How to get on the plugger ladder...

October 9, 2006 5:05 AM

I'm 24 and work in sales. I have a huge passion for indie music. I have never been sure what I wanted to do but I think (on paper) I have found a vocation I can really love. How do I best break into new music plugging in London? Also how awfully paid is it? Money is a motivator for me but more than anything I want to enjoy what I do.

I am reducing my costs (rent, bills) to pursue this but I still think debts etc could hold me back.
I will be grateful for any tips or ideas.

posted by mjlondon to media & arts (16 comments total)

it's not a well paid field..

however, student radio used to be a very good way of making contacts in this area. I think some of the student radio stations in london allow non-student volunteers to volunteer.. check out www.studentradio.org.uk
posted by ascullion at 5:44 AM on October 9, 2006

If you find a way to make promoting indie music a job, rather than a hobby, you will be an exception to the rule.

If you find a way to make promoting indie music pay you anything significantly above a bare minimum living wage, you're probably either a genius and/or are sort of ripping someone off.

Remember - most indie bands make little to no money as it is. As a promoter, you're basically looking for a cut of the profits made in the indie music market by doing advertising, putting up flyers, booking shows etc.

Problem is: the bands make so little money, what can they afford to pay you? Not a real lot.

I recommend you do it as a hobby or as a part time job with another job doing something more lucrative, because it sounds like something you'd enjoy which is very important to general happiness -- I just wouldn't stake my livelihood on making enough to do it as a career. It's very cut throat, very ego and drama filled if you get engrossed deeply in it, and not very good money.
posted by twiggy at 6:46 AM on October 9, 2006

The radio route is probably the only way you can turn a passion for music into a stable career. It's a hell of a lot of fun too (I work here - lots of people have gone on to private sector radio promotions).

What ascullion said.
posted by phrontist at 7:18 AM on October 9, 2006

At least as I understand it "plugging" and "evangelising about music you are passionate about" are not at all the same thing in the music industry. A plugger will promote the music s/he is paid by the record company to promote and nothing else. If you are willing and able to enthusiastically push stuff that you don't personally like you may have a greater chance of making reasonable money.
posted by rongorongo at 7:19 AM on October 9, 2006

Appreciate the help. It may seem like a silly question but how do you radio around a full time job? If it's volunteer work. I'm not sure where in London I would find independent/student radio work.
posted by mjlondon at 7:31 AM on October 9, 2006

Do you mean 'indie' as in the American notion of 'indie', ie everything from Fennesz to Pavement to Sufjan Stevens to Neko Case? Or do you mean the more typically British/NME 'indie', ie 'boys with guitars' Kaiser Chiefs/Radiohead/Arctic Monkeys style?

I would think that there's certainly dosh to be made in the latter - it's very popular. Maybe call the local NME clubs and ask if they're looking for volunteers in the offices?
posted by Marquis at 7:35 AM on October 9, 2006

mjlondon - you could try hospital radio. You don't give a specific location in London but I know Northwick Park in Harrow has a largeish station.
posted by randomination at 7:46 AM on October 9, 2006

I mean Sufjan Stevens, The Album Leaf, Bonnie Prince Billy, Tom McRae.
When I say indie music I meant only to refer to my musical tastes. I'm not really interested in 'trendy indie'. IE the massive misinterpretation that anyone who has a guitar is indie such as Franz Fedinand, Arctic Monkeys, Idlewild. I like music I like NOT music NME likes.
There is a massive amount of people in London that love good guitar based music but the radio idea doesn't seem to offer anything in that field exactly. However any direction for radio in London I will gladly take on board.

PS Marquis: There is just as much quality UK indie as there is US. Britain just have more idiots that don't understand what it is and therfore wrongly label 'Popular' as 'Indie'.
posted by mjlondon at 7:50 AM on October 9, 2006

As said above, plugging and promoting are two different things in the UK. If you're a plugger, you're hired by the record company to plug the music at radio or at TV (TV plugger). The ones who do it consistently well can make a shitload of money. Its mainly paid on retainer but often you can get huge bonuses for hitting specific targets i.e. I've known people who got an extra 5 or 10k when delivering an A list at Radio 1, etc.

How you get into it is a tough one. Radio and TV plugging is completely centered around relationships. My advice would be to approach the independent plugging companies out there and try to get a low level job. Pick up a copy of Music Week and I'm sure you'll find the names of a few. You could also work freelance but without the connections in place at both the labels (to get hired) and the radio and TV stations (to get results), you probably won't get far taking that route.
posted by gfrobe at 8:58 AM on October 9, 2006

er, mjlondon, i live in the uk and am v well acquainted with the indie scene here. but as someone who has lived on both sides of the pond, i can attest that the word means v different things here and there. here, it means a certain kind of post-Radiohead guitar music. (a group like Tunng, Silver Mt Zion or even Arab Strap probably wouldn't be described as "indie" music in a broadsheet here, as it would in the USA.) it has nothing to do with popularity - just different understandings of the same term. (mostly due to the massive UK success of a certain wave of guitar bands on indie labels - see: Stone Roses, Smiths et al.)
posted by Marquis at 8:59 AM on October 9, 2006

Apologies Marquis, I didn't, want to appear moody. I think the term means alot of things to alot of people but still it bugs me that some very popular music gets labeled as indie. This is starting to look a little like a forum with my input so I shall stop.

