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 Everett True

how to get featured on a music website

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Sure, we’re open to bribery here at Collapse Board. Isn’t everyone in the music industry?

We just like to be a little more open about it, that’s all. Not for us, the largesse of free drinks at the bar, free CDs, guest list places, the odd free drug or offer of sex, trips abroad, advertisements in return for guaranteed content … I’m not saying we’re not above taking it, just that we rarely – well OK then, never – get offered any of the above. A non-downloadable stream that becomes obsolete after seven days, that’s our fare. Someone linking us to the MySpace page. No matter. We like to take the more direct route. Send us money. Hard cash, preferably in Australian dollars. It doesn’t matter which currency it’s in really, as long as you send it. Maybe you might just enjoying reading Collapse Board and would like to show your support? Whatever. Here’s the Paypal account.

ramonesfan79@yahoo.co.uk

(That is a genuine account, by the way.)

Failing that, send us gifts. Gifts we can use. Gifts we want. Gifts like … uh, I don’t know … lunch-boxes with your band’s logo on them, pencils, lollies, T-shirts for the kids (like the one pictured above, styled by Isaac) … a USB key with your band’s music on it.

Of course, it helps if your music is GOOD. Helps, but not mandatory. We’ll still write about you if it’s crap, but we might not be, um, entirely favourable … y’know?

(continued overleaf)

So far the tally runs thus:

Dude from NZ band Sole Stickers (who we like and really ought to get round to writing about): Aus$50

And then there’s Erika, of Isaac’s favourite Portland band Boo Frog.

Erika ticks the boxes on all three counts. Money sent: tick. (US$15 to buy the new PJ Harvey album with.) Gifts we like: tick. (See Isaac’s photograph above. Plus a frankly awesome-looking DVD documentary about the birth of Portland’s DIY culture, Northwest Passage AND a copy of Willamette Week, featuring an oral history of legendary rock club, the Satyricon.) Music we like: FUCK YEAH! Primordial dirty oozing old-fashioned swamp rock, like Dead Moon and The Cramps once wrote that … um, frankly we’d write about (and have written about) even without the first two boxes having been ticked. Still, it’s the gestures that count, and so Boo Frog are shortly to join the hallowed ranks of artists who’ve made Song of the Day twice (Kate Nash, Cornershop, Shannon And The Clams), this time around to celebrate a new live album they’re releasing, Undead At Satyricon. LINK TO MUSIC. LINK TO RECORD LABEL. LINK TO SONG OF THE DAY ENTRY. Especially as they are one of Isaac’s favourite bands, full stop.

So c’mon PR and band folk! Join the gang. A month’s time, we can run an old school Viz-style chart, detailing the Top 10 bribes we’ve been sent. Why not cut out the middle-men (editors of magazines) and commission the writers themselves direct? I can’t see it’s any less corrupt than the present system anyway.

Transparency on all counts, folk. Transparency on all counts.

P.S. If you want to take the old-fashioned route, and take out an advert, please contact me. We have surprisingly reasonable rates.

P.P.S. Both the examples cited are done so, slightly unfairly. James from Sole Stickers actually sent me the money in appreciation of the writing on Collapse Board, and with strict instructions that I shouldn’t write about his band. That’s “shouldn’t”! And Erika’s money (and DVD etc) was a gift: at no stage did she ask me to write about Boo Frog again. I’ve explained more here.

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