On my Q&A Zoom call yesterday with some Ari’s Take Academy students, one of them was lamenting about hiring publicists in the past and being very disappointed with the results. If you’ve ever hired a publicist as an emerging artist, I would imagine you feel the same.
I’ve hired my fair share of publicists for my own work and for artists that I manage and have spent tens of thousands on their services. Let’s just say, results vary. Of course, things have dramatically shifted over the years. It ain’t 2014 anymore where getting blog coverage was the end all be all. Chart on Hype Machine and your inbox was flooded with label and management interest while your SoundCloud plays exploded.
These days, press can still be important, but for very different reasons. You have to be super intentional about why you think you need a publicist. It varies at different stages of your career. If you get nominated for a Grammy, a publicist is almost a necessity to help you manage Grammy week events, red carpet appearances and to maximize the moment both in LA and for back-home press. For major events like this, a publicist can work wonders.
If you’re a buzzing artist (or already very established) releasing a new album, publicists can help get you Late Night spots, morning news, podcasts, social media collaborations, YouTube appearances, an appearance on Hot Ones, and high profile press like Rolling Stone, Billboard, Variety, Pitchfork, Paste, i-D, Stereogum.
But for the emerging artists, is press necessary? Does it move the needle anymore? Is hiring a publicist still necessary? Yes and no. It depends on your goals.
Let’s just lay out the facts and expectations: getting press doesn’t translate to getting streams. It’s also not great for discovery anymore. That’s not the purpose. It’s really important to be clear eyed about this.
I still think getting press at any stage of your career can be very helpful for a few reasons. One, you need other websites to start populating with your Artist project, linking to your website for SEO purposes, and increasingly, AI purposes. You want the Google AI summary at the top to have a robust description of who you are when someone searches for you. Also, to get a Wikipedia page requires a lot of legitimate press and news about you.
And when fans start to do their deep dives, they’ll seek out any and all information about you. Interviews and articles can be tremendously helpful at deepening the fan relationship and most importantly, establishing legitimacy. If someone hears your Sound on Tiktok and they go check out the song on Apple Music and then they Google you and there’s absolutely no press or anyone on the internet talking about you, they may give up and feel like it’s not worth it to be a fan of you because you don’t have much going on.
One emerging artist I work with released an album not too long ago and we hired a publicist at $1,500/month. For the record, this is on the low end for what publicists charge (I’ve paid $4,500/mo for a 4 month album rollout campaign before). Anyway, this publicist got some tiny podcasts, a few little press write ups, but nothing substantial. We were pretty disappointed, so I hit up my buddy Mikel who runs Purple Bite PR for assistance.
+This Music Publicist Has Upended the Entire PR Model
Purple Bite’s model flips PR on its head. Instead of charging artists a flat, monthly rate to try and get “earned media,” they work on a results basis. You only pay if you get legitimate press from agreed upon outlets, or your money back. Some of the best press we obtained for the entire album campaign was through Purple Bite – not our publicist who we had on retainer for 4 months.
Because of my personal experience working with them, I am proud to partner with Purple Bite. They are the only legitimate service out there, working with major outlets like LADYGUNN, Rolling Stone, Stereogum, Pitchfork, Paste, i-D, Earmilk, and NYLON that will guarantee you press, or your money back.
They now also have a playlisting service to ramp up your streaming game with a little jump start. I’ve vetted them through and through and they’re legit. They’ve run thousands of campaigns and have had zero songs flagged for fraudulent streaming or bot activity. When there are so many scams out there, it’s hard to know where to turn. Purple Bite is legit.
I recommend checking them out. Visit Purplebite.com click Submit Your Project and let them know that Ari’s Take sent you for 10% off.