Regluar reader of your blog by the way.
posted by mjlondon at 9:34 AM on October 9, 2006

no worries matthew. sorry i got persnickety too.

still it bugs me that some very popular music gets labeled as indie

well, in a world where The Decemberists, Sigur Ros, Modest Mouse and Herman Dune are all signed to majors, that's a hang-up that will probably cause you some further hernias yet.
posted by Marquis at 12:12 PM on October 9, 2006

My advice would be to approach the independent plugging companies out there and try to get a low level job. Pick up a copy of Music Week and I'm sure you'll find the names of a few.

I think this is going to be your best bet. Another place to try would be at a label. A major indie like the Beggars Group (that includes Matador, Beggars Banquet, Too Pure, 4AD and a few others) is going to have its own promotions department. A smaller label won't but you'll at least start meeting the people you need to meet. Keep in mind, particuliarly at a major indie, that we're probably talking about an internship at first. Of course, if you've got the social skills to be a good record promoter you might be able to just talk your way into a job. I had a friend like that at the college station I worked at. She moved to NYC right after we graduated and found a promotions job immediately.

It may seem like a silly question but how do you radio around a full time job? If it's volunteer work. I'm not sure where in London I would find independent/student radio work.

There's always the 3am to 6am shift.
posted by GalaxieFiveHundred at 1:19 PM on October 9, 2006

A plugger will promote the music s/he is paid by the record company to promote and nothing else. If you are willing and able to enthusiastically push stuff that you don't personally like you may have a greater chance of making reasonable money.

Oh, and I just wanted to reiterate what rongorongo and gfrobe already mentioned. In fact, I can't emphasize this fact enough. If you have any delusions about this you need to drop them or not pursue this line of work.

I was the music director at my college station for a few years and hung out with a lot of radio promotion and label folks. The first year I thought everything was so fucking cool and was convinced that I was going to work at Matador or Merge after I graduated but by the time I finished my tenure I was thoroughly disenchanted. Not to put you off it or perhaps you already understand all that. Just wanted to make sure that clear.
posted by GalaxieFiveHundred at 1:48 PM on October 9, 2006

still it bugs me that some very popular music gets labeled as indie

But that's because it is indie, in the traditional sense of the term – i.e. it's music being released on independently distributed labels. It's also "indie" in the sense that it's not – say – Beyonce, or Girls Aloud, but rather "alternative" (God, how I hate that word) guitar rock of some sort or another.

Franz Ferdinand, Arctic Monkeys, The White Stripes, The Strokes, The Libertines – all popular as you like, all (in the UK at least which is where, with the exception of The White Stripes, they were first signed) on independent labels: Domino for the first two, XL and Rough Trade for the others.

And indie as a description has only (obviously) referred to "post-Radiohead guitar music" when it's been possible to be post-Radiohead – and even then, I'd still argue that there's plenty of latitude. Electrelane, Stereolab, Clinic, Primal Scream, all manner of other people, would be grouped as "indie" in some sense in the UK. Go back a few years and everything from My Bloody Valentine, Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr to The Pastels, The Smiths, the Comsat Angels would have fallen under the same banner, despite none of them sounding alike.

Anyway, enough derailing. If you want to get into music PR in London – whether radio, where it's generally called plugging, or working for a company that serves print media, which is just called plain old PR – you've got plenty of work ahead of you.

There are a couple of factors working to your disadvantage: the fact that you're 24 makes you a few years older than the average media studies graduate/dropout, and therefore you will be seen as less pliable/prone to manipulation. It also means, roughly, that you're not as likely – and again I'm speaking generally – to work for a pittance of a salary. And when I say pittance, I mean exactly that; more than a few people I know who are music PRs were taken on as juniors earning something in the region of £10,000 a year, which – unless you've got wealthy parents – is not a viable salary if you want to live in London, where accommodation and transport (even if you live in some scummy dive out in zone 6) can easily suck up two thirds of that without you even noticing. (This is why so many of the music PR people you encounter in London are nice upper-middle class girls and boys whose parents can afford to bankroll them through a few years of penury, subsidising their enourmous rents as they go.)

I'd also reiterate the points already made by rongorongo, gfrobe and GalaxieFiveHundred: if you have any illusions that you can get into this area and suddenly find yourself working with all your favourite bands, evangelising about the things you truly love, then you're sorely mistaken, unless you get lucky enough to work for a label or a PR company who exactly fit your idealised vision of what the job might entail, and that's not likely, because when it comes down to it, there's far more awful music to be promoted than good.

Another thing to keep in mind is that working to plug great independent music is no less sordid and cut-throat than working to sell the latest Christina Aguilera album to a radio station: the same tricks are involved, the same techniques, albeit on a smaller scale. You might, indeed, be promoting music you love, but you're still a shill, unless you spend all your pious time only talking up bands you truly and genuinely love, and the only chance you're going to get to do that is if you spend a few years establishing yourself and setting up your own company over which you have complete control. And you're a good way off from that yet, to say the least.

All that might sound like I'm trying to put you off, which I'm not at all. It's just that the realities of being a music PR/plugger – particularly in London – are far less fun/enticing/rewarding than you initially might have thought. Of course, you might already know all this, in which case, go for it: ask for an internship at a label and/or company who you have respect for; find out which PR companies or record labels do interesting stuff, and then start applying for jobs. There's a fairly good directory of labels, PR companies and pluggers here to get you started.
posted by Len at 5:16 PM on October 9, 2006 [1 favorite]

Move to Glasgow. The place is rife with wannabee bands and talentless hacks trying miserably to promote them (Len being the obvious exception). Find the next big thing, do them well and the world's your deep fried oyster.
posted by brautigan at 6:42 PM on October 9, 2006