The front page of a music retail site is usually plastered with recommendations or featured bands. They are being promoted because the site thinks it can make money by selling them. You want to be one of those bands that gets the support of a big retailer, don’t you? Good. So, you need to offer the site something special to make them pay attention to you. If you’re just a small fish, then you need to prove to them how all that’s preventing you from becoming big time is a lack of promotion, and that if they help you, they’ll reap extra rewards.

Primarily you need to have a package that’s commercially viable. Retailers won’t bother putting you up on their front-page pedestal if they don’t think they’re maximising the potential that space has to offer. Sorry, but there it is. Commercially viable doesn’t mean you have to sell out and go pop, quite the opposite, it means you have to have something unique and attractive about your music, your image or both, that will make people take notice and want a piece of you. Figure out what this is. Think about the image that you’re presenting of yourself and play to that.

Capitalise upon your strengths, match them up to the audience of the retailer that you’re approaching and give them a ready made package. Get together tracks, pictures, press releases, merchandise, everything you can muster, and give the retailer a bundle that they can just plug in to. It’s a big effort, but a big payoff if you can beat the crowd of artists who want that slot.