It was 20 years ago today!

It’s that time again…

My last Bikini Test Failure release, February’s Kiss Me Like You Mean It, seemed to be a bit of a watershed; for the first time since I began releasing music again last year (after a decade-long break) before I’d even begun to promote the track, DJs, playlisters and pundits picked up on it via Spotify and the usual channels - a most welcome change.

Over the next few weeks, I went ahead with my usual, old-fashioned radio promo plans, but beyond that initial flurry of interest, I mostly met with the usual, blistering indifference. The fans and champions I’d previously gained in Radioland knew about it already and despite a couple of thousand well-intentioned emails, I managed to add but a handful of new ones across the US and UK. I suppose there could have been a couple of hundred extra plays I never heard about but the truth is more likely to be that I never made it past a thousand Junk folders.

Not like The Old Days, eh?

So. THIS time around, as I released my latest single, Nobody Knows Anything, a 20^th anniversary, remultitracked, remade, replayed, remastered version of my first ever Bikini Test Failure song, (the title track of my first CD EP), I conducted an experiment:

NO PROMO!

My solitary Tweet was something like, “Shh! Bikini Test Failure is 20 years old! Here’s a new single…” Otherwise, just sit back, relax, see what happens.

Well, the results are in; what DID happen?

Somewhat surprisingly, absolutely nothing!

A handful of loyal listeners got in touch or playlisted the new song, but the respectable flood the last single self-induced was sadly missing.

It’s hard to know why. Did people prefer the first 30 seconds of the previous song more than this one? I doubt it. More likely, that was on a cold, dark Friday evening in February when staring at your phone was a more attractive prospect than it is in long, sunny evenings at the end of June. Can’t be sure though.

The writing was soon on the wall so I leapt in and quickly emailed my couple of hundred good friends in radio. Thankfully they instantly responded with plays, posts and playlistings. Release week had been rescued.

I've learned the lesson: whilst my audience and relationships are clearly growing, they're nowhere near the critical mass required to get off the ground. 

In short, as my pal from the studio days Parisson (and Curtis Mayfield!) says, keep on keeping on.