The real guide to getting a record deal part 2

Welcome back for part 2, before we continue I would just like to point out that the tips in this guide are not just specific to dealing with record companies, a lot of the information could also be applied when approaching management or publishing companies.

Now last time we ended on the subject of demos, so once we have the completed demo ready to go we need to know where we are sendng it. This is the time to start researching record labels, the temptation maybe to knock out as many copies as you can afford and send them to every address you can find but I would much rather send 10 cd’s out to well researched contacts than 100 cd’s to any company that has ever put a record out. As well as wasting money you are showing yourself to be unprofessional and in this business first impressions count!

Find labels that release your style of music, check their website and see what the latest releases are, get as much information about the company as you can and compile a list. Once you have selected your companies check there submission guidelines, you may find this on the website or you may have to email or phone them. What we are trying to acheive is to look as professional and business like as we can after all this is a business.

Once we have our chosen companies we need a name to send the package to, unless specified on the submission guidlines never address the demo to ‘The A&R dept’ this will flag up your demo as unsolicited. Now it never ceases to amaze me how some musicians have no problem with standing in front of a couple of hundred people and singing but find it difficult to pick up a phone and talk to someone. If you struggle with this then get someone else to do it as this part can be crucial in getting your music heard.

The Dragon

I once read a business book that described how every business has a dragon, somone at the end of the phone whose job it is to get rid of the 90% of phone calls that come in during a day from timewasters and sales people. Record companies are no different imagine if everyone that phoned up EMI and demanded to speak to the head of A&R was put through to them. They would never release another record!

So it is you job to tackle the dragon, after a bit of experience you will find that some are worse than others but all will regard you as the bottom of the food chain.The other thing you will notice is that some of these people are very professional receptionists who have obviously done the job for years and that is their chosen profession, these are the worst and hardest to overcome. However there are some who are obviously using the job as a stepping stone to a career in the music business and are hoping that starting off on reception is better than nothing. These ones can be used to your advantage the trick is to recognise early in the converstion which type you have got. The minimum amount of information you need before putting the phone down is a name and email address of someone in the A&R dept but be ready to adapt to every situation and if you can get more information take it. Always be ready to take advantage of lucky breaks, once I was trying to get a contact for a very large music publishing company to send a friends demo too. I wasn’t having much luck and the best I could get was an email address for the personal assistant to the managing director. I fired an email off to see if I could get any further information and straight away an out of office reply came back asking for all enquiries to be emailed to another address. The only detail was a mans name, no department or job title was mentioned so I sent the email again and within 5 minutes I had a phone call from the guy who was intrigued as to how I had got his contact details. It turned out that this guy worked in the accounts department but had ambitions to work in the more glamorous parts of the music business and he was quite excited that someone had contacted him about a possible new artist. He assured me that he was friends with the head of A&R and if I sent the demo for his attention he would make sure it got heard. I sent the demo and true to his word I had got a reply back from the head of A&R within 3 or 4 days which is a still a record.

Once you have got the name and email address send an email just asking if it would be ok to send your demo to them, this just helps to put your name or the name of our band into their heads and when they get to your demo they may think they have heard of that name. Sometimes you will get  reply to these mails but don’t worry if you don’t still send the demo.

thats all for now until part 3