It's the first week of May 2020 and I have FINALLY put my first Bikini Test Failure single in a decade, UNCOMPLIMENTARY, to bed, promotionally-speaking.
It's taken almost three months of dedicated, daily grind, finding and emailing as close to "all" the radio stations and music reviewers I could find, telling them not only about the existence of my new single, but in most cases about my OWN existence: the artist-who-goes-by-the-name-of Bikini Test Failure.
It's no surprise that many of the recipients of my wonderful missives weren't born when I started making music; a lot weren't born when I released my first BTF album! Whilst a ten-year gap between releases was for me about two changes of car and five new t-shirts, to some of my new "fans", it's half a lifetime.
Like all amateur scientists, firstly I state my hypothesis ("release and promote a new single in this uncertain, digital world where money no longer changes hands and The Undertones are no longer the most important thing in anybody's world"), secondly I do my experiment ("single out, video out, radio and reviewers informed"). Thirdly, I record the results ("radio plays, written reviews, video plays, Spotify streams, lesser scores like, Followers, Twitter numbers"). Then finally I can write up my report and see if there is any conclusion to be made ("Just how much of an impact can a complete unknown, from a cold start, make on an uninterested and over-saturated world?") and if that might lead to a theory.
As with those same amateur scientists, so must I accept the results of my experiment, good AND bad and remember that ANY result is better than the NO result that would come from not trying.
So here, as good a place as any, I must reveal my "rewards" for three months of breaking rocks:
Radio plays: (drum roll...) of 1500 stations contacted, 42 played it. Of which 12 were US/Canada and 30 UK. Many plays, delightfully, were by stations or DJs who'd played my previous releases and like me, were still beavering away in this strange business without intervention from anything as silly as "common sense".
And a couple of weeks in, many stations DID shut down/go to automation/stop answering emails, but that's no excuse eh?
And of course, that's just the 42 I know about; I'm keen not to do too much following-up, adding unsolicited email on top of unread initial email, but I suspect there have been a few more I'll not know about for a while.
With virtually no other direct promotion, Spotify has had... 59 plays. Just the 59. Or perhaps, "Wow! 59 people have heard my new single! Fab!" It's hard to decide which.
The YouTube Video (another special creation by DJ Alf at KTCL Denver and his videographer pal Bryan Bugfrog) wins hands down, with 297 glorious views.
(The figures in the picture at the top of this are the latest viewing stats for the BBC "Homeground" telly programme my dad appeared in, back in 1981. It's clear that old railways and industrial archaeology have far more fans than cutting-edge indie-pop!)
So that's that. Perhaps no new theory, but some kind of conclusion to be drawn: that I'm not so much blazing a trail for my forthcoming releases as hacking a path through a rainforest with a blunt machete. It needs doing and it will slowly, surely build.
There's something masochistically comforting about starting from a zero base level. But in common with all the best school reports, James "must do better" and hopefully, next time, WILL do better.
