My band's album was due out today (EDIT: it's getting all legal now)

digitalscream

...but we had to cancel the release, because our PR company totally fumbled it.

Actually, that's being charitable. Apart from putting an error-ridden copy-paste press release on a few no-name sites (including calling us a quartet in the headline when there are five of us in the photo underneath it, and even spelling it "quarter") and getting a track played on a few radio stations with a combined listener base of about 20 people, literally nothing appears to have been done.

And that's not to mention the fact that we'd already had to put the release back by a couple of months because they took our money and disappeared for 7 weeks. Since then they've been nigh-on impossible to get hold of by email, phone, text or carrier pigeon. Everything they're supposed to have done has been late (we should've had three reports by now, and we received one a month late), insufficient (that one report was missing almost all the information you'd expect to have from a professional PR company), or incomplete (the only decent-sized radio station actually got in touch with us because they'd only been sent 7 out of 11 of the album tracks, and they couldn't get a response when they asked for the rest).

I'm not mentioning the name of the company right now, because we're currently making an effort to get our money back (at least some of it), so if you know the name...please don't put it in the thread.

Basically, they've tanked our album release, and we're not the only ones they've done this to - I personally know of one other band they've screwed, I know that a record label took them to court over another instance (they didn't show up), and industry folk I've spoken to say they've been contacted by several more bands in the same situation.

I guess those bands didn't fancy a public scrap with a PR company, because you can't find any information about any of them warning people off.

Looks like we're going to break that trend, because we're not going to let this one go; we're relatively stable, being middle-aged, but if they did this to a bunch of younger folk who actually wanted to make music their career...£1200 is quite a lot of money. Not only that, but if an album has already been released, then no other PR company will touch it - so that'll be a lot of time and effort wasted.

Just having a rant. Anybody got similar stories?

darthed1981

No similar stories, but knowing how stoked you were about the upcoming release, you and your bandmates do have my utmost sympathies

Hope it gets sorted soon mate.

stickyfiddle

digitalscream said:

I guess those bands didn't fancy a public scrap with a PR company, because you can't find any information about any of them warning people off.

TBH it doesn't sound like they're remotely competent as a PR company, so I can't imagine they'd be able to whip up any negativity towards you guys. 

I don't think I can offer any help or advice, but wish you the best of luck and hope you can get sorted with a proper release that's properly sorted.

guitarfishbay

Sucks to hear this

boogieman

Not in the music industry, but the company who published my book are/were utterly useless. They didn’t organise any publicity on the release date, we had to organise everything ourselves, including finding and booking a venue, inviting guest speakers, sorting out the guest list and invites, organising food and drink and making sure there were people there to take said refreshments around. Two guys from the publishers turned up on the night, but only to sell copies of the book. They seemed to think putting the book on their company website was enough. 

After that everything was down to us: booking talks and bookshop appearances, sorting out talks at literature festivals and interested organisations, trying to drum up publicity, doing mail shots etc etc. Luckily my co-writer is a journalist and well connected otherwise I doubt we’d have got half of this sorted. To add insult to injury, the publishers were “redesigning their royalties software” a while back which took two years and meant we didn’t get any money owed for all that time. 

Moominpapa

What a nightmare - how can they be so unprofessional and stay in business??   I hope you get your money back. Would you be OK with giving the name of the company in PM (I would like to pass it on to the band my son is in so they don't get shafted like this) or would you rather not at the moment?

MattBanshee

There's a music industry blacklist group on Facebook, you should post on there so that other bands don't fall victim to them.

digitalscream

MattBanshee said:

There's a music industry blacklist group on Facebook, you should post on there so that other bands don't fall victim to them.

Yep, I will do - as soon as the time we've given them to rectify the situation has elapsed (24hrs for one deadline, and five working days for the other).

And then I'll probably post the whole story here. It's long.

ICBM

That sounds like one of those old-fashioned 'promoters' who used to be notorious for taking young bands' money on the pretence of getting them gigs, support slots etc and then doing the sum total of fuck all has moved into the PR business.

Sassafras

Anyone can set themselves up as a PR agency.
I worked for one in the 70s. Anything more strenuous than ringing up their cronies at newspapers was beyond them. Right lazy bastards at anything that didn't involve taking your money.

digitalscream

Sassafras said:

Anyone can set themselves up as a PR agency.
I worked for one in the 70s. Anything more strenuous than ringing up their cronies at newspapers was beyond them. Right lazy bastards at anything that didn't involve taking your money.

