Submit Music / Press Guidelines
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Press Releases and PR
Any press releases about Irish bands or bands coming to Ireland are welcome. We cannot guarantee we will get something up on the site but we will do our best. Please do not mail multiple times requesting something to go up on the site. It will go up when we get a chance to get to it. If you want your press release to be given priority, please offer us financial compensation. We are a volunteer network and as such do not have the resources to instantly cover something at all times.
Bands – Please do not Tweet or Facebook your material or content and expect us to remember it. Consider our email inbox like our to-do list.
All PR should be sent to admin@goldenplec.com
Interview offers
All interview offers are welcome. As with everything, we will try find someone free and capable of doing the interview. If you are proposing an interview please send us vital details and not just the name of the band.
When will the interview be?
Will it be in person or a phoner?
If in-person where will it be?
How long with the interviewer have with the act?
Competitions
We are happy to run competitions for readers to go to gigs / festivals or win merch / CDs / signed CDs. Please contact us with full details of the competition. With regard competitions, it is the one part of the site we are happy to blur the music lines. So if you want to give away movie tickets / comedy tickets / merchandise or anything similar then please email admin@goldenplec.com
Submitting Music
Singles
We do not review singles but we will use the songs on The Fourcast on 2XM. If you label your email as for play on The Fourcast, we will get it into the show.
Albums
We prefer submissions via permanent digital links. We are a small volunteer team so we CANNOT guarantee a review but we do our best to get to as much of everything that is submitted to us. Our Irish band submissions receive priority. These are the following preferred options to receive albums and EPs. We ALWAYS prefer the option to download where possible.
- Bandcamp – Link to album with a download code or two sent over.
- Dropbox – share the folder with [email protected] or use the direct upload option below
- YouSendIt – Send us the private link.
- Soundcloud - Private link with download option preferred.
Please do not send an entire album as an attachment in pieces of several mails. The less clicks to get your music, the more likely we are to use it. If you submit the album as stream only you are limiting your chances of review. Firstly we cannot use streams in our 2XM show, we need the file to put it in the show. Second, our reviewers like to give albums multiple listens before casting judgement. If you limit them to listening at their PC, they most likely will choose to pick up another album they can take on the go. Use your head when submitting. If you don’t trust us with the contents, please don’t bother sending it.
Raw tracks and unfinished or unmastered songs
We don’t want unfinished tracks. Please only contact us with the finished article. It is not fair to you or your band / music to be critically reviewed on an unfinished product.
Tagging
Please name and label your album properly. It is very poor for a band or management to send in files with no ID3 tags and cryptic file names.
Band information
Lets assume we do not know you. Link us to your Facebook and Twitter. We tag reviews when publishing so it will benefit you to save us having to search to find you. There are lots of bands with ungoogle-able names, so help us out. If you have a band website / Facebook / Twitter / Breaking Tunes link please send it in with the album. If you want to include a concise bio that if fine, however we don’t want to know everything you have ever done as human beings. Keep it short, concise and telling us the important details to know about your band.
Sending physical albums
Mail [email protected] and we will furnish you with a forwarding address. This should be a last resort, we are quite happy with digital copies unless you want to run a competition. Physical CD’s cost you money, save your money and send us the content digitally.
Write for Goldenplec
Goldenplec is a volunteer network. It is owned and ran as a hobby by Aidan Cuffe in his spare time. This hobby has become a massive collaborative effort over recent years and we have a team of writers and photographers who cover events / festivals / interviews and review albums / EPs for the site.
If you would like to volunteer, then please send us an example or two of your writing for our sub editors to look over. If our sub editors feel your writing is good enough we will add you to the team. We operate a system that aims to weed out people just looking for free gig tickets, so if you have no interest in reviewing albums or EPs or conducting interviews, please do not contact us.
We only want people trying to improve their writing and make a name for themselves. Goldenplec is a journalism platform to start from and learn skills you might otherwise not be afforded. We do all this in our spare time because we love music.
Photograph for Goldenplec
There are some extremely talented photographers in Ireland who on a regular basis snap gigs all over Ireland. Our team have some of the best live photographers in Ireland snapping gigs largely in Dublin. If you are a photographer and want to join the team, feel free to contact [email protected] and our photo editor Kieran Frost will discuss the possibility with you.
Gig photography is a high pressure event. Most gigs are first 3 songs only and no flash. This means you need to be quick and be able to adapt to low light and smoke-machine scenarios quickly and still be able to get great shots of the gig. Anyone who hasn’t done gig photography before, we will limit where they are able to snap venue wise while they are learning. Equipment also will dictate what you are able to shoot as depending on the venue or artist, as the photographer could shoot from a sound desk or back of venue.
