Good, practical advice about writing music press releases is in short supply. As someone who’s both written and received many, many press releases, I can tell you Michele Wilson-Morris’ article “Seven Mistakes To Avoid When Writing A Press Release” is sound. Particularly on-target is #2: “Don’t Believe The Hype? Don’t Write the Hype”:
Your objective is not to make people laugh. You may state factual details about your event, but saying that your upcoming performance is “going to be the bomb” or using adjectives and/or phrases that actually infer how great it will be is taking it a little bit too far…Bragging is not professional, and it is actually quite a turnoff.
Hear hear! However, considering the number of delusional characters I’ve run into making music, I’d amend that to “Don’t write the hype — even if you truly, truly believe it with all your heart. Because you’re wrong.”
Also, as someone who has also written more than his fair share of search-optimized copy, I wouldn’t advise one to spend too much time on #6: “Keywords: A Press Release’s Best Friend”, as there’s little more painful to read than amateur attempts at search optimization — just make sure you state clearly what the release is for and include all relevant information, and let the search engines work it out for themselves. Alternately, I’d recommend hiring a search-optimization expert to do the work if that’s really a major concern for your project, or at the very least doing some serious reading about proper SEO tactics before awkwardly wedging “hottest rock band San Diego” into every other sentence.
Michael from Musibility contacted me recently, asking some relevant questions about copywriting, music, and the nebulous area I inhabit where the two intersect. It turned into a full-blown interview, which I found interesting enough to save, document, and post below:
Q: I found that you’re a musician as well as a copywriter. I thought you’d be the perfect candidate to know both sides. Let’s say there’s an artist who has an album releasing in 3 months and has a mailing list of 3,000 fans. The average artist would probably just email saying “coming out soon” a few times, maybe give updates as to what is going on with the album artwork or the studio progress.. and then finally announce the release. What could a well written sales copy do for them?
Aaron Poehler: Actually, as a musician, copywriter, and former music journalist I’ve experienced all sides of the music promotion game and seen some of the best and worst of each. What professional copywriting can help you achieve depends on two things: 1. where you are, and 2. where you want to be.
In the example you gave (artist who has an album in 3 months, a mailing list of 3,000 fans), this artist has probably developed a certain rapport with their fans via email/twitter updates or face-to-face at shows. In this situation, hiring the wrong copywriter could be worse than hiring none at all. If what was previously a friendly discussion between artist and fans suddenly becomes a high-pressure ‘hard sell’ campaign, longtime fans are likely to be put off and irritated, while chances of actually getting new music sales may be no higher. Music copywriting must be carefully tailored to work in tandem with who an artist is, what they wish to convey with their music, and the image (or lack of same) they project. Otherwise it’s just going to be good money after bad.
On the other hand, very often artists lack the perspective to effectively market themselves and their music. They try and cram every aspect of their music into a marketing medium which is suited to convey only simple thoughts and messages, and are unable to reduce their creativity to a simple tagline. That’s fine; it’s not their job to do so, it’s a musician’s job to make good music. A good copywriter can help connect that music with people.
A good copywriter can also help keep you from sounding like a complete idiot. I know when I was working as a music journalist I could tell from a quick perusal of a onesheet bio whether an album was getting played or going straight into the trash. Certain phrases and presentations telegraph amateurism and wannabes; needless to say, no one wants to come off this way, but the majority do. By hiring the services of a skilled, experienced copywriter, you automatically put yourself ahead of 95% of the pack.
Q: How would you recommend an artist to go about finding the right copywriters, rather than bad ones that would hurt the effort or just editors posing as copywriters? How much would they cost?
Aaron Poehler: There are really no shortcuts to finding a good copywriter — or perhaps more importantly, an appropriate one. Word of mouth is always a good sign, so ask for recommendations, but if you don’t know anyone who’s used copywriting services that may not be helpful. In that case, try to find someone with experience in the field who has professional work samples somewhat in line with what you’d like.
How much it should cost is literally impossible to say without knowing the scope of the project — I’ve done everything from help bands come up with appropriate names to writing press releases and bios to crafting entire advertising campaigns. It shouldn’t cost more than you’re willing and able to pay, but jobs can be either billed hourly or on a per-job basis. It’s generally a good idea to get at an estimate before committing to a particular individual, and make absolutely sure you have the money you’re committing to pay and you’re not spending mythical back-end dollars you think will come rolling in someday. If you stiff someone, word gets around quickly, and that’s really not the kind of word-of-mouth any musician is looking for.
