A few awkward publicist things on a gloomy Wednesday!
First, a journalist forwarded the following (amazing) press release the other day:
Susan Boyle will return to the states this month to perform the title track off her forthcoming album ‘I Dreamed a Dream’ (Columbia) on ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars” on November 10. Then, to celebrate the album’s global release, on November 23rd, Boyle will make her live morning TV debut singing “TK” on NBC’s “Today Show.” (FRAN – Can you confirm the song?)Produced by Steve Mac (Leona Lewis, Kelly Clarkson), Boyle’s album debut ‘I Dreamed a Dream’ is out November 23rd ( Columbia). The 12 track collection features her signature songs “I Dreamed A Dream” and “Cry Me A River,” as well as her haunting rendition of Rolling Stones’ “Wild Horses,” Madonna’s “You’ll See,” The Monkees’ “Daydream Believer,” and “Who I Was Born To Be,” an original recording written especially for Susan.
A few weeks back, another writer friend forwarded me the latest news on the approaching-$1000 Yo-Yo Ma Pay Your Rent or Buy This Box Set of Destiny:
Due to the high price point of this box set we will only be able to send out review copies on loan on a case by case basis and will not be able to provide any contest copies. However, we can do contests using single disc bundles from the box set. Please let me know if you would like to run a contest. I have also included a widget below which includes a video describing the box set.
…PS. Because there are no review copies we are allowing members of the media to purchase Outside The Box at the wholesale cost $475. Let me know if you are interested.
Bold. Call. I understand the loan thing, but the “wholesale” cost? Is that almost insulting, or is it just me? I can’t imagine someone from the classical music press in 2009 paying $475 for a review copy, unless he or she was going to turn around and sell it on eBay for a profit. Which would probably make them more than their paper would pay for the review itself!
Whoever wrote that Susan Boyle press release was *obviously* referring to Elvis Costello’s punchy classic, TKO, and left out the last letter:
http://popup.lala.com/popup/432627069328713191 .
Just imagine how wonderful it’ll be to hear Susan sing lines like, “You need a back to break/or a back to stab/now your birthday suit/looks dull and drab.”
The Yo-Yo Ma box set review copy situation is a perfect illustration of something I’ve been saying for a while. PR people should set up streaming versions of the albums they’re promoting on a password-protected site that only journalists can access. It would be really expensive to send out even a few of the giant box sets, but it would be relatively cheap to make the whole thing available online.
This isn’t necessarily a replacement for sending CDs in all cases–many journalists prefer CDs over downloads, especially older people at the major news organizations. But giving those people more options for how to hear the music can only be a good thing. Plus, you can tie listening to the music directly to receiving the press release–if I get an e-mail press release I’m _Already_ sitting in front of a music player when I read the release. If I get a CD in the mail I have a paper press release but it might not be a convenient moment to listen to the CD, so maybe I just put it in my stack of PR CDs and never get around to it. Then there’s the scalability of my proposed approach. Send CDs out to your top tier prospects, but you can reach another whole group of people who aren’t worth sending CDs to.
If there are a hundred bloggers, each of whom has a 1% chance of reviewing the CD, sending the CDs is a big waste. You might spend several hundred dollars (including CDs at cost, envelopes, and postage) to get one review from a third-tier blog, which probably isn’t worth it. But if you can give them access to streaming music for free you spend nothing for that review.
So why isn’t this done? Am I just totally misreading the situation and it would never actually work? Is it too technically difficult? Are people doing it and I just don’t get their press releases?
@Galen: Certainly, it’s technically possible, but I imagine the logistics have all the appeal of a migraine. I’m not a PR or music industry expert, but I imagine that first, you’d have to make sure there exist some form of digital distribution rights for all the tracks you make available. Second, you have to make sure you have those tracks in MP3 or whatever format. (I wouldn’t want to be the one stuck ripping 90 CDs from the Yo Yo Ma set. Or tracking down distribution contract details for some obscure recording from 1980.)
Third, and most seriously, you’d have to deal with giving journalists restricted access. One shared password for everyone, included in the press release, will leak in roughly 45 seconds. Even the MPAA has failed to prevent its members from sharing pre-release DVDs, and here we’re talking about a streaming audio site. So you end up stuck managing accounts and access for every journalist. I don’t know enough to guess if that’s better or worse than just mailing CDs.
Along with probably every other culture blogger around, the folks publicizing the Yo-Yo Ma box set sent the same PR to my in-box. I’m very happy to see that you mentioned the $475 wholesale offering the way you did and I agree with your perspective.
Galen is on the right track with offering copies via streaming. Granted, as Constantine pointed out, the devil is in the details but it really has more to do with antiquated mindsets than than technical hurdles. In fact, some folks out there already making this happen, such as IODA Promonet.
Re: reviewers paying for a CD box…the PR person for an interview would not send me the latest CD of interviewee, asked me to buy it on arkivmusic.com. Are you kidding me? Thank goodness for multiple representation of the same artist!
“TK” is copy-editor for “to come.” Finding that line in the press release confirms what you already know – the release was emailed prematurely before it was complete.