No matter how well-known you are as an artist, a Groover campaign has to be carefully prepared. The platform is already guiding you to write out your submission properly, but it’s not always easy to know what the media or music professional you are about to send your music to is waiting for !

I myself am on Groover with my own digital magazine : hauméa magazine, and I have been working as a music web writer for several webzines beforehand. I will explain to you what is expected of the artists on the platform as a media, and I will share my advice on how to have all the odds in your favor in order to get good feedbacks & shares thanks to your Groover campaign !

Ready ? Follow me !

What you’ll find in this article :

What is Groover ?

Groover is a platform that gathers a large number of music professionals located all over the world, whose profiles have been handpicked by the Groover team itself to make sure that is it only filled with active & valuable “influencers”. It’s a platform that allows you, in the words of co-founder Dorian Perron when I was interviewing him on hauméa, “to break the wall” and allow you to get listened to. Thanks to Groover, you’ll have a much higher feedback rate than if you contacted these same professionals by email, and they are given a small financial compensation for their feedback.

Because, yes, Groover is a paid platform : you pay 2 euros (or 2 Grooviz, as they say) – sometimes 4 but we will come back to this later – to contact an influencer on the platform. So, if you contact about fifty people, you pay 100€ (or 90€ if you use a promo code, I have one on hauméa on my contact page !).

On Groover, you’ll find media, journalists, labels, bookers, publishers, managers, mentors, playlist editors and more.

So how do you know who to contact, and when ?

Don’t worry, I have the answer right below. Let’s keep going !

The main categories of “influencers” on the platform and when to contact them.

Let’s have a deeper look at the list of influencers I just wrote above.

Media

This includes digital magazines, radio stations, online radio stations, blogs or even web TVs. Contact them when you have a new single / EP / album coming up, preferably ahead of your release – but I’ll focus on that right below.

Journalists

I put them into a separate category because they sometimes work on behalf of several media. I’m thinking in particular of Estelle from LOFI who also works at Mowno or PWFM, or even Maxime Delcourt, who writes for Vice, Brain Magazine and more. The latter have “personal” profiles in a sense that you’ll find their name first and not the media they work for, and are to be contacted the same way you would contact other media on the platform.

Labels, bookers, managers, publishers, mentors…

This is an ever expanding category of influencers on Groover ! More and more professionals are registered on the platform (all over the world) to give you feedback on how to you improve your demos, your communication strategy, and these discussions can and already have led by the past into signing a contract with them. I put all professionals in the same category because it will matter a little further down in the article.

Playlist curators & Youtube channels

This last grand category certainly features the most sought-after influencers of all, as they are largely responsible for the increase in your statistics on streaming platforms, and play a big role at any times in the development of an artistic career – yes, even Billie Eilish or Lady Gaga need to be shared by Spotify playlists in order to properly reach their audiences !

Now that you know the main categories of influencers on Groover, let’s get into the main topic of this article : setting up your own Groover campaign.

Getting in touch with media with Groover : a master guide.

Media are a special category of influencers because they are the ones who will share your story to their audience and therefore allow you to reach new ones. Yes, they’re not just going to broadcast your music, they will actually deliver the message you want to convey through your songs !

Some of you may already see where I’m going with such a statement : it is essential to make sure that your presentation, biography and track pitch are well written in order to grab their attention.

As a music web journalist, I spend a lot more time reading your biographies, reading your press kits, browsing your photos and scanning your social media profiles than listening to your music. That doesn’t mean that I don’t listen to your tracks (actually, I do while reading your bio) ! However, it means that if I don’t have any or enough information about you, I can’t project myself, and therefore I can’t write about your music, because I just don’t know who I’m dealing with.

But you are here because you want to get some press coverage, right ? Here’s how to put the odds in your favor :

  • mention the release date of your track, music video and/or album, while taking into account that most media like to receive your track in advance so that they can properly plan out their content. With hauméa, I plan my content at least three weeks in advance, and I only focus for editorial issues on tracks that have been released less than 6 weeks ago. So don’t hesitate to contact the media before your release – two weeks before at least.
  • put your biography on your artist profile. We can access it as curator in a sidebar on the side of your music submission, and it lets us know who is behind this great track that we just received (it’s key to getting to know you) !
  • describe your track to the journalist. No need to say the obvious (for example : “here is my next French pop song”, we will hear it and guess that by ourselves while listening to the track !), Describe your song so that the journalist understands why you wrote it – now this is something we cannot guess !
  • do not think that uploading your press pics is optional : add several photos to your campaign so that the journalist can access them whenever, can choose which one fits best to the upcoming article (we all have different tastes!), and above all, this will allow when people type your name in Google that all the articles you’ve obtained do not not all show the same photo, you will appear more professional that way !
  • if you have one, put your press release in your campaign’s attachments. Yes, upload it even if you  have already described your track, and even if you have already put your bio !
  • last tip : give as many information as possible in your campaign submission. That means putting all the links to the social media accounts that you have, to your Spotify profile, your Soundcloud, and even your Bandcamp profile. Journalists use Groover so they don’t have to depend on their mailbox anymore, if they have to come running after you to ask for a photo, link or info (which they won’t do because they don’t have the time), you run the risk of seeing your long-awaited press coverage pass right under your nose !

So in short : launch your Groover campaign before the release of your track, specify the release date of your track, upload your bio, your pitch, and put as many documents & links as possible to make the journalist’s work easy. You have no idea how many people will be happy if you do all of this !

But Cloé, I also want to contact labels, how do I do it ?

Follow me, the answer is right below !

How to contact music professionals with Groover : another master guide.

The process is slightly different when you want to contact labels and I’ll explain why. A label may need the same elements as the press to be able to see the bigger picture (a label of course signs an article for an EP or an album release, but above all, it signs an artistic for its project, its music & artistic identity). This is why it’s important to contact them in a slightly different way.

Here’s how to do it :

  • upload your bio, your pictures, your press release directly on Groover.
  • upload your key track, but don’t forget to include the demos of your future EP/album in which this key track will be featured. And in order not to see these demos go unnoticed, I heavily recommend you to copy and paste the link where they can be listened on directly in your track pitch !
  • instead of describing your track, explain why you are contacting them. If you contact multiple labels, keep your track pitch simple and straightforward, but leave a personalized message to each label you contact – you aren’t going to contact every label for the same thing, are you ? You’ll probably appreciate the collar’ opportunities with one label, and the artistic vision of another. And that is to be stated !

Now that you’ve read all of this article, you’ll realize that PR campaigns and network campaigns are not at all the same, even though they require the same communication tools. This is why I strongly advise you to create two separate campaigns, because your track pitches will be written differently for both the press and the music professionals.

And if all this still seems confusing to you, don’t panic : my job is to supervise and support you in order to make you understand how the music industry works. I am therefore currently creating a guide to help you with your music release, and I am available to answer your questions and support you if needed !

Subscribe to the newsletter to get notified of the launch of the guide before everyone else !

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