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Submit your music to Magnatune
Magnatune welcomes submissions of music for possible inclusion on our site. Please read this web page carefully and follow instructions before submitting music to us. You can submit via Internet or postal mail, however we strongly recommend you send a CD by postal mail, as the sound quality is usually better and it increases the chances we will listen to your tracks in the order you intended. Since we often have to make quick decisions about music, this is important. Please take a look at the contract terms before you submit. Only send music if you are willing to sign the the agreement should we accept you. Note: Submissions are accepted only from musicians or their management. We don't accept submissions from labels. Read this if you want to recommend someone. |
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Ensure your music is heard. Read and follow instructions.
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Submitting a CD by Postal Mail
- Remove any shrinkwrap from your CD submission.
- Send us your album only if it is 40 minutes or more in duration. Do not send singles, EPs, or short demo CDs.
- We recommend sending one CD—your strongest—to start. Please don't send us more than two CDs. We can always request more of your work in the future.
- Please write your email address and phone number on a piece of paper and include it in the CD jewel case, or wrap it around the jewel box with a rubber band. Please don't write on the artwork itself. If we accept your submission, we'll need to use that!
- Many people submit without ever having visited the Magnatune site, so it helps to include a brief sentence indicating you know what Magnatune is about.
- If you're including printed material, please limit it to a one-sheet with all the relevant information about you and your work. Do Not Send: packets, postcards, glossy photos, or an entire folder full of stuff.
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Send CDs to:
Magnatune Recordings (attn: Shannon Coulter)
2342 Shattuck Ave, Suite 524
Berkeley, CA 94704 USA - Please don't send us email asking whether we've received your package or have listened to your music yet. We always have lots of packages sitting in our offices, and we don't have time to dig through these stacks multiple times a day. If you send us music, we will listen to it. And if we like it, we will contact you. If you want to know for certain that your package arrived safely, we recommend using one of the return receipt services offered by most post offices and shipping services.
- FTP sumbissions are accepted in MP3 format only.
- Upload MP3s to ftp://ftp.magnatune.com/incoming/.
- Please send us at least 40 minutes of music. We strongly recommend sending just one album's worth of material to start. If we want to carry your music we can always request more work from you later.
- DO NOT submit zipped files. We often run into problems when unzipping them, and submitting this way is like digital shrinkwrap: it creates a barrier between us and your music. Submit individual music/song files only.
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Use This Format To Name Your Song Files Before Uploading: ArtistName-TrackNumber-SongName.mp3. Here's an example of how the files should look:
- TheClones-01-FeastYourEyes.mp3
- TheClones-02-DayPass.mp3
- And so on...
- If your song files don't follow this format, we most likely will not listen to them.
- After uploading, email Shannon with your band name on the subject line and song names in the message. Include a telephone number.
- Sadly, for about 20 percent of FTP submissions that we've liked in the past, we can't determine who submitted it due to incorrect file name formatting, and thus can't sign them up. Help us avoid this problem by either putting your artist/band name in the file and sending us an email afterward!
- Don't worry, the FTP upload directory is write-only: no-one else will be able to download your submissions.
- If you'd rather not send a whole CD right away, send Shannon an email with your band name on the subject line and the filenames of the mp3s in the body. She'll get back to you and let you know whether or not sending a CD would be appropriate.
- Whenever possible, include links to each song or to a playlist file or web site that makes listening easy (MySpace, mp3.com, IUMA or your MP3s web page).
- We get over a hundred submissions per week, and links to web sites can easily fall by the wayside. Please be advised that the best way to ensure your music is seriously considered is to send a CD by postal mail.
- Follow the instructions above, and we will definitely listen to your submission.
- Because of the volume of submissions we receive, we only reply to the bands we want to sign.
- We sometimes get as much as a month behind in listening to submissions, so please be patient.
Submitting Digital Files via Internet/FTP Upload
Send us a Web site with MP3s
We will listen to you!
