The Null Device Blog

The band press kit or one-sheet is like the band photo – it’s a necessary evil.  You’re gunna come off looking like a douchebag no matter what, but you still need to do it.    It’s a lot like a resume in that you can’t get a job without one, you can’t outright lie on it, but you have to polish it to make your accomplishments sound kind of awesome,  and you have to walk that fine line of polishing without insulting the intelligence of the reader.  In the end, you want to have a passable press sheet, since it’s going to be your first foot forward to promoters and if you’re consistent it’ll be the basis for your web presence, press reviews, etc.

I’ll admit know that I’ve written some bad ones.  I’ve certainly read some bad ones, and some even worse ones.  I have also read some good ones, and what follows are some tips I’ve gleaned from those.  I don’t know if I’ve written a good one yet, but I’m trying.  I’ve written a lot of resumes, though and the same sort of tips apply.

1. Be direct. You’ve got a page, tops, to say who you are, what sort of music you make, maybe a few press clippings.  If you spend half of the page exclaiming that you’re the most awesome band ever before anybody has a clue why they should even care, you’ve lost.
2. Good grammar costs nothing. Seriously, people, do you want the primary representation of your musical endeavor to read like it was written by a 7th-grader?   You may be tempted to pepper it with l33tspeek or try and sound like PsychicTV by using “thee” and “ov.”  Don’t.  It’s not cute anymore.  It might be genre-appropriate to use some colloquialisms or slang – if you’re a dubstep act, using the word “wobble” is fine, for example, or if you’re Dizzee Rascal, you can occasionally use the word “wiv.”  Still, it’s dodgy.  Some promoters and the general public may catch on, others may just think you can’t use a spell-checker.
3. You are not a genre-defying, uncategorizable, one-of-a-kind band. Nobody, nobody believes that when they read it, so don’t bother to write it.  Even if, on the off chance you are a genre-bending totally unique act, it’s just not something you can come out and say.  You are not redefining anything, recontextualizing anything, or reinventing anything.  You can describe what you do.  If you can describe your sound well, that’s a stronger advertisement for your work than any “reinvention” BS.
4. Nobody cares who mastered or engineered your last album, or what gear it was recorded on – unless of course those people or gear are coming with you on tour or are always going to be working with you.  This is a reasonably new development, and I’m not sure where it came from.  I’m starting to see a number of acts who spend far too much time detailing exactly what sort of mixing board or synthesizer or producer or engineer was involved.  Trainspotters like me may think it’s cool, but unless it somehow contributes to the overall perception of your band, it’s not worth the space.  The rare exception to this is the producer, since they can have a direct impact on your sound, but even then they have to be established enough for it to make a difference.  For example, if your producer was, say, Brian Eno or someone of that stature – those guys don’t need your money, they have to like you first.

   Basically, you don’t sell your house by listing the plumber.

