We care about TBB a lot and put in a ton of time to the organization. We spend a lot of time on email, going through submissions and forwarding them to the rest of the staff for consideration. It’s fun and challenging and always satisfying, as we get to discover a ton of new music along the way.
As always, we are so happy that so many bands in the Bay Area would like us to feature their music, and that so many hard-working PR firms contact us about their clients. And while most bands and PR firms get it, a few common errors drive us nuts!
If you send short emails with no helpful details.
Sending an email that says nothing aside from “I was wondering if you could write about my band/event” – we’re never sure how to answer these emails. Usually I try to be polite and ask for more information, but sometimes there isn’t enough time for that. Try including some album details, upcoming shows, good photos, links to where your music can be heard, etc.
If you submit your music by attaching MP3s to an email.
MP3 attachments completely clog up inboxes, and are very difficult (sometimes impossible, depending on the size of the attachment) to forward to the rest of our staff to share. Try using Soundcloud/Bandcamp/any other streaming service where you can easily provide links that we can subsequently send.
If you pitch us through Facebook and/or Twitter.
This one really irks me, since we don’t communicate with the rest of the staff via Facebook (there’s no way to organize Facebook messages like you can with email, among other reasons). In order to share your submission accordingly, I have to take several additional steps to spread the info to our staff, versus the one step required when bands use good ol’ email – as with email I only have to hit the “forward” button and then go on with my day. The same goes for replying or messaging via Twitter.
When you use Facebook or Twitter to pitch your band, you are asking whoever is checking our social media outlets to do most of the work. Instead, please check out and use our online submission system!
If you get angry when we haven’t replied to your email and/or covered your band.
We’re all really busy, and working as hard as we can to provide the best possible coverage of the Bay Area music scene. But we’re not perfect! There are only so many hours in the day, and there’s just no way that we’re going to be able to reply to some of the emails that we receive. And if we haven’t covered your band? It’s possible that no one on the staff has shown interest in writing about your submission (sorry). But we hope that you keep trying!
