Dear artists, give me the means to listen to your music properly. Let me download it!
Even now, some artists with whom I come into contact suggest I listen to their music online either through Spotify, Soundcloud, YouTube or other similar services.
These tools are very good to discover the music of a musician but not really suitable for quality listening in my opinion.
I prepare my interviews by listening to an album many times on my stereo at home or on my iPhone with a good pair of headphones. In both cases, the quality of MY listening is determined by hardware and not by varying quality of an online listening sites and by the bandwidth of my Internet connection.
Furthermore, I do not know about you but when I'm at my computer I'm doing several things at once and I am not at all focused on what I am listening running in one of my tab browser.
This is why I ALWAYS request a link to download the album in MP3 files of good quality or failing that a physical CD (but it is more expensive and slower for the artist).
Dear artists, you put your heart and soul in your music,
give me the means to listen to it in good conditions !
If I ask you a download link is not to spread it around me, what would be the point?
If I am asking this for YOU ! To give the best chance to YOUR music.
I'm on your side, to promote you guitarists and bassists who make the music I dig.
I will not sell your MP3! So let's simplify our lifes, you and me and provide me download links.
There are lots of ways to send a full album: YouSendIt, WeTransfer, DropBox, etc.. Some online sites like Soundcloud can even have an option activated to allow to download files for offline listening.
I hope I was able to clear this matter which comes up quite often when the first contact is established.
Pierre.
PS: I listen to EVERYTHING I receive. I then make my choice entirely subjective and I totally assume those choices to decide which artists I interview or not. It is by no means a qualitative judgment on my part, it's just a reflection of the emotions I feel when I listen to the music.
