If you’re thinking of sending us your new album or EP for review, please read the instructions below carefully. Or carelessly, your choice. One of our writers also wrote a more lengthy piece on how you can better get your music covered which you can find here.
“I’m a promoter, label and/or artist and would like to send Americana UK an album or EP for review – how do I go about it?”
Please send us a download link to this email address. Please note this is a “no reply” email address and should not be used for any follow-up queries. The email should contain:
- a working link to download your album or EP
- a proper press release (not just a couple of lines in the email)
- a streaming link for at least one track, preferably the whole album, so we can hear what you sound like before we download anything – Soundcloud works really well for this as it allows you to make the stream private.
It’s helpful to have at least one track from the record in a publicly available streaming format, with the cover-art as the image, as we’ll include it in the review if we publish. Please do not attach MP3s to your email or our mailbox will get full up. It’s also useful to include the lyrics as an attachment (unless it’s an instrumental album of course). If your release gets selected for review, the writer covering it may contact you for a physical copy if you have that available.
“Can I send the release for the attention of a particular writer?”
Albums get allocated to writers on a random basis so there’s kind of a democracy going on. There’s nothing to stop you sending a link to a particular reviewer directly if you really want them to hear it, but it probably won’t be them reviewing it for the site.
“Do you review singles?”
We don’t review singles sorry. We do sometimes feature single tracks though so long as they’re newly released. Get in touch with Deputy Editor Jon Aird via our contacts page. Please note that Track Features use Soundcloud, Bandcamp or music only/lyric YouTube videos – i.e. not Spotify, Apple Music, etc which only allow you to embed short clips from songs.
“Do you review EPs?”
We do, not as fully fledged reviews but as part of our monthly EP roundup although they must contain at least 4 tracks – if your EP is less than 4 tracks, try submitting a track from it to Jon our Tracks Editor.
“Can I send you an album for review if it’s not just been released?”
Sadly no, we only review new release records. If your album’s release date is more than 6 months ago then we won’t be able to review it but by all means give us a shout when your next release is out.
“When will the review appear?”
There is normally around a 5-6 week turnaround from when we receive your album although it won’t get allocated until 5-6 weeks before the release date. Basically the earlier you can send stuff through the better.
“My album hasn’t been reviewed. Omgfg you hate it.”
Unfortunately we don’t have enough writers to cover even half of what we’re sent so if your release doesn’t get reviewed, it’ll be either because it’s off genre or an issue of capacity – either way no judgement on the quality of your material.
“What genres do you cover?”
We cover left-field americana, folk and indie/alternative with a folk or twang bent. We don’t cover Nashville-esque mainstream country, country-pop, stuff labelled americana that sounds like mainstream country, trad blues or soul (but we do review country-blues and country-soul!), R&B, rap, nu-metal, death metal, math rock, pornogrind or any genres that don’t fall under our still rather wide americana umbrella.
“That list seems very specific. Chill, man. (or woman).”
We’re not judging the genres, just ensuring we cover stuff that we know something about. If you’re not sure, try us (unless you are MAGA or Britain First type, in which case we’re probably not going to get along).
“What about vinyl or books?”
Writers love to receive vinyl or books as they’re still rare as hen’s teeth (actually this apparently isn’t the case anymore) but please contact us before sending as we will need to give you a direct mailing address for whoever is covering it if they choose to.
“I desperately want to send you a proper CD still.”
That’s fine, please get in touch for our mailing address. (This won’t be for review purposes though, you still need to send us a stream please, but we may use them as competition prizes for our subscribers, in which case we’ll give it a plug, or even keep them as recording “trophies” if they’re great).