Beware of the Wolves

Beware of the Wolves !
by Tony Koretz http://www.koretzmusic.com/tony.html

You are a budding new artist/band with a CD that's hot off the press, and you think it's fantastic. If only the right people get a hold of it, you will be on the road to success! Then you get an email from someone in a far away country who tells you they have a radio station (or a magazine) that plays or promotes just the sort of music that you do. Could you please send them a CD (free of course), and they will feature your music. Wow, you think! Here's one chance already ! So off you go, posting the CD at "your" cost to this distant land, or state, hoping that maybe this will help get you noticed. A while later you email this person to ask how it's going. A day passes, then a week, then...............still no reply.

Sound familiar ?

Four years ago, when I released an album, I got a number of such emails, and yes, I posted away a bunch of CDs to these people, never to hear from them again. It is important to give away some CDs to help promote your album, to reviewers, promoters, radio stations etc, but be wise as to who you send them to. In fact just recently I attended a series of seminars put on by trustworthy and successful people in the music industry, and one of these people said during the course of their talk, be prepared to give away up to 200 CDs for promotional purposes. Wow that's a lot of CDs ! Whether that figure is right or not, is probably open to a little bit of conjecture, but as independent artists, we do need to look at ways of promoting our music, and giveaways are one of those. But I have learnt a thing or two now, and when these people started emailing me again with the release of my next album , instead of blindly posting off discs to their addresses, I began asking some questions first. Like , do they have a website that you can visit to check out their credentials ? Or where can I get a hold of one of their printed magazines, or brochures ? And I started emailing them back with some questions to test their authenticity. After all, it's one thing to give away CDs for genuine promotions, but it's another thing to send them to people who want to add them to their collections (or worse sell them off for profit ), free of charge. So, beware of people who email you wanting you to send them something for free, because if they were really "important" people in the industry they probably wouldn't need to email you asking for a freebie. Now, while there are some people who have genuine reasons for wanting you to give them something for free, weigh up the costs first, because after all, if you are like me and music is your bread and butter, you probably have to watch your budgets somewhat, as ultimately we are in the business of "selling " music. In the end, myself, I would rather be giving away money to worthy charities than dodgy " freebie hunters".

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