Funny you should mention that. The only bits of contact from them which have happened on time since we signed the sales order were the three invoices.

darthed1981

@digitalscream - I watched your last video - tie up with Kelloggs for the album launch is surely the plan?

DLM

Hope you get this all sorted and the album out. I hated worrying about getting ripped off in deals promoting my last band. We only got screwed out of €50 by some South Americans, but all the interactions felt bad, not just with them.

LuttiS

Shit matey
Was looking forward to the album! 

PolarityMan

well that sounds pretty balls

digitalscream

Amazing. After loads of messages and texts sent to them this week in vain, we finally got a response around 6pm this evening.

"Hi <singer>, will get back to you shortly. Had a mental week!"

Really? 'cos it's kind of been a big week for us too, on account of being our album release an' all.

Still not heard anything, of course. "Shortly" is obviously a malleable concept.

rico

@digitalscream really interested in the name of this firm (and ensuing story) as we are about to sign a deal and want to make sure we’re not gonna get done over!

Strangefan

Please dont take this negatively  but it's not the early 2000s anymore
I assume your unsigned hense you having to  pay for the "priveledge " of the promoter? Everything they do you can do yourselves, getting on radio stations is a waste of time unless is a major station , you 100% have to concentrate on social media, and immediate content.
People are not interested in an album release unless you have a solid following, especially as the majority of listeners are not interested in albums anymore.

Regular updates on insta FB, new regular videos on YouTube and tiktoc, and solid regular gigs it the way it works now. 
Our live shows are an event, people come for the show, 

We have just come back from a hiatus and even then we were making the odd video so we didn't lose subscribers, our next song is a collab with electric 6! Guess how they got to know about us..... Yup our YouTube videos...
We also play bearded theory every year and again no ones helped us it's been 100%down to us, 

Throwing money will only add to the frustration if you have good songs a good show, and a good presence that's what will do the work not some con artist promising the world.

FYI the above is purely down to my experience, so just an opinion. 

digitalscream

Strangefan said:

Please dont take this negatively  but it's not the early 2000s anymore
I assume your unsigned hense you having to  pay for the "priveledge " of the promoter? Everything they do you can do yourselves, getting on radio stations is a waste of time unless is a major station , you 100% have to concentrate on social media, and immediate content.

It's not promotion, it's public relations - there's a distinct difference. And a good PR representative will have contacts that are unavailable to other folk; that's the whole point, you're not paying so much for things that are beyond your skill level, you're paying for (reliable) access to those contacts.

Ultimately....yes, it would be possible in the strictest sense for us to do that part of the job ourselves, but it'd be monstrously time-consuming to do it and much more hit-and-miss; there's a big world beyond social media which needs to be dealt with, and it's simply more effective to pay somebody who does it every day. At least...it's supposed to be.

Strangefan

digitalscream said:

Strangefan said:

Please dont take this negatively  but it's not the early 2000s anymore
I assume your unsigned hense you having to  pay for the "priveledge " of the promoter? Everything they do you can do yourselves, getting on radio stations is a waste of time unless is a major station , you 100% have to concentrate on social media, and immediate content.

It's not promotion, it's public relations - there's a distinct difference. And a good PR representative will have contacts that are unavailable to other folk; that's the whole point, you're not paying so much for things that are beyond your skill level, you're paying for (reliable) access to those contacts.

Ultimately....yes, it would be possible in the strictest sense for us to do that part of the job ourselves, but it'd be monstrously time-consuming to do it and much more hit-and-miss; there's a big world beyond social media which needs to be dealt with, and it's simply more effective to pay somebody who does it every day. At least...it's supposed to be.

I'm sorry to say but I disagree, (again only opinion) record companies are not interested in you unless you have a certain amount of presence and a certain following, they are risk averse, having contacts means nothing if you're not up to scratch in the areas that matter to them.
You know as much as me that the music is now not the selling point your sellability is and how you promote, music they have to give out for free, gigs merch and ad revinue is what's key.

The only people in the business who are interested in your music are independent labels  as they have less to lose, but you certainly won't make any money with them in the current musical climate. And certainly will take you a very long time to get your moneys worth. 

Legionreturns

It sounds like they need a spot on the B ark with all the telephone sanitisers and hairdressers.