How To Get Interviews On Music Blogs

You can toot your own horn all you want. At the end of the day, if you want to be validated as an artist, you need to get other people talking about you.

And as far as online music promotion is concerned, getting coverage from music blogs is quite advantageous. One review may not do much for you. But if you keep stacking one review onto the next, pretty soon you will begin to see more links to your site, more fan interaction, and more sales for your music.

Now the only problem you have to solve is how to get interviews on music blogs. Fortunately, it's not as hard as it sounds. Here's what you need to do.

Get Interviews By Building A Buzz

If you want to get covered, it all starts with you.

Building enough of a buzz locally, and even on a bigger scale could get you in front of more media people and music bloggers.

But this depend on your locality, at least to some extent. There may not be any bloggers in your neck of the woods, or they might be too busy in their basements or offices to pay attention to what's going on.

But if you do something unique or extraordinary, and the word gets out, someone is going to want to cover it. Figuring out what that is can be the tough part. I'll talk more about that a little later.

Put Out Some Feelers For Potential Musician Interviews

There's nothing stopping you from reaching out to music bloggers directly. Just don't be like the vocal minority and start sending press releases and review requests indiscriminately to every blogger you can find. You need to be a little more calculated than that.

It has often been said that the squeaky wheel gets the grease, but do you really want to be that annoying guy or gal that's constantly pestering people to get them to do what you want them to do? I don't think so.

The only reason some of these artists get coverage is because of the volume of messages they send out. It has nothing to do with the quality of their outreach.

Context is really important. I have a lot of people reach out to me without so much as a “hello” or an introduction. That's not how a relationship or rapport is built. I know, it's kind of a pain to start from scratch, but you have to break the ice with bit of small talk, maybe a compliment even. From there we can start to hammer out the details because the upfront effort was made to connect.

What I'm trying to say is this – be thoughtful and intentional in the way you reach out to and connect with music bloggers.

You could also try Help A Reporter to see if you can get connected with relevant industry people.

Buy Exposure From Music Blogs Looking For Those To Interview

In some cases, it may be possible to get in front of more music bloggers with a well-targeted PR campaign, advertising, or by paying for interview features.

While this can be an effective strategy, it's easy to waste money, and if your music isn't likely to appeal to the people you're trying to reach, you aren't going to see results.

After all, we as musicians aren't trained in PR or advert optimization. If you want to do it right, you'll have to hire a professional, and that's going to be all the more costly.

Only buy exposure if you a) have the budget to do it, and b) know that it's going to help you get more interviews.

Show That You're Willing To Promote

I've interviewed a lot of people over the years, and oftentimes I have done it out of the kindness of my own heart – I didn't expect anything in return because I wanted to add value and get myself established as a blogger.

But I have to warn you that most people don't think that way, and aren't just going to interview you because they've heard of you. They want to see a return on their investment of time and energy.

You know what they're looking for? Shares! There's nothing that frustrates a music blogger more than seeing a band get covered only to never share the news with their fans. It's free publicity (and credibility) for God's sake!

Look for ways to help each other. Show your willingness to promote the crap out of the interview – after all, you're both going to benefit from it. Give and you shall get. But don't keep trying to get. You have to give too.

Appeal To Their Ego

Here's one, final, advanced tactic for getting more interviews. I'm surprised more musicians aren't doing this, but I suppose growth hacking hasn't exactly made its way over into the music industry yet.

Here's what you need to do if you want to appeal to the ego of music bloggers:

1. Find and use one of their recommended strategies.
2. Be consistent and persistent in applying their methodologies, and keep track of your progress.
3. Make note of how things change over the next 90, 180, 270, and 365 days. If you see notable results as early as 90 days, you're ready to reach out. Otherwise, you might have to hang in there for a little longer, or find a different strategy of theirs to apply.
4. Share with the blogger what results you were able to achieve using their strategies. They'll want to cover you as a case study in some way, shape or form, almost guaranteed!

Final Thoughts

If you follow the steps outlined above, you should be able to get more interviews on music blogs.

If possible, stay in touch with the bloggers that interview you. This will increase your chances of being featured again in some way. Maybe they'll ask you to guest post or to offer an opinion on a specific topic. Maybe they'll want to catch up with you later to find out how things have been going.

If you strive to add as much value to them as they are likely to add to you, the positive reputation you will build will help you to create a platform for more exposure down the line.