Getting Music Reviews

Online Reviews Are Easiest
OK, so you definitely want your music reviewed. Where do you start, online or print reviews. The fact that you’re reading this here should answer that quite quickly.

It is much easier to get a music review online than in a print magazine. Space limitations are an obvious reason… print magazines are limited by physical pages. Thus, they’ll tend to try to make the most of every single review they write. Consequently, you either need to already be famous or really impress the hell out of the reviewer to get written up in a big music magazine.

Print “zines” may be a better bet for reviews, and in fact can be handled pretty much like online review sites. The only thing is that you may have to spring for a copy of them, which can get expensive and/or time consuming.

Online review sites really have no such constraints. For them, the main cost is the work it takes to write up reviews. The number of “pages” is pretty much free so they can include more reviews. But consequently, they will often get more people sending them things.

So then, what is the best way to come up with a list of online review sites to send to? Here is one way to go about this that limits the number of packages you send out while maximizing the chance that you will get reviewed. Make a list of your top 25 favorite indie bands that you feel your music is influenced by or sounds similar to. These don’t have to (and really shouldn’t) be extremely famous bands, thought they should have somewhat of a following. But forget U2 and Sting. Think famous on the fringes, like Arcade Fire or Decemberists or Yo La Tengo. Don’t know those names? For more inspiration, check out some of the major indie labels like Matador and Merge to find ones that you do know. If possible, choose bands that have a similar sound or genre to yours.

Now take that list and visit the “official sites” for all of those bands. Most will have a “press page” that either lists the actual reviews that they have gotten, or has links to them. They should also say WHERE the review was taken from. Start making a second list of all of the online review sites you find with their home URLs. Try to read a bit of each review to see if the reviewer likes genres of music that are similar to what you play. Put a star next to those. You will start to see the same online review sites emerge, and that’s good.

After going through all the bands. Take that second list of review sites and visit each one of them. This is important for two reasons: one, to find out the site’s review policies and two, to see if they still exist! Don’t laugh, new online review sites are born every day, and an equal number fold up shop after less than a year. So go through the list and cross off the ones that are defunct.

At the same time, take a look at the reviewing policies for each music site. Almost all have a page that talks about it. You want to find out for each the following: Do they accept unsolicited and/or unsigned bands? What’s their physical address to send stuff to (many will make you contact them first to get it)? How long does it usually take to get a review? If they have more than one writer, what is the name/contact email of the reviewer that is most likely to dig your music and is it possible to send it to them directly?

Cross out the sites that don’t take unsolicited (and unsigned, if you are not signed) bands. Write down all other information and anything else you think is important next to each review site. It might be helpful to start up a spreadsheet to keep all this info.

To add to this list of music review sites, go to some of your friends’ music websites (you do have friends who are musicians, right?). If they’ve gotten online reviews, investigate each of them and follow the same process above.

When you’re done, you should have a pretty good starting list for music review websites to send stuff to. And because each of those sites has reviewed a band that plays music similar in style to yours, and you looked at each of them by hand, you’ve increased your chances of getting reviewed.

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