Q: Sounds very reasonable, I like that you don’t fluff it up. When I was researching “copywriting for musicians” (interchanging a lot of words) I couldn’t find many that were specialized in that area until I found you. Copywriting is often confused with copyrighting. [AP note: you’re telling me!]
So if a band is in the infancy stage a copywriter (maybe even a branding agency?) could be a major help to the “stickiness” of the band name and image. But for a formed band they will often be broke and spending their money on microphones, amps, etc. So someone like you probably won’t be affordable to most bands during that time because they’ll be saving up for releasing an album or EP.
But lets say they saved up $5000 for an EP and marketing campaign. I would assume that before they ever step into the studio that they should see someone like you that knows how to do a good campaign. What can they expect for $1000 to someone like you(qualified) and $4000 on their EP? Is 20% a good amount to spend on marketing an album?
Aaron Poehler: These questions are getting into the marketing end of things rather than copywriting. A copywriter is not an advertising agency; I don’t place ads or set budgets for advertising.
I would also say your assertion that marketing should be taken into account “before they ever step into the studio” is completely wrong. Get the music right first, then figure out how to market it, not vice versa.
A copywriter will write something for you when you know what you need: press releases, blog posts, ad copy, whatever. But you have to know what you need, it’s not a copywriter’s job to tell you.
Q. You’re right on about getting the music right first. I work in a recording studio and I’ve seen artists who aren’t ready, it’s an expensive nightmare for them. I’ve also seen good albums released with no money left over for marketing them. Unfortunately in those cases by the time enough money is available to market the album, it’s 6 months old and lost it’s buzz.
Can you give an example or two of phrases that go in the trash versus those that were ahead of the pack?
Aaron Poehler: These things tend to come in cycles, where for six months or a year, people will be trying to hop on whatever they perceive as the current trend either in terms of music or in how they present themselves (image/marketing/etc.). Problem is, if you’re imitating something that’s currently popular, you’re already old hat by default — and out of the race. Hopping on today’s fad is a sure route to sounding dated and ridiculous tomorrow, and fashionable types hate nothing more than last season’s look. Be who you are, not who you think people want you to be.
I realize that isn’t very specific advice, so here are a few real-life flags that let me know without fail a band or artist does not have their act together enough for me to waste my time on their music:
A. Ridiculous lists of influences. I’m sure you genuinely believe your music was influenced by everything from Duke Ellington to Ray Charles to Faith No More to Paul Simon to John Zorn. However, if your band sounds like Phish crossed with the Grateful Dead, that’s what you should say.
B. No one cares that you got a music award in elementary school. So did everybody. It’s not amazing that you’ve been playing the piano since you were 8. You are not a child prodigy unless you are in classical music. (Even then, you are not a child prodigy.)
C. Describe the music. It’s not “like nothing else ever heard before”, trust me.
D. Don’t say how the music is “definitely going to set the world on fire.” No it’s not, and if it was, I’d have heard of it.
E. Don’t plagiarize.
F. The more elaborate, glossy, and expensive the presskit, the shittier the music.
G. Don’t forget to include all relevant information: at a minimum, website, email, phone, and US mail contact info.
H. Don’t take it personally when someone doesn’t like your music. More importantly, when you do take it personally, don’t pretend to be “a fan” and write the reviewer to complain because he or she will laugh at you and tell all their reviewer friends.
A number of factors have led to my updating this blog less regularly of late, including working on my novel and other writing activities. Priorities, you know. However, I have finally gotten around to updating many of the other pages on this site, including the professional copywriting page, the homepage, the about page, and the music page, and I even tweaked the design a bit. So that’s something. Hopefully I’ll be able to post here a bit more often at some point in the future — we’ll see. In the meantime, it’s not like there isn’t plenty of stuff on the writing page to check out.
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As I believe I’ve mentioned here before, I’m a freelance copywriter with many years of experience crafting professional writing. Although the benefits of hiring a professional copywriter are well-documented, once in a while people try to do it themselves. Usually what happens is they find that it’s not as easy at it looks, give up quickly, and hire a copywriter anyway. Sometimes, though, amateur copy gets passed through anyway, which inevitably ends up resulting in embarrassment for all concerned. Witness this otherwise fairly professional-looking Philadephia legal website: I don’t know for sure that they cheaped out on the copywriting end, but either way, whatever they did didn’t work out so well. I just picture a police officer saying, “Thank god his injuries were only fatal. He could have suffered serious injuries!”
