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(upbeat techno music)
- What's up, TeamMBL?
It's Music by Lukas.
- And Lauren Z. Ray, DJ filmmaker, DJ producer,
and this week's talk is about--
- How to email big labels.
- And, if you can't tell, yes,
we are still here in Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
Lukas's song is coming out on Spinnin' Copyright Free
August 31st, so we've been doing live meetings,
meeting with some labels,
and we just figured it'd be the perfect time
to really kinda cover how to contact labels,
and how to send them an email,
what should be in the email, et cetera,
so that's what we're gonna be discussing today.
All right, you have a track you're so proud of,
and you think it's amazing,
you wanna send it onto a label,
but you don't where to start.
You don't know the label's email,
you don't know what label to send it to.
Well, that's pretty easy.
Just, I would say, figure out
who your track sounds similar to, what artist,
and what labels have they been signed to,
because they would be--
- That's gonna help you figure it out, yeah.
And there's other resources like labelbase.net
and 1001 Tracklist, which will be super helpful.
Labelbase.net actually lists
all of the different labels by genre,
so you can search things,
like if you know you do future house,
you can search future house labels,
you can search tropical house labels,
and start figuring out which ones you wanna send to.
It shows you the links to their SoundCloud,
you can see how many followers they have.
- And it has their email address,
everything right there, so they can grab that email,
and that's where you would send your demo to.
- Yeah, and you can also, if you think that the info,
like let's say the email for the label is there,
but you know that it's the wrong email,
maybe they have a new email,
you can actually submit an update so that you can,
it's like a collaborative website,
so that's really cool.
- And once you get what labels you wanna send to,
I would create an Excel spreadsheet
where you would list the labels
and maybe list what tracks you sent them to,
what dates you sent them on.
- If they listened and if they responded.
- Yeah, if they replied, what they said,
that sorta thing, to keep track of,
because further down the line,
believe me, you're gonna forget,
and it's just gonna be a really good reference to
who you sent it to when.
- You also wanna start weeding out labels
that are not active anymore.
Like, you could search future house labels,
there could be like 200 that show up,
but maybe there's only 10 that are actually good,
and one of the best ways to figure out
which ones are good is by going to 1001 Tracklist,
trying to figure out, like, search a track on there
from that label and see if it's getting support,
see if it's getting plays,
see if it's getting spots on radio shows.
- Kinda like a good way to research
and make sure it's a good label, basically.
Okay, now what goes in your email?
Very good question.
We're gonna talk about it and we're gonna tell you
exactly what goes in the email.
Now, we're gonna head to--
- The weekly highlights.
- Okay, so we just introduced something called
the Artist Coaching Platform.
If you guys haven't checked it out, head to the website.
You could literally do a one-on-one Skype coaching
with all different artists,
they have all different skillsets,
it's really, really awesome,
and it's 10% off if you book until, what?
- August 31st.
- August 31st, right.
- Yeah, you can learn mastering, you can learn sound design,
you can learn, I mean, all of it one-on-one
with bigger artists that area already signed,
so definitely go check it out.
We also have our team vlog,
and in the team vlog, we go visit
another DJ and producer studio
and started working on a collab,
so there's a lot of details in there about that.
- It's really, really fun, go watch that.
Don't forget to be checking out our Instagrams.
We do daily content there.
So, this YouTube video, maybe it's just
once or twice a week, but the Instagrams,
you know, it's every single day.
And Lukas has an IGTV about
if you have to be Dutch to make it in the EDM industry.
- Yeah, if you have to be Dutch
to make it as a DJ producer.
It's an interesting topic.
And if you wanna see that or any of
the other stuff we talked about,
or the secret link of the week,
all of that is in the description below.
- And back to the normal programming.
- So now we need to talk about
the most important part, which is what to say
and how to send your email to the labels.
So, record labels have two different types of emails.
They have public emails,
which is like demos@recordlabel.com,
and they have private, direct emails
like bob@recordlabel.com.
- That's like directly to the A&R.
Now, those emails are probably harder to come by,
but you know, through connects and through other ways
that we've discussed in other videos,
we can go into that some other time,
you can get that A&R email, so that's really good.
But you say you'd maybe start with the public ones first?
- Yeah, you start with the public one
and see if anyone responds,
because if they reply, most likely it's going to be
from a direct email, and then you wanna of course save that.
- Put that on that list we were talking about
before the weekly highlights, where you keep track.
