How can I get my CD reviewed in AP?

First off, tell us about yourself and how you ended up in music journalism.
My name is Scott Heisel, I'm 25, and up until a few years ago, I had no idea you could actually make a living telling people what bands suck and what bands rule. What a nice surprise! I started writing record reviews and columns for my older brother's zine (like, actual paper zine) back in the late '90s, and trust me, 99.782% of it was awful. But the more I wrote, the better I got, and as I went onto college (Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois-go Vikings!), I found myself involved with a website community called Punknews.org. I became an active contributor, submitting many of the reviews I had written previously to the website's reviews archive (which at the time was virtually nonexistent). The owner of the website invited me to join their editorial staff in 2001, and I spent the next three years of my life helping to build Punknews.org into the juggernaut that it is today. When it was graduation time, I started looking around for places that might actually pay me to wear T-shirts and jeans to work and listen to music all day; somehow, I convinced AP I'd be a good part of their staff and I've been here ever since.

What made you want to be a journalist?
Strictly a love of music. I didn't major in journalism in college (my college actually didn't even offer it as a major), but I couldn't deny my passion for music and got involved in every possible aspect, whether it was booking shows, working for the college radio station, playing in bands, working at an indie record store, etc. It just happened that I was better at writing about music than doing any of those other things, so I kept at it, really doing the "fake it till you make it" idea to perfection. Heck, I had never even talked to a publicist or interviewed a band on the phone until after I started at AP! Now my phone doesn't stop ringing (and I talk bands' ears off, too).

How did you get involved with AP?
As I mentioned above, I applied to be AP's copy editor when I was finishing college in 2004; after a phone interview and an in-person interview, they liked me enough to offer me a job and I uprooted myself from Illinois within a week to be there. Thankfully, the staff here recognized my talents in more than just copy editing (which, to be honest, is probably my weakest skill-don't tell them that!) and made me the associate editor, which meant I got to take over a lot of sections in the magazine and be responsible for their planning, as well as handle all web news on altpress.com along with tons of other tasks. After some editors decided to move on in 2006, I was promoted to music editor, and that's where I am now. It's an incredibly hard job but also one of the best in the biz, mainly because I get records weeks-if not months-earlier than most, and I can experience them fully before they get played to death by the rest of the world. It's selfish, yes, but if someone offered you the new Brand New record six weeks before it came out, are you going to turn it down? I thought not.

What are the hard parts about your job?
Honestly? Listening to tons and tons of horrible, awful, terrible music to try and find the needles in the big-ass haystack to expose to our readers. You'd be absolutely stunned at the volume of mail I receive in a week-everything from jazz to bluegrass to country to dance. Obviously, we don't cover every genre in the world, so I focus my listening more on punk/rock/indie/emo/hardcore, trying to find the gems (and it's not as easy as you think).

How many CDs are in your office right now?
I'd say there's a hundred or so on my desk; another 300 on my windowsill waiting to be listened to, and another few hundred on my CD shelf, which is where I keep things that could potentially be reviewed. It's horribly unorganized, but somehow it works for me.

If a band or label wants to submit a CD, what's the best way of doing it?
First off, pick up a copy of AP. If you don't see at least one band being covered somewhere in the magazine that you would compare yourselves to, don't bother sending the CD in. Like I said before, I get buckets of CDs from jazz musicians, folk artists, pop R&B singers... These people have no idea who AP is, and are just wasting postage sending me their CD. So make sure your band would fit inside the pages of AP before sending it in!

Secondly, I don't need fancy press kits, random swag or anything else (although sometimes snacks are nice); just send me your music with a brief bio/fact sheet included. If I need to know more, I'll do research on my own. I don't care about what you look like; I don't care about what other members of the press have written about you; I don't care about what shows you've played. It's always about the music.

What if I'm in an unsigned band?
Send the package to our associate editor, Tim Karan, ATTN: AP&R. If you do that, you're submitting for our unsigned bands of the month section, where we profile eight groups a month. If Tim likes what he hears, you're in!

How do I get to write reviews for AP?
If you think you have what it takes, send three reviews-each between 130-150 words-of recent albums to editorial@altpress.com with your contact information. If I think you've got talent, I'll include you on my writers list. It's that simple.

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