I read a great article on a site that sells email lists. They wrote that they get a lot of complaints that their lists don’t work. People didn’t get answers they sent to over 1000 emails and only got two answers. The site explained that you really need to check out the blog, radio station, record label, etc before you send it to them. Not just send an email. Yes, this takes time. It’s quite easy to just put emails into an email list and just send a generic e-mail. The problem is that it never fits everyone. The generic email almost never fits anyone.
You have to go into each site to see what’s it all about and adapt your email content. So instead of sending 1000 emails in one hour, you are down to be able to send maybe 30 emails a day if you are working efficiently.
Why don’t people answer? Here is a mail that came into one of the festivals we work with. On Facebook not even on the official email that goes to the bookers.
Dear,
Hope you're ok.
We contacted you before, last year, about a concert of ******** from USA, blues, bluesrock.
We got the news that it is possible again to give concerts, with smaller capacity. So we started to plan a July-tour in Sweden.
Because of the situation, ***** will go solo.
We would love to perform at your location. We want to know how you work with live bands or artists. ***** has an own ticket system, so we can work this way too.
Please let us know if you have availability in July.
And hope we can work something out.
Looking forward to hearing from you!
*** e presskit ***
*** Youtube link ***
[3/11/2012]
First, as I mentioned, it came through on Facebook, the person that handles the social media for the festival is not the booker. It’s not even interesting for this person to send this along. Why I saw it is that I was in there looking for something else. Since it clearly says a lot of instructions on how to reach the festival team on the homepage we can directly see that she hasn’t even done her homework. It’s a festival. She assumes it’s a gig place. Just that errror could have been avoided by a quick look on the Facebook page.
The festival is held in September. She is asking for dates in July! Also easy checked on the Facebook page and the homepage.
She got the news that you could do smaller capacity shows? That is more than I know. Sweden has not opened up like several others and is still in 50 person capacity. And it looks like we will keep that over July as well.
She wants to discuss how we work with artists. We really don’t have time to discuss that even with the artists we book. Anything that says that I need to explain or discuss things is a big no no.
Having our own ticket system. I really don’t see the point. If we were a venue we would have a ticketing system. As a festival, we have that already. And to be honest there are so many ticketing systems out there so getting one is as easy as getting spam mails. Another question that arises is if we used the artist ticketing system how safe is that we ever got the money that we sold for?
Why am I not writing this back to her? No, then you get a full email with explanations and other information. We are not paid to clean up the booking agents’ mistakes. Already here we don’t have any possibilities. We don’t have a show in July, and we are not opened up for more than 50 people and that can change if a second wave would happen. Finally, we are not interested to work with a booker that has not researched our event and having errors in each sentence in their communication. We just have to explain everything over and over again, things that already are presented on our homepage.
Instead, you just don’t answer. Leaving the person to make the same mistakes over and over again. Meet them later on a music business conference where they complain that it is so hard to get an answer from the music industry.
More and more also people are just talking to professionals that they know can deliver what they need. That is the route to go if you want success.
Contact Peter@:
pastedt@gmail.com (personal email)
peter@casboxradio.ca (Station Manager)
Discover Sensation https://musichelp.se/discover-sensation/
Editor’s Note: Peter Åstedt has been working in the music industry for over 30 years. He has started record labels, distribution systems, and publishing companies. Peter also runs several major showcase festivals and is an advisor for INES and co-founder of MusicHelp/Discover Sensation. He has worked with the Top Ten most streamed songs and had music on both the Olympics and Super Bowl. Peter has currently taken up the seat of Station Manager of Cashbox Radio, working with MD, PD and station owner, Sandy Graham.