SonyBMG Asks Wannabe Musicians to Blog

Posted on March 30, 2007

SonyBMG will no longer accept hard copy demo submissions starting on Monday. Instead, Sony wants musicians to blog about themselves and their music on two sites: columbiademos.co.uk or rcademos.co.uk. Both of the sites are part of a collaboration with Six Apart's Vox.

There are a couple of interesting things in the Demo FAQ. In this excerpt from the FAQ they explain why they are using blogs.

Blogging is one of the major trends in music, media and entertainment, and we think it's about time that a major record label uses the new medium to find and communicate with new artists
We want to offer all those artists out there a new, efficient way of presenting yourself to our label's A&R managers, and using blogs for this purpose will be drastically easier for all involved parties.
Because we are open for submissions and conversations with interested artists, and the market-place, in general.

It also sounds like they will check with blogging peers to measure the interest in the music before offering a deal.

What happens if you guys like me / my band?

If we like your band we will first bounce your blog links around internally and collect feedback, and see how high the collective level of interest is. We may contact you, or visit one of your shows, or request more information, at any time.
If things get more serious we may offer you a development deal or some other form of collaboration - this all depends on the individual A&R manager that will engage with you but you will be engaged in normal A&R process.

Another portion of the FAQ also hints at this need to get buzz going on your blog in order for them to consider your music: "The bottom-line: if you get a lot of buzz on your blog we'll be there to check you out! Your task is to make the buzz."