03 May 2006

Hype, PR, the music industry "machine"...

An inside look at what it's like to do the MP3 blog thing, that's what I'm going to give you. I just got the following, it concerns a new song that's just been made available by one of the "hot" bands out there. I'm sharing this because a few folks were curious about what kinds of PR stuff is sent my way. There's really a ton, but here's the message I just got with the only edit being that anything directly relating to what was actually being pushed has been removed because I'm sure as heck not posting about 'em.

http://myspace.com/______

When I get over this mountain, you know where I'm gonna go? Straight down the Myspaceppy River to the Gulf of _______! What the... Hey! Now you can DOWNLOAD "_________" FREE ON MYSPACE. And you can stream all of ________ here: ________. The whole album. Can you even imagine what that's like?

Oh, you know who's REALLY gonna love this? Your readers. Seriously. I hope you like traffic because traffic is the thing that you will have tons of once you post this hair curling item. Also, if you don't have the record yet, will you please tell me so I can give it to you? Great.
Do you love it?? Be honest. I know you do. Just as an FYI to those sending things to EAR FARM: I respond much better to personalized emails that don't make me feel like a PR hooker. If I'm going to drink the kool aid and write about something that brings traffic my way that's being talked about everywhere else, I'll do it in my own way...like yesterday.

Where does that leave us? When the PR email is more interesting/entertaining than the band it is about, I post the email.

4 comments:

Amy said...

Good lord, I feel dirty just reading that. I've got my own little collection of clueless PR missives.

Matt Hayhurst said...

Great Post.

Anonymous said...

i thought by now the whole world had caught on to sarcasm. my fault.

Eric said...

Matt, I was one click away from posting something exactly like this last week. Form letters in which the blog title is the only thing changed do nothing for me. I seriously had the whole thing written but deleted it since it was pretty scathing. I second your thoughts.