 is their total subscription. So it's not huge but probably still viable.
I agree with Greg that for that small amount of money you should go for it. I look at the interview as advertising, you'd have to pay to advertise anywhere else. The CD sales will probably suck because no one buys CD's nowadays.
 
That's 5000 people who will read the first paragraph of the article and listen to the first song on the compilation CD.
 
I paid 35 bucks for a vanity review of my first album, and it was very thorough and well-written.
I never link to it or quote it anywhere because it feels kind of dishonest, but I still get traffic from it and it was well over a year ago. I don't regret it, but obviously check out the publication and make sure the writers are competent and knowledgeable, and also that your music is a good fit.
 
Promotion is usually always paid for some how. If you are already famous or popular, then you sell more hits (can be magazine buys or web traffic, it is about the same) which pays for advertising.

If you are with a record company, it comes from a draw of sales (touring, promotions, etc. are paid for by the band, just fronted by the record company).

If you want your stuff heard, it has to be promoted. That requires someone who knows how to do it and they usually get paid. I think what Seefroggy did was correct. If I get .50 for every 5, and I have this potential of sales (so forth and so on) if it equals out or here is net cost, etc.

Promotion is going to cost you, you either pay in playing/touring or playing/touring/promoting but that is the only way to get discovered by people. What you have to be careful is people blowing smoke up your a$$ and getting scammed. If you're serious, you have to promote some how.
 
So for about $90 you get a chance for 5,000 to possible hear your music and learn about your band. Maybe, just maybe acouple of the 5,000 may be A&R people using the mag as one of many ways to discover new talent - or perhaps a producer who scans industry mags looking to keep up on new talent. Or maybe some other artist glances at the mag, hears the CD and decides your band could be a good support act for an upcoming tour?

Or maybe, it's a waste of time and morally and ethically wrong to actually pay $90 to try a different way to promote your music.

If it was my carreer, I'd spent the $90
 
Xdrummer said:
So for about $90 you get a chance for 5,000 to possible hear your music and learn about your band. Maybe, just maybe acouple of the 5,000 may be A&R people using the mag as one of many ways to discover new talent - or perhaps a producer who scans industry mags looking to keep up on new talent. Or maybe some other artist glances at the mag, hears the CD and decides your band could be a good support act for an upcoming tour?

Or maybe, it's a waste of time and morally and ethically wrong to actually pay $90 to try a different way to promote your music.

If it was my carreer, I'd spent the $90
Click to expand...

Maybe it's not 1975 anymore.
 
I did something similar to indulge the other guy in the band... and because it wasn't clear at the time that we'd ever complete a full album... 5000 copies of a compilation CD in the free music press publication that everyone reads in Sydney. It led to absolutely nothing. People were picking the mag up and just chucking the CD away... so I have a stack of copies... :D

It's not much money I guess, but there are many such snares along the way... which do you pay for and which not?
 
Yeah, actually I'm now appending my previous comment to say if you're paying extra to to appear on a free comp CD, don't because no one listens to those. I listen to music constantly and don't even own a CD player anymore.

Paying a small amount for some real publicity is sensible. Trying to get on a comp CD is pretty useless.
 
Armistice said:
It's not much money I guess, but there are many such snares along the way... which do you pay for and which not?
Click to expand...

I had to pay for all of my snares. They aint cheap!

---------- Update ----------

fat_fleet said:
Yeah, actually I'm now appending my previous comment to say if you're paying extra to to appear on a free comp CD, don't because no one listens to those. I listen to music constantly and don't even own a CD player anymore.

Paying a small amount for some real publicity is sensible. Trying to get on a comp CD is pretty useless.
Click to expand...

This is true. No one listens to complimentary compilation CDs. Club floors are littered with those things at the end of a night. Free music no one's ever heard of? No thanks.
 
On the other end of the spectrum, I think if you're really into music and like to write, running a blog that sells a good thorough write-up to unknown bands could be a pretty lucrative side business, especially if you do it well and don't steer people wrong. I see more and more of those pop up... often they'll have some caveat where they won't accept work that they can't give at least a decent review to.
 
Cool you guys are just affirming what I was thinking. I figured if the singer really wanted to be part of it, I'd have her pay for it, I'm not contributing anything to it.

Btw the review itself is going to be free, its the interview and inclusion on the comp CD is where the fee comes into play.

Another thing is that if we're going to pay money to promote (which there's nothing wrong with that in theory IMO) might as well do it somewhere local, rather than 7000 miles away.
 
Xdrummer said:
Maybe, just maybe acouple of the 5,000 may be A&R people using the mag as one of many ways to discover new talent - or perhaps a producer who scans industry mags looking to keep up on new talent. Or maybe some other artist glances at the mag, hears the CD and decides your band could be a good support act for an upcoming tour?
Click to expand...
These are all such long shots that it's pretty inadvisable to make business decisions based on them.

That being said, your music might be heard by one of your "1000 true fans", which would be worth the $90 assuming your band has the longevity to produce at least $90 worth of merchandise.
As far as marketing goes, $90 for 5000 decent impressions (i.e. people skimming your interview) isn't bad.

The deciding factor I'd use for something like this is looking at their selection process. Did you actually do something to merit inclusion in the compilation, or is it entirely based on buy-in? If they let any crappy band pay and appear on the compilation, that means there isn't any quality control; most of the music will be terrible; and no one will listen. It's the same business model that companies used to use where they'd troll MySpace and get bands to buy into a compilation album.
 
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