First and foremost: Fingertips exists primarily to feature free and legal MP3s. I don’t post streams or videos. To be individually reviewed, your song must be available as a free and legal download, either as a stand-alone existing link, or as a file you can send to me which I can then upload and make available on this site.
I also do post (mostly) monthly playlists, in which case the song does not have to be a free and legal MP3 but it still needs to be sent to me as an MP3 so I can build it into the mix. A stream still doesn’t work in this case.
If you would like to email Fingertips, I strongly encourage sending a personal note that indicates your awareness of what Fingertips is about. Beyond that basic tip, here are some further email guidelines, along with explanatory notes below for each item, for the excessively curious:
1. I do not read bulk promotional emails, outside of those coming from vetted industry sources. Which means I don’t listen to music that is submitted this way. This includes emails from both PR professionals and musicians. Additionally, I actively unsubscribe from all mailing lists I have been signed up for without permission.
2. If you are sending a more personally-directed note, thank you! And, remember that Fingertips is focused on free and legal MP3s. I try to answer personal notes but can’t always do it, based on the volume of submissions.
3. Fingertips does not review albums, EPs, or videos.
4. I don’t care about anyone’s thousands or millions of social media followers, or hundreds of thousands of streams. If that’s what’s important to you I’m probably not going to like your music, and you’re not going to like Fingertips. Relatedly you’ll notice that I do not use SubmitHub or any other submission aggregator. I am not looking for friction-free submissions; I want and need direct human contact, which has nothing to do with social media volume.
5. I cannot reply to follow-up emails asking if I’ve listened to something.
6. If you want direct, personal feedback to your song, the only way to guarantee that is to submit through Fluence, here: http://fluence.io/fingertipsmusic.
7. I am open-minded about genres but my natural predilection is for music based in the rock’n’roll tradition and its many and varied offshoots.
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Notes:
1. And yes I understand this limits the number of submissions I receive. But I am ever always in search of quality over quantity. And I have found, through 20-plus years of operating Fingertips, that the best submissions are almost without exception the ones that come in via personal contact. I’m sorry if this makes things more difficult but it’s been a really good indicator for me of the types of musicians I end up connecting with.
2. But, the less obvious it is from your email that you in fact have a free and legal MP3 available, or that you are specifically familiar with Fingertips, the less likely I am to read it and/or listen to any music. That said, I will sometimes, when the mood strikes, listen to streams, because how can I not? But it’s not a reliable way to reach my ears. Likewise I am extremely unlikely to listen to a remix (see below).
3. Emails that are promoting albums, without any clearly indicated individual songs to download, may end up being ignored. Likewise emails that appear simply to be promoting a video.
4. In fact, when I see social media numbers being heavily promoted, I don’t bother to listen to the music. Now more than ever, “popularity” is entirely divorced from quality in the music world. It is definitely of no interest for me to promote that particular status quo.
5. Not trying to be rude but the volume of submissions rules this out. And if you must follow up (please note that I’d prefer you not to) please wait at least a week or so–there’s a lot of email to go through here all the time, and I definitely do not read everything right away. If you follow up on something you sent two days ago, chances are I haven’t even read the first one yet.
6. To submit via Fluence does cost a small bit of money–typically less than $10 a song. But you will in that case get my undivided attention. Note that this is not a way to guarantee a feature on Fingertips, it’s just a way to get my personal take on your music.
7. At some point Fingertips seems to have gotten onto a list of blogs that feature hip-hop music but it’s definitely some kind of mistake. While I have nothing at all against hip-hop, I have zero expertise in that arena: I honestly don’t know what to listen for, which means I can’t judge it, which means that I very rarely feature it.
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Bonus information for the extra attentive:
* Even when I do respond it may take a week or two.
* Resist the urge to promote to me via Twitter or Facebook. I don’t look to social media for promotional messages and I prefer not to see them in my streams.
* Because Fingertips is here to highlight and honor original songs and performances, I really don’t connect with remixes, if only because I really don’t know what to listen for–it’s my shortcoming, not yours, but as a result, no remixes here.
* Auto-Tune and I also do not get along. For better or worse, I listen to music to hear singers who can sing. I’m hoping this will sound really dated someday, like ’80s drumbeats. But I’m not holding my breath.
* My name is Jeremy; you can find more information about me here.
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