I recently hired Rhonda Kelly, who runs Rainmaker PR, which only does indie artists. Though I'm pretty burnt out on PR firms (I recently received [and declined] an $8000 bid to do 15 hours work, inviting press to an Artemis house concert I'm giving) she really impressed me so I'm giving her (and PR) a chance.
I really like Rhonda's in-your-face, authentically excited approach. She'd approached me about a year ago, telling me what a fan she was of Magnatune, and I blew her off (as I do almost all PR come-ons). Then, 2 musicians of mine voluntarily recommended her (unsolicited) and a phone call with her found me thinking that she had a great attitude, and she really deeply groked Magnatune. I also like that she has a mail room staff just for sending review CDs out, and uses stamps.com, which shows that there's a repeated process going on (it's not like we just invented the idea of music PR, is it?).
I've also been too busy to burn all the CDRs needed to send to reviewers, so I bought Rhonda a Primera Bravo II CD burner/printer. I already own two of these, and they work very nicely, cranking out a CD every minute or so, byte-by-byte verified, with a terrific on-the-silver-media color printout (though you have to use special, more-expensive inkjet-printable CD media).
Very flexible, very handy of her to take that duty on.
Also, I liked that when I was trying to convince my previous PR agency to send CDs out for review, Rhonda commented that their proposed approach of sending several CDs to each reviewer was likely to backfire and alienate the editors, as they're too busy and sending many CDs is insensitive. That advice resonated, as that's how I feel when a musician sends me 6 CDRs of "miscellaneous tracks" as a submission for Magnatune rather than one album of their best stuff. Makes sense.
Rhonda's first press release for Magnatune is now online ("Magnatune Sticks IT To The Record Industry"), and shows her gutsy style. Yer gonna hear more about Magnatune, ya hear?!!?
Hey John, just reading your blog to catch up with how well Magnatune is doing.
I'm not so sure whether Rhonda is a good pick, though. Quote from her press release: "Magnatune, gives their artists a 50-50 split of profits. That’s it."
Your terms page clearly says it's a "50/50 gross revenue split on music" (and a "50/50 net profits split on merchandise"). Considering Magantune is all about music, shouldn't she word more carefully? Or can't she tell the two apart, that is gross revenue and profits?
Anyway, good luck to Magnatune.
- eugen
Posted by: Eugen | October 17, 2005 at 09:53 AM