The trouble with the heavy metal promotional process begins with the promotional CD. These get sent out in the hundreds (and sometimes over a thousand) to every piss-ant little heavy metal magazine, website, mail-order, and radio station out there. Think about that. One thousand free copies of a CD are sent out by a record company in the hopes that the recipient will write about the band with either a review (and every review is an advertisement for the release) or an interview (and every interview is an advertisement for the release) or play the album on their show (thus advertising the release), or sell it in their store (the ultimate goal).
If you have never seen a promotional CD, they are a thing of wonder. They are designed so that the recipient will not turn around and sell this CD they got for free. Really naïve companies take a normal copy of the album and stamp "PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL" on it, and/or punch holes in the bar code. Really annoying companies will take a normal version of the album and just cut the corners off of the booklet and traycard. Some will just not send the traycard. None of those work very well for preventing the sale of promotional CDs, but they do provide the recipient with a good artifact with which to know everything there is to know about the album. The lineup, technical credits, lyrics, and all the rest are in the CD and the thing can be judged by the same perspective that a fan would judge it by after they buy it.
The real joy comes with the standard issue promotional CD. It comes in a little cardboard sleeve. One side has the album cover, the other side has the song titles, maybe a lineup, maybe a band photo, and the record company contact information. If you're lucky you get a sheet of paper with the CD which contains all sorts of useless publicity information where the record company has basically written you a form letter telling why this CD has the most awesome music ever recorded in the history of Earth. Comedy ensues when the package contains several CDs and promotional hyping trying to convince you that the most awesome albums ever all arrived, for free, at the same time, in the same promotional mailing. It becomes the greatest comedy on Earth when all of the albums are of the exact same style. Life is good when people send lies to you along with the evidence that they lied.
The problem with this sort of promotional mailing is that the record company dictates what parts of the album are important for people to know about, which leads to most people having only that information when trying to use that material to then inform their audience. By not including lyrics in a promotional CD, the record company declares that lyrics are not important to the album and shouldn't be discussed in any coverage of the album. The record company attempts to decide what facts about the musicians need to be known and almost subliminally tries to dictate what facts should be spread concerning the band. It becomes a problem when the promotional jibber-jabber is so out of touch with reality that it becomes distracting, harming the perception of the album at hand through no fault of the performing artists.
It can not even be argued that such an approach is to make the focus on 'the music' or else all they would send is a blank CD without a lineup, album title, song titles, or other information about the band or album. It's all an effort to both manipulate the media coverage the album receives as well as be economical and try to not lose any album sales through promotional CDs entering the market first.
If there's one good thing about the internet it is that record companies can not get away with that kind of manipulation anymore. There is too much research material available on absolutely any act out there for anyone who will take the time to look for it. Not that many writers use every resource available to them
Recent tricks have been attempted by record companies to prevent promotional CDs from being uploaded to the internet. The CD will be edited, with half of the songs being wiped out. This is called a "faded" CD. What would you think of a review made based on listening to half of songs? How would you feel if you found out a writer has been publishing information based on these incomplete albums and not mentioning it? Another trick is to just make the entire album into one long CD track so that people can't skip to individual songs, and they'll overlap the end of one song with the beginning of the next. These become very tedious to listen to and they're in big trouble if the first song doesn't become the media outlet's favorite. The coolest attempt at corrupting the material on an album would be the idea of a voiceover. The artists break into the songs to deliver a commercial about the album. These people must be thrilled when they have to record those voiceovers.
My favorite part of a promotional CD is that they always contain markings that say something to the effect that the CD, even though the record company willingly sent it away, is still the property of that record company and it must be returned on demand and can not legally be sold. The dilemma for the recipient of a good number of these promotional CDs then is to decide whether to keep all of these things forever (the record company never asks for them back and nobody in this business can possibly afford a house large enough to comfortably keep these damn things stored away), throw them away, give them away to people, or selling them. In the past I've traded them to people in exchange for meals or housekeeping, and I've sold them for rent money, for food money, I've sold them to buy other CDs, and I've sold them just because I was curious if anyone would ever really ask for them back.
