• I Dare You To Get Closer With Your Fans

    “Last Saturday we drove by REI and I ended up with a new bike. Whoops.” The quote above is typically not the sort of intro you’d expect in a newsletter from a music-themed podcast, but hey – why not? Bryan Patton runs the As The Story Grows podcast, and his newsletters aren’t just links to his latest… [KEEP READING]

  • Do Cool Stuff, Share It With Your Fans

    As an artist you can sit around and wait for a media outlet to do a cool feature on your project, or you can do it yourself, then share it directly with your fans. Back in 2010 when I was running Noisecreep for AOL Music, we worked with The Devil Wears Prada to promote their upcoming video… [KEEP READING]

  • Video Didn’t Kill The Email Star

    If you’re a talented host and actress and presenter (and a million other things) with a big following on Instagram and TikTok – you should still have an email list. Whitney Moore is super active on the socials – videos! photos! witty observations! – but she also has a website (hooray)! So when fans get clicking and… [KEEP READING]

  • Make That Link In Bio Count

    While Sunny Day Real Estate may not be heavy metal, I saw them post recently and felt their announcement process could serve as a good lesson. First, a cryptic post on Instagram. The red letters spell out ‘We owe you nothing. You have no control,” which is a line from the song ‘Merchandise’ from Fugazi. The post wraps… [KEEP READING]

  • Pissed Jeans Has An Email Newsletter

    This is how you can start a Social Media Escape Plan. Sign up for Substack, and tell people to sign up. In this case, Pissed Jeans put up this Instagram post, said “link in bio,” and now they have an email list. Their reasoning sounds legit, too: Rather than rely on the mercy of the proprietary Meta™… [KEEP READING]

  • Put Your Welcome Email To Work

    Un-opened and un-clicked emails look “bad” to the mysterious inbox servers in the email world, which is why your emails might skip the INBOX and end up in the “promotions” tab in Gmail, or even worse – the spam folder. If your open rates are dipping down near 10%, it just shows those servers that… [KEEP READING]

  • Send Better Birthday Emails

    My birthday just passed (I turned 46 this year, thank you), and because of the joys of email marketing I got a few celebratory emails from some brands I subscribe to. In fairness, I won’t show off the birthday email from a client, but here’s an email from another label in the same genre: Nothing… [KEEP READING]

  • Sell To People Who Like To Buy Your Stuff

    Sell To People Who Like To Buy Your Stuff

    As part of my ongoing research in the world of heavy metal email, I buy albums from various record labels, (edit – and opt-in for future emails), just to see their email flow after I put in that order. A handful send me a receipt for my order. That’s expected.Then they never send me another email.… [KEEP READING]

  • Your Fans Miss Most Of Your Social Posts

    No band signs up for social media and says, “eh, I’ll Tweet once a month, I don’t want to be too spammy.” Then eight times a day they’ll post tour posters, YouTube links, and whatever else that capture on their smart phone. Okay, you might not want to send eight emails a day to your fans, but… [KEEP READING]

  • Interview: Ryan J. Downey Of Stream N’ Destroy

    Interview: Ryan J. Downey Of Stream N’ Destroy

    Ryan J. Downey is a reporter, podcaster, writer, manager, and a million other things, and still finds time to publish his Stream N’ Destroy newsletter a few times a week – and it’s one of the Top 25 Top 20 (as of Sunday, March 20, 2022) music newsletters on Substack! Why Substack, instead of something like Mailchimp? Joe Escalante told me… [KEEP READING]