That would be where you'd add that email and be like,
this is the one. - 'Cause those kind of emails
are not listed on labelbase.net.
- Yeah, good to keep track of too.
- Yeah, and you can also find those,
like if you collab with someone else,
they might have a connection with that A&R,
and then once they include you,
like they CC you on the email,
then you can also take that email address
and put it on your list as well.
- That's kinda how you find those.
And then what goes in the email,
you wanna introduce yourself,
not a long biography of the year you were born,
and you were doing this, and doing that,
and then you discovered music.
It's like, it's too much information,
they don't know what you want,
they just probably give up, don't read the whole email.
They don't have a lot of time, remember guys?
They're really, really busy,
so short, and sweet, and to the point, very direct.
So, I would say your name, maybe your best pitch,
like a really quick thing about yourself
that makes you unique, maybe a recent,
you've been signed to another label recently or something.
- Supported by an artist.
- Supported, something like that,
then quickly add the--
- Yeah, you wanna add one SoundCloud private link,
so one SoundCloud private track.
Like, you don't wanna add 10,
you don't wanna attack an MP3 or a .WAV,
and the reason for that is because
you need to be able to tell
if they actually listen to the track.
If you attach an MP3 or a .WAV file,
there's no way for you to really tell
if they listen to it,
whereas if you attach a private link,
then you can keep track and you can also see
which A&R listened to it,
because if you send it to a big label
like Spinnin' or Armada, there's tons of A&Rs,
so you might send it to info@, you know,
whatever, biglabel.com,
and you could see the different names,
like this guy James listened to it,
and Ralph listened to it, and you get to see it.
- And then, notate that on your notes
that we were talking about earlier.
Like, the notes are the most important thing,
honestly, I really do think.
After that, in your email, make sure
you add a call to action,
like looking forward to hearing back from you,
or you know, something like that,
your feedback, something like that, yeah.
Just make sure you tell them what you want from them next,
because they'll listen, and then maybe do nothing.
And if you put it out there like
this is what you want from them,
but in a nice way, of course,
then they will be like, all right,
maybe he wants a response.
You won't always get a response,
but it's really good to see if they listen,
like Lukas said.
That's feedback enough to put in your list,
like, no reply, but I got this many listens.
Like, all of these are just clues
to discover the mystery of what it is
to be in this career, I swear.
- Yeah, it gives you more information,
like, if they listened but they didn't reply,
it probably wasn't the right fit for them.
- Maybe not the right fit, maybe it wasn't, like,
the best track maybe, you know,
it's just clues, because I feel like
a lot of times you're just sitting there
clueless of what to do next or what's going on.
You've sent your email.
Like, we get comments or questions all the time like,
I've tried to come in contact with these people,
or get, you know, my music heard by blah, blah, blah,
and no response.
Well, tweak it, tweak the email, tweak the song,
tweak all your little things to discover if the answer
or the solution back is different.
That's how you discover what works.
- Yeah, and don't be afraid to put yourself out there,
because you're never gonna know this information
if you don't actually email them,
and you have nothing to lose.
- You really don't.
They get hundreds of these all the time,
so they're not gonna be specifically remembering
you, and your name, and your track was terrible.
It's like, no, not necessarily,
so you know, just take the chance.
I mean, you have to take the chance
in this type of career.
That's what it's all about.
And don't feel bad if something doesn't happen,
because everything takes a really long time.
I mean, Masto, Mike Williams, any of these people,
they went through some rejection as well,
so you're not alone in that.
- I've been through rejection.
- He still does, what are you talking about.
- If anything else that we didn't talk about
has worked for you and you'd like to share it
with everybody else, be sure to comment down below.
- And if you're new here and not subscribed,
make sure to subscribe, because we're gonna be doing
videos like this to help you guys
further your music career.
And also, don't forget, on our Instagram,
we do daily content.
We do daily, just more things like this,
you know, tips and tricks--
- Interviews with artists.
- Stuff like that that'll help you as well,
in case you need something every day.
- And if you wanna listen on the go,
these are also available on SoundCloud,
so if you're on the train, you're on a plane,
you're in the car-- - You don't have time
to look at the YouTubes, you wanna just hear it.
- If you wanna fall asleep to our voices.
- I mean, that's cool.
SoundCloud, we got everything on SoundCloud too.
All right, that's it.
- See you guys next week,
see you tomorrow on Instagram.
Later. - Bye.