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With their new album Homesick out on March 25th (pushed back from January 14th), Sea Girls have announced a string of record store shows for May 2022. Kicking off at Gorilla in Manchester on 3rd May, the run includes a date at Pryzm (Banquet Records) in Kingston on 12th May and ends at Rescue Rooms (Rough Trade) on 15th May. The ticket bundles will be available at 11am on Tuesday 14th December here.

Sea Girls UK instore gigs May 2022

• 3rd May – Gorilla, Manchester
• 4th May – Artics Club (Out Of Phase Records), Liverpool
• 5th May – Blitz (Action Records), Preston
• 7th May – The Church (Assai Records), Dundee
• 8th May – Foundry (Bear Tree Records), Sheffield
• 10th May – The Fleece (Rough Trade), Bristol
• 11th May – Old Fire Station (Vinilo Records), Bournemouth
• 12th May – Pryzm (Banquet Records), Kingston
• 15th May – Rescue Room (Rough Trade), Nottingham

New Album Homesick pushed back to March 25th

Originally scheduled for release on January 14th, Sea Girls’ new album Homesick (pre-order here*) was recently pushed back to March 25th. The band announced the rescheduled release date via their Facebook page on December 2nd.

Due to circumstances beyond our control the new album Homesick will now be released on 25th March 2022. Thanks to every single one of you who has ordered copies so far

Posted on 2021-12-21

Sea Girls drop lyric video for ‘Hometown’

Sea Girls have just dropped the lyrics video for their recent single Hometown, featuring live footage of the band’s sold out performance at the O2 Academy Brixton. The track is taken from the band’s forthcoming new album Homesick, out March 25th. Check out the video below.

Every hometown has its own identity – all of them are exciting and rewarding to visit for different reasons. We made this video from footage of one show on the tour – it’s just one of those special stories. We want to be a part of your story, you’re already a part of ours.

Henry Camamile (frontman)

Sea Girls UK outstore gigs May 2022

With their new album Homesick out on March 25th (pushed back from January 14th), Sea Girls have announced a string of record store shows for May 2022. Kicking off at Gorilla in Manchester on 3rd May, the run includes a date at Pryzm (Banquet Records) in Kingston on 12th May and ends at Rescue Rooms (Rough Trade) on 15th May. The ticket bundles are available here here.

• 3rd May – Gorilla, Manchester
• 4th May – Artics Club (Out Of Phase Records), Liverpool
• 5th May – Blitz (Action Records), Preston
• 7th May – The Church (Assai Records), Dundee
• 8th May – Foundry (Bear Tree Records), Sheffield
• 10th May – The Fleece (Rough Trade), Bristol
• 11th May – Old Fire Station (Vinilo Records), Bournemouth
• 12th May – Pryzm (Banquet Records), Kingston
• 15th May – Rescue Room (Rough Trade), Nottingham

New Album Homesick pushed back to March 25th

Originally scheduled for release on January 14th, Sea Girls’ new album Homesick (pre-order here*) was recently pushed back to March 25th. The band announced the rescheduled release date via their Facebook page on December 2nd.

Due to circumstances beyond our control the new album Homesick will now be released on 25th March 2022. Thanks to every single one of you who has ordered copies so far

Posted on 2021-12-21

Why Should You Submit to Music Blogs?

Let’s start with the bad news: You should not submit to music blogs if your primary goal is to get new fans.

(And you should definitely not submit to organizations that try to scam you with paid placements.)

I run the site you’re reading right now. It’s a mid-level-ish music blog that’s decently respected in the industry  – we’ve been around for six-plus years, have interviewed hundreds of artists, and have gotten added to a fair number of “best blogs” lists.

In October 2021, we had about 21,353 users hit our site. 20,772 of those people had never visited twostorymelody.com before in their lives.

Only 12.2% (2,889) had ever seen our site before.

Sad stats.

Here’s the point: We’re a mid-sized music blog, and we have virtually no regular audience of our own.

Instead, our traffic comes from our artists. It works like this: We cover an act like Strawberry Guy. Strawberry Guy shares the article we write on social media. Strawberry Guy’s fans click the link, read the article, and think, “Nice!”

Then everyone goes their separate ways.

We write about other artists and Strawberry Guy’s fans never think about us again.

Most music blogs work this way.

(Shoot, the music industry as a whole works this way, but that’s a can of worms for another day.)

Yes, Two Story Melody’s traffic is only a drop in the bucket compared to traffic for some of the bigger blogs out there – but I keep up with a list of music blogs, and I can tell you that the model they’re using to bring in traffic is nearly universal.

Take Pitchfork. Pitchfork is one of the biggest music blogs in the known universe; they’re owned by Condé Nast, a massive media conglomerate that also holds GQ, The New Yorker, and Vogue, among many others.