5. An aesthetic is a tricky thing to work with. If you’re a band with a specific visual identity, you have a tough line to walk.  What a band looks like won’t sell records, and while a stage act may bring bodies to a show, it’s really hard to sell that line to a promoter who’s only got a demo CD and a single photo to go on.   It’s even harder if your look doesn’t match the music – if by design you’re a techno band that dresses up in 14th-century Italianate costumes, well, that may be your thing but an unfamiliar reader is going to just see “schtick.”  Some descriptions are going to sound played-out or bandwagon-y no matter what you do, or no matter how true they are, too.  It’s best to leave that for later.
6. Who you’ve opened for needs to be relevant – and true. If you’re going to say you’ve played with U2, you’d better have opened for U2 and not just played the “Bob’s Grocery Local Talent Stage” at the same enormous music festival  as them.  It’s ridiculously easy to look this stuff up, and if someone can call bullshit on any small part of your presskit, the whole thing gets tossed.  Similarly, even if you did open for someone reasonably respected, it should likely be something that has some cache – opening for the “Pet Sounds” Beach Boys is a vastly different thing from opening for the “Kokomo” Beach Boys, for example.
7. If you’ve been a dick to someone, leave their name off your presskit. If you played a gig with another band, if you didn’t get along or they wouldn’t remember you, don’t namecheck them.  Unless we’re talking about the Rolling Stones, a promoter in your genre is probably going to have the ability to call up and check.  “Hey, yeah, Tom…these Null Device guys…oh, they’re asshats?  Thanks.”  Or worse “Hey, Tom, these Null Device guys…Null Device.   With an N.  No, Device.  So you don’t remember them?  They claimed to have played with you…huh. [click].”
8. Be consistent. A well-written onesheet can serve as a promotional tool in a lot of situations.  If you use the same, or at least very similar, language and content on your website, your myspace, your facebook, your demo, etc, you’re going to put forth a nicely professional and hopefully well-thought-out image.  Obviously certain media will require some tweaking, but the point is simply that tying it all together means you don’t ever have to worry about contradictory or confusing information anywhere a promoter, label honcho, distributor or even a fan might look.  It also saves you a lot of work.
9. A little informality is okay. While this is like a resume, this isn’t a resume.  You don’t have to write it like an insurance policy.  That said, you don’t want to go too far in the other direction.    You’re still trying to sell something, in this case your music, you’re not trying to get a pen pal.
10. Try to focus on the now. This is a tough one, since by definition your previous glories are what are making you attractive to a promoter or label.  There is, however, a limit.  It’s one thing to talk about your last album, or your last two albums.  To reference something you did 15 years ago?  Unless it was something massive that still has repercussions today (or this is a comeback tour for a band that was huge in the 80’s) it’s going to give the distinct impression that you’ve not done much noteworthy since.
11. Edit.  Edit, edit, edit, edit. Pretend this is your final term paper in high school.  It’s got to be spot-on.  Check it over a zillion times.  Have a friend read it.  Get opinions from people you trust.  Anything awkward-sounding, or poorly-written, is going to jump out and distract the reader.  There are still enough grammar fascists and orthography tyrants in the world that there’s a not-insignificant chance that one of them may be on the receiving end.  A misplaced comma or [gasp] quotes used for emphasis instead of facetiousness is going to jump out and be the Thing That They Remember.
12. Don’t expect everyone to know what the heck you’re talking about. While you can assume a certain level of commonality and familiarity on musical genres, if your references and definitions are so obscure or bleeding edge – or worse, you un-ironically coin a genre name for yourself – you’re going to get the promotion equivalent of a blank stare.  It’s the trickiest part of writing up self-referential press; you know what you do, but you have to write for the perspective of someone who has no idea who your references, influences, and baselines are.
13. Go easy on the comparisons. A few are alright, and in fact probably necessary if you’re just starting out.  It’s okay to say you’re influenced by Depeche Mode or Kraftwerk or the Beatles or whatever.  But don’t go nuts.  This is still about you, so a paragraph of your influences is probably overdoing it.  If your sound-description is clear enough,  you can reign back even further – everyone can pretty much take an influence to kraftwerk as read if you describe yourself as making minimal techno.  Too much and you’re wasting space that could be used for your own stuff, and additionally it could be setting the distinct impression on the reader that you’re just not that original.

I saw the documentary “it Might Get Loud” this weekend.

Interesting film.  It’s quickly very clear why those particular three guitarists (Jimmy Page, The Edge, Jack White) were picked – they each represent a different era of guitar heroics, and they’re also the kind of guitarists who are known for their sound as much as any guitar heroics.  As much as there are many super-shredders out there who could outplay all three of them, probably only EVH would have the appropriate amount of crossover appeal.

It’s also clear what these guys did, in terms of their places in their respective bands – Page was a consummate Musician, joining bands after long stints as a studio musician and arranger; The Edge was a hardcore technician and sonic architect, showing up with a guitar and 4 giant racks of effects gear; Jack White was…well, Jack White’s a douchebag.

Okay, maybe that’s not entirely fair.  He has a very distinctive sound and manner of playing, and he’s probably the one of the three who’s got the closest ties to old blues, so there’s that, and he’s  admittedly a reasonably iconic axeman.  But he was also the only one with a lot of conceits – he had his special outfits, he had a sidekick of “12-year-old Jack White” which was a mini-me version of him, and he was busy showing off his playing in some tumbledown old Tennessee house as though he were some backcountry bluesman, and not the $37M-valued rockstar he actually is.  While Page and Edge were pretty frank about what they did and how they did it, Jack White spent about as much time espousing his personal philosophy about vintage gear, recording a song on a battered old plywood guitar into an ancient reel-to-reel (I noted that he  *was* using a like-new $3000 Coles ribbon mic).  He was frankly pretty annoying.

