This website has an enormous list of record labels, grouped by genre, and by city or country. When we got our 100 copies of our partial release printed up, we went through the list of labels in our genre, CREATED A DATABASE, and one by one checked out their websites. Many of them were out of business, but several were still going strong. For the labels that seemed right for us, we emailed them and asked permission to submit our project. In that email we gave them a short description of our record, and a link to where they could listen if they wanted to take the time. For the ones that responded, we then wrote a cover letter, mentioning how we’d communicated in email, and then again gave them a brief description of our project, and depending on what we’d accomplished at that point [like airplay and licensing], we mentioned some of that. Then we mailed them a CD WITHOUT THE SHRINK WRAP. [ALWAYS take off the shrink wrap when you’re giving your CD to someone in the industry, it’s a courtesy to save them time.] For the people who didn’t respond the first time, we emailed them again. If they didn’t respond after that, we left them alone. This is how we got 10 song licenses for various compilations before our CD was even finished. Having that to promote our full release was hugely valuable.
[Hi all, Ellen here. I've decided to take a very long handout that I created for my college students and break it down into a series of blogs. This is a summary of what I know about promoting yourself and your music online. If you or someone you know is a self released artist who doesn't necessarily have a plan of action after the CDs are manufactured, subscribe to this blog and read the series. I'm breaking it down into bite sized portions. ]