Screenshot from condenast.com

My web crawler tells me Pitchfork gets about 6M visits to their site a month. That’s huge.

But still – the truth is that most people (i.e., average, non-musician people) have never heard of Pitchfork. (Ask your mom or the cashier at the grocery store if you don’t believe me.) And most people who have heard of Pitchfork only read it when they want to see how badly it’s slamming their favorite band’s latest release.

Virtually nobody regularly reads written music publications anymore.

People used to regularly follow music blogs because they were the best places to find new music. Now, we have Spotify’s algorithm (and plenty of other options) for that – so music blogs don’t play nearly the same role in breaking new artists that they did 10 years ago.

And the takeaway is that getting covered in a music publication won’t get you very many new fans.

Which begs the question…

Is it even worth getting covered in music blogs anymore?

Yeah, of course. It absolutely still is.

Come on, I run a music blog – obviously I’m going to tell you submitting to music blogs is worthwhile. I’m a little biased, but I’m not blowing smoke.

Getting covered in music blogs still matters for three reasons:

1. Getting covered in music blogs strengthens your relationship to your existing audience.

In my eyes, this is the fundamental value of music blog coverage: It helps to strengthen your existing fanbase.

I like to use sports fandom to illustrate this. I’m a Steelers fan. Most mornings, I’ll spend ten minutes reading some sportswriter’s opinions on the team – and reading about the team actually makes me a bigger fan.

Same thing for musicians. I liked Lord Huron’s Strange Trails – then I googled it, found this New York Times article detailing the band’s insane creative process, and decided I actually loved the album.

Getting covered in a music blog isn’t a way to get discovered; it’s a way to add more context to your artistry so that your existing fans can fall deeper in love with it.

2. Getting covered in music blogs gives you credibility that can open other doors.

While music blogs typically won’t put you in front of significant new audiences, you can bring the coverage you get to the eyes of people that matter.

For example, let’s say, hypothetically, that Stereogum were to review Cassandra Jenkins’ An Overview on Phenomenal Nature and call it “one of 2021’s most extraordinary albums”. That’d be hypothetically cool, right?

And if Jenkins was going to book a tour, run a press campaign, or do literally anything else requiring her to pitch her music to people, she could include that line in every email she sent.

Hypothetically, that line could be the difference between a venue manager listening to the music and deleting the email. (For me, lines like that are often the difference between listening to an artist’s submission and deleting the email. Just saying.)

It’s social proof. Hearing that someone else thinks Jenkins’ music is awesome gives Jenkins’ a foot in the door that she wouldn’t otherwise have had. Music blog coverage makes you look more legit – and looking legit can lead to more opportunities.

3. Blog coverage actually impacts the Spotify algorithm (a little).

All right, the last reason that blog coverage is worthwhile is because it helps you hack Spotify’s algorithm so that you can rack up the streams.

Kind of.

The truth is actually pretty complicated, because Spotify’s algorithm is pretty complicated. The underlying principle, though, is simple: Spotify wants to show its listeners music that they will probably like. And the more Spotify knows about each track, each artist, and each listener, the more confidence they have that they can make a good match.

Natural language processing (NLP) is one tool that Spotify uses to collect data to do this.

Spotify scans the internet and looks for context on every song and artist on their platform, then uses what’s being written about them to inform where they should be placed and who they should be shown to.

Outside Insight has a fairly detailed breakdown of how this works here, but the gist is that if a blog calls your song “summery, light, and fun,” Spotify will have more confidence in adding it to an algorithmic playlist like “Totally Stress Free”. If a writer calls you “Merle Haggard reincarnated”, Spotify might take a chance on adding you to Country Coffeehouse.

Keep in mind, this is one of many factors in driving algorithmic playlist placements – it’s by no means the most important one. (For a more comprehensive look at the Spotify algorithm, check out this piece.)

If your goal is to drive Spotify streams, music blog coverage is probably not the primary route you should go. But it does make a small difference – and hey, every little bit helps.

So, that’s why you should submit to music blogs.

Music blogs are no longer a way to blow up or break an artist. But they’re far from dead. As long as people use language to communicate, music blogs will continue to add value – because everyone likes to talk about music.

Now get out there and make music blogs count.

The post Why Should You Submit to Music Blogs? appeared first on Two Story Melody.

Independent Music Promotions (IMP) was one of the first PR firms I found as I was getting into the music marketing space. And to this day, I think they have my favorite slogan / mission statement:

“Worldwide promotion and PR for music with depth.”

That “music with depth” part jumped off the page for me; it resonates really closely with how I’d thought about Two Story’s purpose (which is to help artists build meaningful community around beautiful art). Inherent in the idea of “music with depth” is the idea that music can matter – maybe even that music should matter. And that means that promoting music matters, too.

