How To Write A Hip Hop Music Press Release

We understand why artists, labels and managers have a kind of love/hate relationship with music press releases. When all the mixing and mastering is done and you’re ready to promote months of hard work, sitting down and producing a press release which accurately reflects the work, effort and thought behind the music and artist is pretty difficult. It’s the start of the business end of music, and sometimes this doesn’t sit well with those who idealistically feel that the music should organically promote itself.

We want change the way in which Hip Hop artists, labels and organisations feel about writing press releases for music. Press releases don’t have to be 500 word adjective-fuelled pleas of desperation in order to get your music heard. In fact, those are the kind of press releases that we STOP reading after the first few sentences. A&R professionals, journalists and label executives hate them too, because they don’t provide an accurate description of artist and they can’t a feel for an artist’s direction or what it is that’s fresh about them.

There’s the potential for it to be distributed all across the world, so it’s important to get it RIGHT. Write it to make an impression, not just because you feel it’s something you have to do.

Format Of A Hip Hop Music Press Release

Firstly the format of a news related press release and a music press release are roughly the same, but the content is completely different. A music press release may not be considered ‘news worthy’ and thus can be written in a more informal, personable style and distributed on an individual basis or collectively to specific contacts. A news related press release takes a more formal approach and can be distributed across a multitude of press release networks.

The format of a press release should follow this structure:

• Title or Headline (Approx 10 words);
• Opening statement or summary (Two to three sentences, or approx 40 words);
• Main content (300 words minimum);
• About section (A description of the company or label);
• Keywords or tags (Used for online distribution centres, minimum of three keywords);
• Contact details (Name, telephone number, address, email, social media links).

The format above pretty much covers everything that should be included in a press release that’s distributed both on and offline.

Other Things To Remember

Okay, so if you’re a Hip Hop clothing site or music store and you’re distributing a standard press release to promote your business, it’s important to make it news worthy. If it’s not, it’ll be a complete waste of time and the success rate of it getting re-published will be pretty low.

When writing a news article press release, always keep content written in a third person style. Rather than using terms such as ‘we’ or ‘I’, you should use the full company name. A really simple way of producing content for a standard press release is to think of how it would sound if a news reader were reading it out aloud. You can be clever and to an extent loose in how you make the press release news worthy. Ask yourself these questions:

How has my business helped someone?

What is my business doing that’s unique to this industry?

What has my business discovered that nobody else knows about?

If you can answer any of the questions above, you can probably work it into a news worthy press release.

The title of the press release is arguably the most important part. It’s the equivalent of the first few seconds of an instrumental or the headline of a newspaper article. It takes literally a second or so to decide whether or not you’re committed to reading on. Keep the title on point and creative. Don’t try and be too clever or it might come across as too cryptic to the reader and they will lose interest. Remember, to capitalise every letter of each word in the title.

The MOST important thing to remember when producing a music press release is that it should reflect your style, mentality of ethos. Think of yourself as a business. Remember to include words and phrases which your audience and intended recipients will understand and that you feel a natural association with.

Don’t over-sell yourself. Whether you think you are the world’s best or hottest new rapper or singer does not matter one bit.  Emphasise your story. Where are you from? What are you changing? What have you done to get to this point? What are you contributing that’s new to Hip Hop? People want to read your story, not your sales letter.

Lastly, it might be that you don’t have time or you really struggle in putting together the content for a press release. That’s where we come in. Contact us if you’re interested our custom press release writing services.