How to send us music

If you’re sending in your own music or haven’t sent us music before you might find the below interesting. You might not.

When to send us music, when not to send us music

First off, we don’t make tracks downloadable or stream them in full or in part unless you’ve made it clear in your email that this is what you want to happen, or we’ve asked you first.

If your music’s at an early stage or if you just want some feedback let us know and we won’t even write about it. Quite a few acts over the years have sent in works in progress for feedback here and there, and it’s been fun hearing the music gradually take shape over time.

Please bear in mind that Popjustice is a pop music website. There is not point in sending us music if it is not the sort of thing we cover. We keep saying this and we keep getting goth shit but it’s really not worth sending it in.

Digital vs Physical

We love innovative packaging and cute format gimmicks and that sort of thing, but if all you’ve got is a standard CD-R you might as well just send us MP3s or SoundCloud link via email.

The best address for music submissions is music [dot] tips [at] popjustice [dot] com.

There’s a form here, too. Everything ends up in the same place.

We love SoundCloud but we prefer MP3s for two reasons.

Firstly, we tend to be able to give MP3s a quick blast as soon as they arrive. We use the Mac Mail program and MP3s are playable in the window as soon as they arrive so it’s really easy that way. Obviously a SoundCloud requires going to the SoundCloud page and so on every time we want to hear something – it might not sound like much effort but when you’re getting dozens of links a day it’s easy for them to start drifting down your inbox.

Secondly, when we’ve put an MP3 into our iTunes, we’ll end up listening to it loads, either on purpose (because it’s there in ourRecently Added playlist), or by accident (because it keeps playing when we’ve finished listening to whatever we added after your music). And of course that means we get to know your music better.

While it might be tempting to use the obscure online player your web designer built into your official website, or to make your SoundCloud links non-downloadable, the chances are that if we can’t easily get your song into our iTunes, we won’t listen to it as much.

If you’re sending us MP3s, please try to make sure they’re tagged properly. Our iTunes library is enough of a disaster as it is…

…and there are plenty of untagged songs in there whose titles or even artists are a complete mystery. You can avoid slipping into that pop Twilight Zone by tagging your songs.

Information to include with your music

Let us know who you are, where you’re from, where we can find you online (Facebook, Twitter, SouncCloud etc – don’t bother with MySpace) and how we can hear more music.

Keep it simple.

Use bullet points if you like.

They tend to be easier to read in an email.

Feel free to include a picture, but it doesn’t need to be massive. As a guide, images we use on Popjustice are rarely bigger than about 100k, so if you’re sending in some ludicrously hi-res image weighing in at 6mb you can resize it to be smaller and it’ll still be quite usable.

In 2010 we received an email from a chap in New York – pretty dated sounding over-Auto Tuned club music like loads of stuff we get from New York for some reason – and he included a perfectly reasonably 128kbps MP3 of his song, whose file size was about 4mb. Unfortunately he also chose to attached three 8mb photographs, meaning that the total size of the email was 29mb. Perhaps, quite understandably, his email program had trouble sending the email the first time he tried, because we received it five times.

That wasn’t a good morning.

Packaging

As mentioned above, exciting, interesting and handmade packaging is always great to receive, and hand-decorated envelopes can come in all shapes and sizes and make their contents seem quite exciting. So that’s always nice.

What isn’t quite so important is the idea of ‘creating a professional impression’ and by this we mean the tendency some independent artists have to blow £6 in Rymans for every CD they send out.

It is not necessary to present your press release in an elasticated PVC binder, for example – you’re a pop act, not an insurance salesman.

If you do want to send us stuff physically a photo, a covering letter and a CD in an envelope will usually do the trick, but if that’s all you’re sending over then an email would be fine too really.

What we’re trying to say here is, if you’ve got an amazing format or artwork or free gift or promo item or gimmick or whatever post it over, if not, send an email.

Watermarked CDs

We’re happy to receive watermarked CDs but if you’re going to send them either by courier or post make sure you’ve got the right address for us or the whole concept falls on its arse a bit doesn’t it.

And that’s about that

The bottom line is this: send us your music and if it’s amazing we’ll bang on about it. THE END.