My feet hurt. The faux suede high-heeled boots I was wearing for the last eight hours are lying on the floor a foot from the chair into which I have collapsed, and I will not be getting up to put them away anytime soon. I am the very best kind of exhausted. Let me tell you about what has happened in the last 48 hours.
We released our first single
“Did You Think This Was A Love Song” became available on all major platforms (including some I didn’t know existed because I am old and uncool and also not European) at 12:01 on Friday morning. I was up then, trying to decipher the world of music bloggers and playlist curators, and across town Joe was awake trying to finish a lyric video for the single. We exchanged a couple of texts at about 12:02. We had both been looking for the song to show up, and we had both found it. It was kind of a wonderful moment, both quiet and monumental. Our music was all over the internet. In small quantities, admittedly, but still. Our dreams, in fairy tale fashion, were literally coming true at the stroke of midnight.
Posting about it on social media the next day gave me further opportunity to demonstrate my inability to keep my cool about this entire process. My posts for the last week or so could basically be summed up in about five thousand exclamation points and heart-eyes emojis. I will make an effort one day soon to curb this excess…but yesterday was not that day.
We tried SubmitHub
So here’s a thing I’ve learned in the last few weeks. In the music business in the 21st century, the way to get your music into the hands of new listeners is to get a music blogger and/or playlist curator to highlight it. And the fastest and easiest way to accomplish this is through a service like SubmitHub, which gives you access to hundreds of these tastemakers for a small fee. You upload a song to the internet, tell the site a little about it, then click through a list of bloggers and choose which ones you want to submit it to. They listen within 48 hours, they (usually) offer a little feedback, and they accept or reject it.
So we tried it. While Joe was busy making videos and managing the business end of things, I pored over lists of bloggers and tried to parse out who would be interested in our stuff. I submitted “Small Fires,” which will be our next single, to 34 bloggers and playlist curators late on Friday night. And right now we’re up to…let me check my email for the current total…14 rejections. This is apparently how these things go, even for successful songs, so we’re not too put off by it. And honestly, they’ve had some kind things to say about the song:
“Sweet-edgy and soulful vocal track…”
“I appreciate the pop energy here…”
“Nice riff in there…”
Who knows? There are still 20 that haven’t made a call. Either way, it felt like a big deal, dipping our toes into the blogger world for the first time.
We had a launch party
This afternoon, dozens of our friends and family converged (carefully, with masks and in a socially distant manner) on my back yard. For a while there we weren’t entirely sure that we were going to be able to pull this off. It’s getting pretty late in the fall, and we’re in the middle of a pandemic, and everything was happening so fast…but this idea, of gathering people we care about to celebrate this milestone, was near the top of the list of “extremely fun things.” Also, we now have hundreds of CDs we need to sell. So we decided to try it and see what would happen.
You guys, it was so much fun. Really. Every single minute. The weather was perfect–it was in the low 60s, but the sunshine took the edge off the chill, and we had coffee (in cups just like the one on the album cover) and warm cider and homemade cupcakes. We set up Joe’s sound equipment and my aforementioned rickety digital piano and its supporting 2x4s next to the back wall of the house, and every half hour or so we did a mini-set with two songs from the album and one of our favorite cover songs. (Any excuse I get to sing “Desperado” I will definitely take.) We met each other’s friends, and we hung out with each other’s families, and people were incredibly kind and seemed to be genuinely enjoying the music. And we signed CDs. Like, autographed them. Because our friends are wonderful people.
There’s more to say about all of the above, but this post is already too long, and it’s almost midnight again. I’m beyond tired. Everything is sore. But it has been an amazing couple of days, and I am entirely content. What a ride.