The Edge was, to me, fascinating.  He was pretty spare with words, but he was also surprisingly humble.  He fully acknowledges he’s not an incredible player, but he also displayed almost boyish glee showing off his electronics gear and effects processors.   It was also interesting to see that a good portion of his “U2 sound” was in the way he voiced his chords.

I’ve never been a big Zeppelin fan, although I acknowledge their impact on the development of rock and roll.   And Page was a capital-M musician.  He certainly makes playing look effortless.  His callbacks to those heady, experimental days of the late 60’s when Zep recorded in manor house stairwells with cables running out to a mobile truck were fascinating.  It was also interesting to note his early career – as a kid in a skiffle band, then as a fill-in session musician, then a regularly gigging studio aguitarist doing everything from rock songs to muzak before he finally got fed up and joined the Yardbirds.  He also seems to be the godfather of Rock Face.  Most intriguingly he said he wept while watching Spinal Tap – not because he didn’t think it was funny, but because he said it was hardly parody, accurately portraying the ridiculous excesses of the 70’s rock band.

A lot of the actual music in the film was surprisingly sub-standard.  You’d think that three iconic players in one room jamming would lead to some crazy sessions, but it was really just three dudes sitting on couches halfheartedly strumming their way through the Led Zeppelin backcatalogue, each with a wildly different guitar tone clashing with the other two.   The exception was when Page played something by himself, and it was obvious that neither the Edge nor White could really conceal their joy at watching Jimmy Freakin’ Page cruise through a legendary rock song.

Overall, from a music-nerd standpoint, it was a fascinating film.  Other than U2 I can’t say I’m a big fan of the artists involved, but they did represent three very distinct points of view and approaches to musicmaking.  Also, the “early years” footage of each of the bands in question was often hilarious.  A big-haired, macho-rocking embryonic U2 from the early early 80’s was hysterical, and a 14-year-old Jimmy Page playing “Momma Don’t Allow No Skiffle” on British TV was rather cute.  Footage of the White Stripes obviously doesn’t go back as far, although what was most interesting was how much Meg White’s drumming has improved in the intervening decade.

Sadly, during the film, it never really did get loud.   It did get interesting.

“Recursions” has been out for a month now and I’ve been tracking it with much interest.  For me, it’s not merely a release, it’s part of a continuing experiment in distribution models.

We did “Footfalls” as a giveaway, to see if it would boost album sales for “Sublimation.”  It did, kinda.  We did something similar for “London” and it too gave AMDM a little bump – helped probably by the fact that this time we got the label on board to help out.  We also printed a number of CD versions of it to sell at shows, and those, surprisingly sold out quickly.

When we conceptualized “Recursions”, we decided to take the idea to its logical conclusion – this wasn’t going to be just another “hey download some free tracks from the internet!”, we were going to treat this like a full release.  That is to say, full distribution channels, available downloads, tracking, etc.

In terms of both marketing and money, it’s been our most successful release to date.  It hasn’t sold as many copies as, say, Sublimation, but unlike our other releases it’s completely recouped production costs, making a small profit even, given us a mess of contacts for promotion and “fan relationship” building, and the bulk of promo has been entirely word of mouth.

Production costs were kept low, mainly due to the fact that we didn’t produce a large run of CDs.  We had 100 run up at a cost of roughly $130.    Okay, sure, costs would’ve been higher if I didn’t happen to have a small mastering business that I could just use for my own purposes, but still, the upshot is we DIY’ed the whole thing.  I cut costs here and there – bartering, begging, promising beer to people.  I probably could’ve spent another $100 if I had to shell out retail prices for things like UPC codes.

