Shown here is the back of the Cold Mac synthesizer module from the company Whimsical Raps. I’ve enjoyed using it, but I’m putting it back in the pool of circulating used synthesizer equipment. Before doing so, I’m commemorating its time in my modular synth with this photograph of the lovely rear of its printed circuit board.
Music PR is broken. The awesome ease of email has combined with the awesome ease of self-publishing audio to produce a far-from-awesome spampocalypse of valueless promotional information. These emails flood the inboxes of recipients and occlude the occasional actually useful and valuable email. Below is some advice when sharing your music for promotional purposes via email, some specifics about sending music to this website (disquiet.com), and a somewhat vile but not valueless metaphor:
Part 1: What Not to Do
1. Don’t expect to hear back.
2. Don’t send 1,000 words of backstory.
3. If you put a giant picture of the album cover or the musician(s) at the top of the email, it likely pushes everything “below the fold,” and thus risks the recipient not scrolling down to read what the music is actually like, or clicking on a link to hear it. Don’t do this.
4. Don’t send a “follow-up” email. Trust that a non-reply is evidence of a lack of interest or lack of time (these aren’t the same thing).
5. If you don’t describe what the music is like, you risk someone not clicking on a link to hear it.
6. If you make the music download-only, you risk someone on a phone will never get around to downloading it when they’re back at their laptop. Have a streaming option.
7. Definitely don’t send a second follow-up email (that is, don’t send a third email).
8. Feel free to “watermark” your audio files, but don’t be surprised if it decimates the percentage of recipients who elect to pay attention to them.
9. If you start your email with the recipient’s name, and it’s an automated email to a list, you’re feigning familiarity. That’s unnecessary, and frankly contrary to the intimacy of listening that you’re trying to encourage.
10. Don’t begin the email with “I love your [blog, magazine, writing]” if you don’t mean it.
11. Don’t attach audio files. They’re big and slow. Link to them (via Dropbox, etc.).
Part 2: What to Do
1. Keep the communication brief.
2. Describe the music.
3. Provide (briefly) some context for the audio: why, how, when, and/or where you made it.
4. Provide as many different ways to listen as possible. And put as few obstacles between your email and those links as possible.
Part 3: When Submitting Music to Disquiet.com
When I’ve received way too many emails from a human-seeming email account (not from what’s clearly an automated service aiming for maximizing recipients), I sometimes send back a reply. I have a few variations in a file titled “cut-and-paste.txt” and they get tweaked as time passes. Here’s the one I most frequently send out:
Hi. This isn’t up my alley. Too pop for me.
For context: I focus on ambient music, experimental electronic music, contemporary classical, instrumental hip-hop, sound art, and other vaguely related things, related to the extent that the use of technology feels exploratory, intentional — and I must admit I write about virtually nothing with an intelligible vocal.
I should also mention: I get hundreds of inbound emails about music every weekday, and so I rarely respond. I do listen constantly, and when I find something I want to write about, I write about it. I’m a horrible correspondent.
Part 4: A Somewhat Kafka-esque Conundrum
I’ll put this bit at the end, because it’s gross, and yet informative. When I lived in Brooklyn, before moving to California, home was a nice building that, despite being nice, was popular with the cockroach crowd. There was one bathroom in the apartment I shared with some friends, and it was through the kitchen. If you needed to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, you had to walk through the kitchen. When you turned the light on, the floor of the kitchen would seem to shudder, and then what was in fact a lot of cockroaches would flee. Which is to say, getting to the email I want to read means, on a daily basis, getting through the cockroach equivalent of email. Don’t be a cockroach.
A lot of YouTube videos of music (in contrast with “music videos,” a term that brings to mind a dramatized or play-along format, à la classic-era MTV) focus on specific instruments. These can feel salesy, and given the prevalence of affiliate links might even be salesy, but many of them are simply evidence of musicians focused on their tools. Some are about trying out new things, while others are about dedication to a thing. Many of the musicians who make these videos are experts in their craft, and their videos are the études of streaming life. Such is the work of Amulets (aka Randall Taylor), whose tool of choice is the tape loop. He is a prolific utilizer of loops, and an activist in promoting their utility (his [how-to video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hER3s1NPr_U) is approaching 150,000 views). His latest, posted this morning, is a timely one, a roughly nine-second loop, seen rotating in plain view, as a warped vocal goes round and round. The table on which the player-recorder rests is festooned with the little plastic reels of past and, no doubt, future experiments. In a brief accompanying note, Taylor connects the maudlin yet beautiful sound to our current circumstances:
>I just had this super simple video idea and decided to make it in quarantine. It’s really nothing more than a repeating tape loop, but I think it’s definitely a reflection of the monotony of quarantine life and our daily existence. These days are on loop and no one really knows when its going to end…
This is the latest video I’ve added to [my YouTube playlist of recommended fine live performances of ambient music](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAgCxRbmR1MJxihgJkCPEnehAPvjoF71-). Video originally posted at [youtube.com](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7-Yq6vQouE). More from Taylor at [amuletsmusic.com](http://www.amuletsmusic.com/).
Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto group, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just over four days to upload a track in response to the assignment. Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate. (A SoundCloud account is helpful but not required.) There’s no pressure to do every project. It’s weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when you have the time.
Deadline: This project’s deadline is Monday, May 25, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, May 21, 2020.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at [tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto](https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto)):
**Disquiet Junto Project 0438: Deep Plan**
The Assignment: Compose a piece of music in which something special is situated at the very center.
Step 1: There is just one step this week: Compose a piece of music in which something special is situated at the very center.
Background: You might simply interpret that instruction as you choose to. For additional context, you might consider this centerpiece a surprise, or you might hint at it at the opening. It might be a gap, or a presence, or something in between.
**Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:**
Step 1: Include “disquiet0438” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your tracks.
Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0438” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation of a project playlist.
Step 3: Upload your tracks. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your tracks.
Step 4: Post your tracks in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:
https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0438-deep-plan/
Step 5: Annotate your tracks with a brief explanation of your approach and process.
Step 6: If posting on social media, please consider using the hashtag #disquietjunto so fellow participants are more likely to locate your communication.
Step 7: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
**Additional Details:**
Deadline: This project’s deadline is Monday, May 25, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, May 21, 2020.
Length: The length is up to you. This may be the rare circumstance when longer is better.
Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0438” in the title of the tracks, and where applicable (on SoundCloud, for example) as a tag.
Upload: When participating in this project, be sure to include a description of your process in planning, composing, and recording it. This description is an essential element of the communicative process inherent in the Disquiet Junto. Photos, video, and lists of equipment are always appreciated.
Download: Given the nature of this particular project sequence, it is best to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution, allowing for derivatives).
**For context, when posting the track online, please be sure to include this following information:**
More on this 438th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Disquiet Junto Project 0438: Deep Plan — The Assignment: Compose a piece of music in which something special is situated at the very center — at:
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
Subscribe to project announcements here:
http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/
Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:
https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0438-deep-plan/
There’s also a Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to [twitter.com/disquiet](https://twitter.com/disquiet) for Slack inclusion.
Image associated with this track is from NASA, used thanks to a Creative Commons license and Flickr. The image has been cropped, colors shifted, and text added.
[https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/)
There was no This Week in Sound email newsletter ([tinyletter.com/disquiet](https://tinyletter.com/disquiet)) this week. The last class session of the 15-week semester of Sounds of Brands (Quarantine Remix feat. Zoom), the course I teach once a year, occurred today. These two statements are related.
