The Good, The Bad and The Ugly of Music PR

The Good - (Sent after a cool, polite email intro asking if I wanted to be on the list)

Hi everyone,

We have a very broad selection of albums for review this week. Please let me know ASAP if you’d like me to put a copy in the post for you tomorrow - I have limited stock for most of these releases.

* The Dead Weather - Horehound
* Maxwell - Black Summer’s Night
* Daughtry - Leave This Town
* Mark Vincent - Mio Visione
* One Love - Smash Your Stereo

Cheers,

XXXX

The Bad - (Unsolicited and 500+ words in length)

Thank you for taking a moment to review this email. We represent the highly respected and international Hip-Hop recording artist (from Queens, New York), Cee-Rock “The Fury”. He is currently signed to the label of !Handzup!/Turmic Records. He is currently available for Interviews, Reviews and Write-Ups. To show you some of his credentials as an artist, here are some links of Cee-Rock “The Fury”’s music video projects. The 1st video link was done with Beats And Styles from Finland (www.beatsandstyles.com) entitled “Straight Up” which is currently released on Sony BMG. The 2nd video link is entitled “Lyssynup” (pronounced “Listen Up” - which was completely shot in New York City)…And on and on and on….Thank you in advance and I await your reply. XXXX

The Ugly - (This stuff pours in unsolicited every day)

Example 1:

Dear Sir/Madam, New Nobility Band peace-rock band which fight for global justice,and won numerius awards including World peace music award-India, MusicAid”Best Band”2007-U.K sending for WeAreHunted new video-clip:MAKE A BETTER WORLD, BLUE BUTTERFLY(revolution) and GALACTIC. Please visit the below links for New Nobility biography, mp3 songs and video clip ‘Galactic’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozwO0tjNEmo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xR_ePdn2ZYM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36qlWxwzU4M http://www.myspace.com/newnobilityband I look forward to hearing from you. Kind Regards, S.Trnka

Example 2:

I hope you are well. I’m contacting you from Tailsweep (blog/social media network) generating awareness for Master Shortie through exclusive content (video, audio, txt etc) 13 I have done a lot of blog outreach and have identified We Are Hunted as an influencer within the music category, especially around your article on June 19th 1CMaster Shortie 13 Dead End 1D. I have access to this exclusive content, if you are interested in creating a post please get back in contact with me and I 19ll send that through (ideally looking to get this seeded no later than 06/07/2009). We will also be running a 300×250 ad unit for this campaign 13 run dates 06/07/2009 13 12/07/2009 with a net CPM of £2.80 if this is also of interest.

Example 3:

“Strong Together” remixes by Heavy Feet, Ko Matsushima and Cockblockers “Strong Together” from Kidda’s debut album “Going Up” comes with a cracking set of distinctive remixes which are released early on Beatport. The original has had some upfront plays on radio and Steve Lamacq had this to say about it on his Radio 2 show. “”A summery update on Northern Soul” You can check out the tracks here: https://www.beatport.com/en-US/html/content/release/detail/178521/Strong%20Together

Update: After posting this I received a genuine, polite explanation for the email I’d originally used as my ‘bad’ example.  The person I spoke to was open and honest about the process and approach they were using and apologetic for a mistake that had caused me to receive the same email twice.  Given all that, I decided to pull the the example because I didn’t feel it still warranted being called ‘bad PR’.  The fact they were actively monitoring and engaged, and then genuine in trying to sort the issue, is in fact an example of good music PR.