Next step was to throw this all on bandcamp.com.  I really, really like this service.  It’s incredibly flexible and consumer-oriented, and I really want them to thrive.  They’ve really hit upon something good for a distribution model – give the consumer the formats they want, while giving the artist the ability to control how things are distributed and what information is collected.  Using their system, we gave away Recursions with an optional “enter your own price” field.  Not only did people enter their own price, but they were awfully generous about it.  I expected maybe a few people to throw a buck at it here or there – instead, an awful lot of downloaders spent $5-$10 (usually, the people who downloaded the high-quality FLAC or AL versions gave more).    Better yet, we collected a lot of email addresses – people willingly signing up to our mailing list in exchange for downloading, meaning the next time we have a show or a release, we’ve got a significant number of new people to tell about it.

We spent another $35 to use TuneCore to put the album on Amazon, eMusic, iTunes, and elsewhere.  I know, why bother when it’s free?  Well, to see if people who don’t go to bandcamp.com find it and buy it anyway.  Or to see if people who love the iTunes interface – I’ve heard they exist – buy it.  The more places it is, the easier it’s to find.   This should hit those stores in a few weeks yet.

All told, so far, this release has managed to make a small profit.  Barely enough to, say, buy a hearty breakfast after a show, but still, this is an accomplishment that in over 10 years of writing and releasing music, hasn’t really happened before.  Certainly not within a month of release, anyway (I *think* Sublimation may have finally sold out its first run.  I haven’t seen sales figures on that in a few years).

The upshot is that DIY releases can work.  Maybe not well enough to make a living on, but certainly well enough that they can pay for themselves.  This isn’t news for some people, but for a band like ours, with a low profile and lower album sales, this is a Big Deal.

Recursions is almost done.  I’m in the process of getting the final masters together.

It occurred to me, with a bit of prodding from Matt Fanale, that I’ve never actually talked about what mastering really is.  I’ve blogged passionately about what to do and what not to do, and what gear is good, and what gear isn’t, but…I’ve never actually said what it is and why it’s important.

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Continuing my random stream of music-industry/marketing blogging…

Yesterday, I was talking to the good Dr. Goedken regarding all the recent blasts of marketing ideas, sales concepts, promotions, etc etc that I’ve been itching to try.

Eric asked me “so, well…what’s the goal?  What are you trying to accomplish?”

I was nonplussed for a moment.  It’s not merely a fair question, it’s a very, very important question.

There are thousands of blogs, services, marketeers and consultants at the ready to help you “succeed” in the music business.  But how do you define success?  What’s a realistic goal?  Hell, what’s an unrealistic goal?   Do you want to be the biggest band in the world?  The biggest band in your town?  Sell a lot of records?  Play a lot of shows?  Make a lot of money?  Be respected as an artist long after your death?

This is the kind of question everyone needs to ask.  I personally often forget to keep this in mind, but it’s dreadfully important.  If you want to be a great touring band, then all the bandcamp.com’s and TuneCores in the world aren’t going to help, so focusing effort there might be a waste of resources.   If you want to sell a kajillion records, then going the indie twitter-famous route isn’t a good one.  If you want worldwide respect, signing on with a major label isn’t necessarily your best option.  And so forth.

Sure, everyone has the ambition to be the greatest band on earth.  That’s a goal one could set, too, but I think it’s probably just a little unrealistic, at least from a planning perspective.  It’s also ridiculously hard to quantify, which is an important facet of planning.  A goal like “I want to sell 3000 records” is a lot more quantifiable, or even “I want to sell more records than that douchebag from Null Device” (not only is that quantifiable, it’s not all that hard).  A goal that makes sense and isn’t so nebulous that you don’t know if you’ve met it or not is a good thing to have.

Of course, you don’t need to treat it all like a business.  This isn’t the IT industry where you need a small army of project managers, gantt charts, and some guy coming in periodically to teach your band members “Agile” this or “Total Quality” that.  Failing to meet a goal doesn’t mean you’re going to get fired (unless it’s a sales goal set by your label).  Success as a musician is by its nature a moving target.  So you didn’t sell 3000 records, you only sold 2000.  That’s still pretty good, and if you hadn’t been doing all the stuff you did  to try to sell those 3000, you probably wouldn’t have been able to sell those 2000 either.  That’s a success in and of itself, driven by a goal-based plan.

For a lot of musicians, “success” may simply be “I wrote a song that I’m really happy with.”   That might be enough. Everything beyond that is just a bonus.