To my PR people

I’ve been doing the music writing thing for a while now. In that time I’ve learnt a lot about the cat and mouse game that is being played between PR companies/people and music journalists. It’s an at times friendly game, and at times infuriating one (for both parties I’m sure but here I’m mainly referring to the journalists). I’ve been on both sides of the fence, albeit for the PR side from a small company (very small actually) point of view but still it’s allowed me the benefit to appreciate both view points.

When I moved to Japan in late 06 I had to pack pretty much all of my life’s belongings – in the process I realised just how much PR CDs and other goodies I’d accumulated over the years. The ratio between ‘stuff I wanted to keep’ and ‘useless pieces of plastic, CD, paper’ was far from equal, weighing quite heavily in favour of the latter.

I took a rest from music writing for most of 07, and during that time most of the labels and PR companies I deal with seemed to change their ways, opting to send music digitally thus helping to save the environment, as well as (and I’m sure more importantly) saving a shit load of money and time. Personally I was more than happy to switch to a digital system for PR, not the least because all my stuff is in storage and I’m currently of no real fixed abode, hoping around countries while I set up the Original Cultures project and figure out just where I’m going to end up.

Thing is, despite this move to digital some labels and companies still seem intent on sending through CDs. Which I just don’t understand. Especially when I sometime receive a CD of a digital promo I’ve already got. This week I got a watermarked CD for an upcoming rap album, it’s numbered, tagged with my name and all that malarkey about stopping piracy. Thing is, the first thing that happens when I get a CD I actually want to listen to (which is pretty rare these days, all the stuff I’m really after comes digitally) is I rip it to listen to it on the laptop/iPod. If you really want to stop journalists from pirating your shit, do what a US label did to me recently and only send out stream previews – the only option is then to fish out the files from the temp cache in glorious 96kbps quality, which no idiot would pirate (and if they did they would only reinforce the idiot statement).

I love getting free shit don’t get me wrong, it’s one of the only reasons I keep regularly reviewing. I treat it as the ‘payment’ for my work. I don’t live of writing about music but considering the hours I’ve spent over the years promoting people’s stuff through sites, reviews, radio shows and more I consider the privilege of receiving promos my payment. A few years back I was ‘connected’ enough to also get really decent freebies like limited edition vinyl etc… and even then I was still late to the party considering some of the promo gems that used to be around years before I started writing. The last decent thing I got was probably some limited edition Def Jux coloured 10″s.

So PR people, my friends/nemesis (delete as appropriate) please stop sending CDs, it’s only gonna make it less likely for me to review stuff and it’ll just end up in the bin soon as I ripped it. Stick to digital, embrace it, use it cleverly, ok there are still people out there who want a physical promo product but even then it’s only a matter of time before the majority of your contacts start requesting digital, so why not jump ahead of the game and make an impression? The labels/artists that have stuck most in my mind in the last few years have been the ones who’ve done just that, embracing the digital side of things not just for the consumers but also for the people promoting stuff. And please for the love of god stop thinking that some of us journos are idiots/good-for-nothing and need to be treated accordingly.

However if you want to send over some vinyl or other collectable freebie, please do. One love, etc…

PS: interested in what other writers/journos have to say on the subject, feel free to drop a line in the comments.