Moonjune received this in a email:
"We will consider all discs for review. However, we can expedite and guarantee reviews for $25 / disc, and do additional feature stories or interviews for $50 a piece. We've had a number of labels ask lately and just wanted to provide that information."
-James McQuiston
Editor, NeuFutur (print magazine)
Editor, http://www.neufutur.com/
Moonjune:
https://www.facebook.com/MOONJUNERECORDSNYC
So its come to the point of magazines/blogs charging to do reviews?
Thats just shite and not the first time I've heard of it either.
DO NOT PAY FOR REVIEWS!!
I wonder if you have to pay extra for a good one?
Friday, 30 December 2011
Should you pay to have your music reviewed?
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7 comments:
I think there's a different question and it's the same one in general media, which is the advertorial / cash for comments issue.
I checked that website and it reviews all sorts of things. They say they will review everything within three days, so why the charge? They don't mention that on the website.
Also, you can only see the most recent posts under Music reviews, with the rest being in some strange key-word order and no apparent way to get a chrnological list.
So it doesn't look genuine to me. Have a look at the review dates and then the release dates.Some of these records ar esix years old. It takes us back to your question and mine. I think what they do is review it, send you the link and yiou circulate it however you normaly do your own publicity. If that helps you get good publicity then only your own morals will determine if it's something you should do.
Although in this case things just don't add up and this is beyond the question you ask. I suspect something really shonky.
For one of my albums, I decided to spend a little bit of money to promote it and used a service where they supposedly do this via paid reviews and placements on Internet Radio stations. I did this purely to see if it would make any difference.
It produced zero effect - so I shan't ever be doing that again!
Was that a PR company? Lots of place you can pitch stuff other than web radio.
To be honest outside of some fantastic niche podcasts and radio i've not sold much off radio, mostly social media and print press. A review in for example Classic Rock Prog and some online advertising etc will do more for you along those sort of lines, although you can do it all yourself. I've never hired a PR company although we are for the new Fierce And The Dead record.
The big music companies have been getting away with buying reviews for years. :P
It was Radioindy.com. I'm not spamming you, but you can see what they wrote on my CDBABY page - this is the only evidence that they actually did anything for me.
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/darrenlock10
Mind you, I sent a copy of this CD to "Sound on Sound" magazine and got it reviewed for nowt.
Had quick look, looks really dodgy.
BBC Radio 6/Echoes/Resonance FM/Dividing Line/Steve Davis will all play your music for nothing and have been really supportive of my stuff. Just a question of bunging CDs in envelopes :)
I've never tried a PR company but we're going to for the next Fierce And The Dead EP. I do know magazines are more keen to review your stuff if you advertise in them but you can see their logic there.
I am The Music Mag - www.themusicmag.com - and we do free reviews for unsigned bands. We get a lot of reviews so it takes a while to get through them, but please send your reviews on and we'll glady do them for free.
What we do is have a donate button on our sidebar and if anyone wants to donate they can... not many do, which is totally fine :).
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