This is what the heavy metal media is being fed by the record companies; this is what they use as the prime source material to provide information to you, the heavy metal consumer. And they accept it, enjoy it, and can't wait to do it again.
If you have never seen a promotional CD, they are a thing of wonder. They are designed so that the recipient will not turn around and sell this CD they got for free. Really naïve companies take a normal copy of the album and stamp "PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL" on it, and/or punch holes in the bar code. Really annoying companies will take a normal version of the album and just cut the corners off of the booklet and traycard. Some will just not send the traycard. None of those work very well for preventing the sale of promotional CDs, but they do provide the recipient with a good artifact with which to know everything there is to know about the album. The lineup, technical credits, lyrics, and all the rest are in the CD and the thing can be judged by the same perspective that a fan would judge it by after they buy it.
The real joy comes with the standard issue promotional CD. It comes in a little cardboard sleeve. One side has the album cover, the other side has the song titles, maybe a lineup, maybe a band photo, and the record company contact information. If you're lucky you get a sheet of paper with the CD which contains all sorts of useless publicity information where the record company has basically written you a form letter telling why this CD has the most awesome music ever recorded in the history of Earth. Comedy ensues when the package contains several CDs and promotional hyping trying to convince you that the most awesome albums ever all arrived, for free, at the same time, in the same promotional mailing. It becomes the greatest comedy on Earth when all of the albums are of the exact same style. Life is good when people send lies to you along with the evidence that they lied.
The problem with this sort of promotional mailing is that the record company dictates what parts of the album are important for people to know about, which leads to most people having only that information when trying to use that material to then inform their audience. By not including lyrics in a promotional CD, the record company declares that lyrics are not important to the album and shouldn't be discussed in any coverage of the album. The record company attempts to decide what facts about the musicians need to be known and almost subliminally tries to dictate what facts should be spread concerning the band. It becomes a problem when the promotional jibber-jabber is so out of touch with reality that it becomes distracting, harming the perception of the album at hand through no fault of the performing artists.
It can not even be argued that such an approach is to make the focus on 'the music' or else all they would send is a blank CD without a lineup, album title, song titles, or other information about the band or album. It's all an effort to both manipulate the media coverage the album receives as well as be economical and try to not lose any album sales through promotional CDs entering the market first.
If there's one good thing about the internet it is that record companies can not get away with that kind of manipulation anymore. There is too much research material available on absolutely any act out there for anyone who will take the time to look for it. Not that many writers use every resource available to them
Recent tricks have been attempted by record companies to prevent promotional CDs from being uploaded to the internet. The CD will be edited, with half of the songs being wiped out. This is called a "faded" CD. What would you think of a review made based on listening to half of songs? How would you feel if you found out a writer has been publishing information based on these incomplete albums and not mentioning it? Another trick is to just make the entire album into one long CD track so that people can't skip to individual songs, and they'll overlap the end of one song with the beginning of the next. These become very tedious to listen to and they're in big trouble if the first song doesn't become the media outlet's favorite. The coolest attempt at corrupting the material on an album would be the idea of a voiceover. The artists break into the songs to deliver a commercial about the album. These people must be thrilled when they have to record those voiceovers.
My favorite part of a promotional CD is that they always contain markings that say something to the effect that the CD, even though the record company willingly sent it away, is still the property of that record company and it must be returned on demand and can not legally be sold. The dilemma for the recipient of a good number of these promotional CDs then is to decide whether to keep all of these things forever (the record company never asks for them back and nobody in this business can possibly afford a house large enough to comfortably keep these damn things stored away), throw them away, give them away to people, or selling them. In the past I've traded them to people in exchange for meals or housekeeping, and I've sold them for rent money, for food money, I've sold them to buy other CDs, and I've sold them just because I was curious if anyone would ever really ask for them back.
This is what the heavy metal media is being fed by the record companies; this is what they use as the prime source material to provide information to you, the heavy metal consumer. And they accept it, enjoy it, and can't wait to do it again.
