Contacting Shiny and New

Over the past month we've started to notice a high increase in the number of press releases about unsigned artists we receive. Of course, compared to some music blogs, we're sure this number is tiiiiny, but for a blog that started out for funz, that then accidentally lasted almost 3 years, this is amazing to us and makes us feel just a little bit more professional about something we do in our meagre spare time for absolutely zero pounds and pence SIMPLY FOR THE LOVE OF IT.

Anyway, here are some guidelines and tips, just to cover our 'asses' in case you decide to get angry that you emailed us 7 times about your exciting new superstar-in-waiting and we haven't written about them yet.

• Send all your stuff to chazandlindy (at) gmail (dot) com. It's our email address.

• As mentioned above, we do this for free. We have never ever gotten paid anything to write about music and actually lead extremely busy and 'choca' lives (except when we take out an hour to write essays like this), so pleeeeease, pleeeeease, unless it is of paramount importance, do not email us about the same artist, with the exact same press release FOUR OR FIVE TIMES. This has actually happened to us more than once over the past month and we would like to say: plz stop. Either we're too busy or we didn't want to write about your artist. We reserve the right to not want to do that for literally any reason cuz it is our blog so we are boss. [There is a great bit on Wendy Roby's site about why someone might not respond. You should read it because she is very eloquent and funny]

• Please try and include a good picture of yourself, or at least a lovely video we can embed. We, and our readers, love to see what you look like as well as what you sound like. You might think this is shallow and ridiculous, but that is just the way of the world. This is not so we can judge you on your looks. It is just so that if we do decide to write about you, we have a lovely little illustration to put in the post and make it look less block texty or drab. We put a picture or video in every one of our posts, so do send one.

• WE LOVE NEW MUSIC BY UNSIGNED PEOPLES. We don't write about it much because for
  ages we didn't get sent anything, so we just wrote about artists who were already experiencing fame on some level. But over the summer as our schedules free up a little, we may well start featuring some of the unknown artists we receive press releases from so as to 'support' 'fresh' 'talent'. Please keep sending us stuff in the vast volumes that you previously have. We don't want these bullet points to scare you off. Send us stuff in abundance.

• Lastly, Shiny & New is a music blog who predominantly write about female, queer, avant-garde, left-of-centre, indie or 'alternative' (vom) artists so if you're sending us some homophobic rap or some heavy metal with lyrics about sodomy and ginsu knives, please refrain. We won't feature it and will possibly also be a bit offended (/bored/rolling our eyes).

 That's that.