The TV show Heroes started up once more this week. I wouldn’t exactly describe myself as an avid watcher of the show during its first season, but I kept up with it enough that I watched the season finale the night it was broadcast. Then that finale hit, and when I describe it as “unsatisfying” I’m being charitable — it may have killed the show for me. I did watch the season 2 premiere when the show returned, but never managed to get back to it: the remainder of season 2’s episodes sat unwatched long enough that now I’m left with the decision of whether to bother even trying to get back into the show now that it’s back for season 3. I’m leaning towards the answer being “no” for one reason: Jeph Loeb.
This week, two Loeb-written comics came out, and both were ostensibly “finales” in their own way, Ultimates 3 #5 being the last of the mini-series and Hulk #6 being the end of the story arc. Now, in case you haven’t been keeping up, Loeb only uses one plot for his comics lately: someone’s been murdered and there’s a mystery. There are very well-defined rules for writing this type of plot, and it’s best to stick to them unless you’re a genius because otherwise your audience is likely to feel cheated and will not be back for more. Amazingly, Loeb manages to break those rules in both books. Suffice to say, he is not a genius.
In Ultimates 3 #5, we do at least get a partial, half-assed answer for who killed the Scarlet Witch in #1, although the explanation makes absolutely no sense, like the rest of this series. Worse, an out-of-nowhere last-page reveal confuses the issue even more: okay, so a robot went nuts and killed Wanda. And then…Doom was involved somehow? To what end? To top it off, the second ‘mystery’ in the book — “who’s the Black Panther” — is answered but not solved. We see, yes, as pretty much everyone guessed after the second (first?) issue, Captain America is the Black Panther. But why? “Uh, I’ll tell you later.” FUCK YOU JEPH LOEB. That is not an answer.
Hulk #6 is even worse, though. The entire story arc has been based around one thing: who’s this new Red Hulk that shot the Abomination? And this issue DOESN’T answer the question at all — or even promise that the answer is coming. It feels like nothing more than the second-season premiere of Twin Peaks, where the entire show’s audience collectively stopped watching after the program failed to deliver on its implied promise to answer their questions. There again, by the time the answer to the mystery was finally delivered, no one was watching.
Both books fail to deliver satisfying endings, even given my lowered expectations. And when I’m wondering whether the addition of a red-suited superspeed character is intriguing enough for me to catch up on Heroes, I’m going to remember that, and my season 1 disappointment, and I think it’s going to be hard to suspend my disbelief and have faith that it’ll pay off this time as long as Jeph Loeb remains a creative force on the show.
Besides, Dexter is coming back, and that always rocks. Forget the weak bullshit — life’s too short to watch shows that could be good, or used to be good, or might get good.
Below you may input your name and email address to receive announcements when there are new developments on AaronPoehler.com. I vow not to deluge you with forwarded chain letters and tasteless jokes.
Good, practical advice about writing music press releases is in short supply. As someone who’s both written and received many, many press releases, I can tell you Michele Wilson-Morris’ article “Seven Mistakes To Avoid When Writing A Press Release” is sound. Particularly on-target is #2: “Don’t Believe The Hype? Don’t Write the Hype”:
Michael from 
Nebraska Governor Calls Special Session to Revise Safe Haven Law
I wrote the following ten new search-optimized webpages for the website of East Brunswick, New Jersey family law attorney Frank E. Tournour:
I wrote and search-optimized all of the copy for 
The TV show Heroes started up once more this week. I wouldn’t exactly describe myself as an avid watcher of the show during its first season, but I kept up with it enough that I watched the season finale the night it was broadcast. Then that finale hit, and when I describe it as “unsatisfying” I’m being charitable — it may have killed the show for me. I did watch the season 2 premiere when the show returned, but never managed to get back to it: the remainder of season 2’s episodes sat unwatched long enough that now I’m left with the decision of whether to bother even trying to get back into the show now that it’s back for season 3. I’m leaning towards the answer being “no” for one reason: Jeph Loeb.