Cold Emails and invitations

In the past week, I have been compiling contacts in a single spreadsheet. This is so I can invite the right people to the right gigs and systematically send out invites to them. There are multiple sections detailing the person’s field, position, and which gigs they should see.

Because of sensitivity I have to block out most of the spread sheet , but hopefully this demonstrate the work.

Currently I am at sending invites to the iklectik show next month as it is already public and it is more accessible for outsiders to come. I am also listing people I want to invite to my invite-only performance at LCC in May, which will be a dance/noise + my new music. This special event has very limited amount of spots so I am reserving it for special people that I feel is beneficial to building my artist image. This includes A&R, artists, editors and journalists from magazines and so on. Apart from building a relationship with labels, I am planning to see if any magazines are open to doing a profile on me, reviewing this special performance and interview me as an artist. This would be a very good outreach move, to create a sense of mystery around me and creating demand for people to discover me, rather than sending cold emails every time I have a gig.

Right now half the lists are of cold calls, hopefully, 30% of them will reply and I can make some connections by performing live. I think having people experience my music live is better than emails, this gives people a sense of genuinely discovering new music by themselves.

I think this is about how to effectively promote myself when I am not yet releasing music, and with a few performances/gigs coming up, how do I promote myself and get the right people to come and discover my music? Who am I targeting for now if I am not releasing music to the public? Whose interest am I trying to get? This is why I tried very hard to get this contact list together, to see if I can get the attention from the industry first and get resources that way before going super public. I think the invite-only show is a really good opportunity to create demand for my work, and only inviting people I feel related to my work or from the communities I wanted to be situated in makes sense if I want to be seen as a serious singer-songwriter. This is also about presenting myself as an intersection between art and music, showing how I am different from the artists currently in the market. To really see my artist image as a product and think of different ways to promote it as to not just your normal singer-songwriter. Especially to the music industry as they constantly looking for fresh new products to sell. I actually find this process very creative and enjoy planning these promotions and actually making it as professional as I can. I am also very comfortable selling myself as a product and detaching my work from my private self, which is why I think I wanted to be a signed artist in the first place. This together with my genuine passion to sing really gives me a strong start to finding a record deal I think.