We try to get as many reviews as we can but we're quite lazy about this now. Strange people email from radio stations all over the world asking for albums - sometimes we send them off sometimes not. But a well placed review or bit of airplay is pretty well the only way to get sales.

Its interesting (but maybe only to me) that website optimisation, that works so well for all sites, has very little effect on music. Though this page is very popular.

But, if you do get a good review or played on a station somewhere, visits to the website will jump - you may even sell music.

Its a good idea to get an actual name to send to, so i hope this helps (to be added to):

• Radio Stations in the UK: a-l , m-z
• Magazines: music magazines
• News papers: news papers uk

BUT magazines often work 4 months in advance - so send it to them 4 months before it goes on
release otherwise they won’t look at it!
Other publications work on  different timescales.

We have always tried to sell music directly, with little success until now. The Tinkerbell’s Dope Ring album: Beetsmakespitpink did get a distribution deal with PlasticHead Distribution which was nice. They took 250 copies of the album and paid us about £2.50 each so we didn’t make any money. Now, through music sites on the internet (www.mp3.com, www.peoplesound.co.uk, www.vitaminic.co.uk, www.besonic.com, www.mp3.com.au, www.avantnoise.com, www.soundsky.com, www.elevationstation.com) we have had about 10,000 listen and downloads (probably about 3000 of which were downloads) of our music.

We did give away all our music (pretty well) as mp3s. After a year and many thousands of downloads we are now going to try restricting the number of mp3s to see if we can encourage sales.

We have also tried to put mp3s on Peer-to-Peer systems to help market the bands’ music. Its difficult unless you  leave the computer on  the whole time.

And now we are trying  Tunecore. Theres Myspace (and supposedly its the way to get gigs nowadays - don't give the venuw a cd, just a myspace address) and Lastfm . Whatthe hell.

 I dare say you  have read about Madge's new record deal is with  a promotion company. Whetherthis means  her music will be free from now on ( i doubt i, i can'tsee Madonna doing  free) we'll see. But for medium and big bands i dare say tickets and  t-shirts are where all the money is. But for new bands it will continue to be  a cash free zone.  But i hope cash isn't why you're doing  it - if it is go and be something  else - a big brother celeb.