Press never hurts

Yeah, tell that to Jered Threatin.

LOL

I've gone after press/boggers and have  a large list. Honestly, it is a time consumer with little measurable results most of the time. (same with spotify playlist curators - everyone is hitting them up) 

Here's the thing to think about, you and about 100,000 other musicians are also using hypemachine, submithub, etc... why are you different? Why should someone listen to your song, review etc. (BTW  i used Heroic's stuff in the past, their course etc, and while many good gems, it's really geared towards someone running an indie label and heavily using soundcloud)

I too am in a position where people submit music to me. I get around 150 submissions a week. Most of it crap. I listen to maybe 1 or 2 of those submissions. I have an assistant that listens to a handful.

The messages/emails I get are either  template emails someone cut and paste (and often forgot to edit), or they are so poorly worded that I don't understand what they want from me - this makes me jaded.

When I am going after press for my own music or when working with others, I focus on my circle of influence, meaning the press, I can build a relationship with, which means local press that sees me at events, shows, bars, etc, and when I go to them it's with a UNIQUE story, not just "hey look at me, I have a new album"; yeah? so do the 50 other local bands that emailed me.

For example, my town was literally on fire this past September with evacuations and watching the mountains burn less than 10 miles from my home. thousands of people had to evacuate. So, once the smoke became more tolerable, I setup a fundraiser concert with about a half dozen local artists  - a couple of them are big, signed, been on the Idol shows, artists. Everything from the venue, to sound, to snacks were donated. We called it Smoke on the Mountain all proceeds went to the displaced residents, and firefighters. We went to the press with the story, and got them to promote it, AND do write ups about the unsigned artists in a way that drove traffic to their websites. With google analytics and facebook pixels we could track the success of this, and all the artists I worked with personally, were able to get some sales, new fans, great press for a cause, and good karma.

Another example, one the artists I work with is a former Army Sniper that came back with bad PTSD, he began playing music to cope. He started building a following over the past couple of years, and due to his USP, we were able to get him to be on Fox Sports, Local news did TV segments on him, he sang the national anthem at the awards for purple heart recipients. So because we used his USP to create a unique tale, it set him apart and now when we drop an album, as part of the MMM pre-sale release, we go back to those, and create a USP around the release, and boom, he gets more press, and we get more traffic and convert more fans to sales.

Now you don't need to have a fire that burns down 100k+ acres of your land to do this or be a vet with PTSD, but when approaching the blogs, press etc, you need a USP to get them to have interest in you - just you need a USP for your fans! 

 I think you can dovetail blogs/press into MMM easily, and if done the right way, you can track and see the results if it was worth it.