Internship Week 2

     My second week at Planetary Group was spent doing a set of diverse tasks. I actually prefer this than to doing the same thing everyday.

     Monday was spent doing research, however this type was a little different than what I had been doing the week before. When we receive new clients we have to research artists that sound like them. Then research publications that have talked about those artists in hope that maybe they would talk about our new client. This helps us be effective and efficient because if we reach out to particular publications that have posted about similar artists there will be a better chance at getting it published. For example, one of the bands I researched for sounded similar to Foals. So I looked for different magazines and blogs that gave Foals’ latest album a review or featured a track. Then I write down the publication name and contact so that we will have it for our records.

     On Wednesday I got to do some social media stuff. I learned about a website called Hoot Suite, it lets you create scheduled tweets. I did not even know you could do that. Most of my day was spent creating tweets for our artists that are about to tour and scheduling them to go out the night they play in a certain city. For instance, if they are playing in Austin, Texas, on July 7^th I can tag the venue and city then schedule it to go out at noon on July 7^th. Also, I got to post on Planetary’s Tumblr. I have not had much experience with Tumblr so I was learning how to work that and had to be sure I sounded like Planetary’s voice when I posted. Later on in Wednesday I got to start creating my first pitch. I had no idea they would actually let me do this so I really excited. I have been in charge of pitching the artist Art d’Ecco. He has been living in semi-isolation on the Gulf Islands in hopes of starting over. Before he moved he sold his guitars and pretty much quit making music. His grandmother, who has dementia, moved in and he began playing piano for him at night to ease her anxiety. Eventually this led him to start making music again. d’Ecco has released his single “She So Hot.” It is very 70’s glam rock so if your into that style you should totally check it out!

     Friday, I finalized my pitch. I was told you do not want to have a pitch that is too long because then the person will probably not actually read it, but it also has to be enough to convince the person it is worth posting about. I was then taught how to work the software File Maker. From what I understand, File Maker contains thousands of records for all publications we have used. The use of it is to find the publications that we will have the best chance with sending out the pitches too. File Maker has filters you can use to help go through them. The filters I used were Seattle, Portland, Canada, Rock, Electronic, and Pop. This gave me a diverse set of publications to go through and see if they would fit. You also have to look at the size of followers each website has. This is because we wouldn’t want to waste a pitch for such a small artist on a website that has over a 50,000 followers because it is unlikely they will use it. Even the smallest music blogs usually get 200 submissions everyday so you have to be careful with who you send it to. Once I had mine picked out I then emailed it out to all of them personalizing each email. Then I had to go back in File Maker to mark every publication that I sent a pitch to. I guess I’ll see on Monday how many responses I got!