How to Get Music Press Coverage With No Press History

Find the angle before you find the outlets

'New single out Friday' is not an angle. A relocation, a collaborator with a following, an unusual recording method, a scene you belong to, a cause you're tied to, a visual world nobody else is making — these are commissionable.

Test it out loud: if you cannot summarise the story in one sentence that a stranger would repeat, an editor cannot sell it in a features meeting.

Build the citation trail from the bottom

Bigger outlets check whether anyone else has written about you. Tier-three blogs, genre newsletters, regional press, and specialist radio are cheap to earn and create the searchable trail that makes tier-two coverage plausible.

Three months of small placements before an album cycle is worth more than a single expensive push into national press with nothing behind it.

Pitch a desk, not a publication

Every outlet has different people for news, reviews, features, and premieres. Pitching the general inbox is how good stories die. Read recent bylines, identify the writer who has covered adjacent artists, and pitch that person specifically.

Keep it to five sentences: who you are, the story, why now, the assets, and a private stream link that works without a login.

Have the assets ready before you send anything

High-resolution press photos, a 150-word and a 400-word bio, artwork, a private stream, credits, and a one-line quote. If an editor says yes and you take four days to send images, the slot goes to someone else.

Coverage is a workflow problem as much as a taste problem — the artists who get written about repeatedly are the ones who are easy to write about.

More in this cluster

• The Music PR Campaign Timeline: What Happens and When