Like most people who write about music online, I get tons of email announcing new bands and CD releases and music services. And I don't even review music. Most of these messages get deleted within seconds of being opened or aren't opened at all.
But something about this one from Wampus Multimedia caught my eye. It had everything to do with this lead-off description of a new CD release:
It isn't about image. It isn't about entertainment. Great rock is about movement -- of the heart, the mind, the feet. The May Bees, a scrappy, uncompromising duo from The Netherlands, understand this instinctively. They want to make a good impression, sure, and they want to amuse and engage you. But mostly they want to move you, to change you, to leave an indelible mark upon you.
What an awesome way to introduce potential fans and reviewers to a new band! Read that paragraph again. It isn't a dry reading of facts and features about the band. It's an intriguing description that puts the focus squarely where it should be: on the reader (the fan) and what you'll get from hearing the May Bees' music.
Plus, it's a great lesson on how to promote music using emotion -- engaging the imagination and painting word pictures that stimulate the senses.
Wampus Multimedia (a music label, ebook publisher, recording studio, and marketing communications company based in Virginia) is the brainchild of Mark Doyon. Check out his blog, where he has some great things to say about the value of music -- included this rant:
If quality = value (and it does), why not talk about the value of music? Who else on the planet but recording artists are expected to devalue their work for some amorphous promise of deferred compensation? Doctors? Lawyers? Plumbers?
The reigning nonsense about giving away music now so you can fill stadiums later is little more than "trickle-down" economics -- a Reaganesque delusion that "a rising tide floats all boats."
Does anyone really believe Salvador Dali would have stood on a street corner giving away paintings to people who didn't care enough to pay for them, just so people would like him and talk about him? Would Apple do that? Would Target? Would Barack Obama? No great artist is going to do that -- unless, of course, money is no object.
Great stuff from Mark Doyon and Wampus.
-Bob
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