In a digital world the unsolicited demo still remains a popular way to discover new musical talent. But what makes a good demo and how do you decide which labels to send it to? David Felton reports.
Getting a demo into the hands of the right person has been the most consistently effective way of being discovered in the music industry for as long as recorded music has been around. Back in the day it was tapes; lovingly artworked and recorded on crunchy four tracks before being handed to A&Rs in sweaty clubs. Then it was CDs, often by post and with the obligatory band name and contact number scrawled onto the surface (with the occasional bribe thrown into the envelope for good measure). Nowadays it is usually an mp3; either emailed direct to the label or uploaded to their Soundcloud dropbox in the hope of garnering a listen from their head honchos.
Though the medium has changed, the goal – and the prize – has remained the same: to impress the label and subsequently find a place on their artist roster.
Of course, it’s not an easy ask. Labels – particularly the more established ones – receive scores, sometimes hundreds, of demos each week. That means you need to do everything you can to make yours stand out, in terms of the music, the production, and the way it’s presented.
How then do you ensure that your own demo has the best chance of being heard – and responded to?
Not before you’re ready
It may seem blindingly obvious, but avoid submitting demos that aren’t finished. One of the key complaints among labels is that many of the demos they receive are works in progress: tracks that are at best incomplete, unmixed and at worst just ideas – eight bar sections that a producer thinks could make a great track.
Although the intentions behind sending these ideas may be good, it’s easy to see why labels get frustrated: they want to a sign a track (and potentially an artist); not an idea. You owe it to yourself, your songs, and the label, to finish the tracks you send in: if you can’t be bothered to finish the track, why should the label be bothered to take any further interest in you? And when a label says ‘finished’, they mean finished; as in, fully mixed and with a proper ending.
The label may – occasionally – decide to re-record your demo, or give it a subtle touch-up, but the days of labels remaking tracks, particularly in the dance music world, are long gone. If you make indie, pop or rock then chances are that an 80% complete track will be enough to catch a label’s interest. Not so for electronic music: labels want to buy into a producer as much as a track. And a quality producer won’t send a half-finished demo.
Mastering the demo tracks you send, incidentally, is not essential. If you’re confident doing so, by all means do a bit of pre-mastering – some gentle multiband compression and limiting – but don’t bother spending cash on a pro job. A label understands that demo tracks are, ultimately, still demos and they will usually have a favourite mastering engineer they use across their output anyway.
Where?
Your first question when submitting demos will be which labels to send it to. There is no point in adopting a scatter-gun approach, firing off your demo to as many labels as you can in the hope that one of your musical seeds falls on fertile ground. One of the drawbacks of email and Soundcloud demo submission options has been that it requires little effort to upload demos to a host of labels in next to no time. But this kind of method rarely yields results and can have the inverse effect of alienating labels (some labels will require that any demos sent to them are only sent to them, their thinking being that there’s no point in listening to tracks that may get signed to another label).
It’s much better to take a focused approach; identifying the labels that release the kind of music you make and who will therefore be more likely to like – and therefore sign – your tracks.
If you are immersed in a specific music scene it should be easy to make a shortlist of labels: you’ll already have a natural affinity with many of them – you’ll probably buy from them and may have been to some of their club nights. If you are more isolationist in your music making then it’s time to start researching: head to Beatport or DJ Download and listen to the top 100 tracks in the genre your tracks most fittingly inhabit. Then follow links to the 30 or so labels that you think will be most interested in your demo. Read about each label; see what kind of artists they have signed and ask yourself how you would fit into their roster. Whittle down your list of chosen labels to around 20: this final list will be your hit list.