It’s a concept I’m fully onboard with (and a phrasing that I kind of wish I’d thought of first).

Anyway, fast-forward a few years, and I’ve been gratified to develop a relationship with the founder at IMP, James Moore. James is a good dude who also happens to be an expert at music marketing and PR – he’s promoted tons of artists from around the globe, he has an incredibly deep network of contacts across a wide variety of genre niches, and he’s written a critically-acclaimed book on music promotion called Your Band Is a Virus.

I recently got the chance to catch up with James to unpack his approach to music promotion. If the idea of super-effective promotion for “music with depth” resonates with you at all, I think you’ll enjoy the interview below.

Hey James! Excited to dig into Independent Music Promotions with you. To start, can you tell me what the mission of IMP is?

And, specifically, what does it mean to promote “music with depth”?

Hi Jon! Thanks so much for having me. The mission of IMP is two-fold. We provide practical and effective, SEO-based music marketing services for independent artists aimed at raising awareness and providing extensive social proof for long-term growth. We also educate musicians, labels and marketing teams on how to promote their music effectively.

Beyond this, we champion diversity in music by working heavily with experimental and multi-genre music of all stripes. This ties into our slogan of “music with depth”. “Music with depth” was chosen as our slogan because I wanted to run I.M.P like a bold underground label, working with artists who are not afraid to challenge in their music. It’s essentially artists doing and saying exactly what they want to without considering what the mainstream may or may not want. That’s beauty to me!

You mention on the site that you once had a bad experience with PR yourself. What was that like, and how did that influence what you’ve built at IMP?

I had enlisted the services of a PR company to promote a rock/metal album I’d performed on. They were quite a well known firm, but heavier music must not have been their strong suit. We ended up with only a few write-ups. I turned around after that experience and made sure we gained 60 + more.

That was one of the catalysts that inspired me to start a music PR company based on deliverables. When I realized that most PR companies do not guarantee any coverage to their artists, that rubbed me the wrong way. I found it just takes more relationship building and cooperation with like-minded people to ensure coverage/reviews, radio adds, playlists, etc happen in each and every campaign.

You wrote a best-selling book on music promotion called Your Band Is a Virus (more relevant than ever in the days of Covid). What does it mean for a band to be a “virus”, and what are some of the most important things artists should take away from the book?

Ha! If I’d have known in 2012 we’d have a pandemic in 2020 I wouldn’t have given that spore any more publicity! For a band to be a virus, they need to be set up so they can spread with ease. Having an ethos, an origin story, custom visuals to amplify both these things, and everything else in it’s right place such as an official website, modern online store, active socials, convenient one page with all key links and destinations…and once all those things are functioning, advertise the whole package.

The book takes artists through the practical steps needed to pitch your music for potential coverage and strategize the marketing of your music in general.

What should artists know before they apply to work with IMP?

If your music is great, regardless of subgenre, we’ll likely be interested in working with you. You can reach out through our website with a link to your music and whatever else you’d like to share. I listen to every submission myself and will get back to you shortly after taking a close listen.

We’re very upfront, so our whole marketing approach as well as campaign rates are public and available on our website. I feel this helps artists and their teams research. Also, I can’t stand cryptic websites who don’t share this information.

How would you define PR, and what is its value for independent artists?

PR is expanded awareness of you and your growing brand. It has both short term and long term benefit. Even if you think you only need to break out on Spotify, this is simply not true. Spotify’s algorithm scours Google for, you guessed it, press coverage, reviews, mentions, news releases, etc. So if you don’t have any of these things, you’re not spreading any kind of story.

What do you think is the biggest misconception artists have about PR?

The biggest misconception artists have about PR is that if they hire PR, they can get away with not advertising themselves. In fact, many of my clients don’t take my advice when I tell them to advertise every month consistently, even if it’s just $100. Start a band fund. Do what you need to do. But it absolutely needs to be done.

PR is the 3rd person voice. You are the 1st person voice, and that can’t be replaced.

 What would you say is the most exciting thing about the current state of the music industry?

That great music finds a way. So many genres are thriving creatively right now even though we’re still dealing with the repercussions of a worldwide pandemic, vinyl shortages, shipping delays and so many other setbacks.

That’s not to say venues or artists are doing well financially at the moment because generally they’re not. But the fact that artists and labels are still putting out incredible, ground-breaking music is exciting.

You asked me this, so I’ve got to return the favor – who are your top five favorite artists?

It’s such a tough question but I’d say Nirvana, The Beatles, Tool, Windhand and Alice in Chains.

What does the future hold for IMP?

Continuing to work with the best underground artists in the world, partnering with new music podcasts, radio shows, magazines, music blogs and more to provide and amplify the message of great art.

More website features and a new book are also in the planning stages.

The post An Interview with James Moore of Independent Music Promotions appeared first on Two Story Melody.