The Great Publicist Rollup

There are a lot of publicists out there; probably 100 for every one working reporter in music. I hear from all of them. Daily. There’s one firm called Earsplit PR that is always sending me releases on bands with the strangest names. This week alone I’ve gotten tour announcements for Cokegoat, Cattle Decapitation, Dying Whale and Goatwhore. 

– ‘All The Hits’
Mariah Carey and Lionel Richie announced their upcoming All The Hits tour with an Instagram selfie.

Can Cokegoat and Goatwhore be repped by the same firm, or is that a conflict of interest?

If either band does decide to leave, they have plenty of options, although the number might shrink in 2017: Live Nation is in the very early stages of looking at a rollup of the PR world and acquiring/hiring some of the biggest publicist firms next year.

It’s really not that different from Live Nation’s push into the management world with Guy Oseary’s Maverick. Rolling up publicists would be one more step in redirecting promotional resources away from album releases and toward tour announcements.

Take the upcoming Lionel Richie “All The Hits” tour with Mariah Carey. To announce the tour, Richie and Carey did an Instagram selfie together but there was no “Today Show” appearance or interview in Entertainment Weekly.

Same thing with Lady Gaga: She timed her gig hosting “Saturday Night Live” to coincide with the release of new album Joanne.

Maybe it would have been smarter to tie it to her 2017 tour where she is going to pocket a lot more money. Besides, the space is rife for consolidation.

There are hundreds of PR firms in music, most with a couple publicists on staff that don’t make a ton of money.

Consolidation could put some cash in their pockets and weed out some of the PR shops that charge retainer fees but don’t generate any real press for their clients.

Will the Earsplit PRs of the world get a couple bucks thrown at them? Probably not.

Only about a half-dozen publicists are going to be in play next year – folks who work directly with superstar artists and have had a relationship for years.

Rolling up publicists is unchartered territory and it’s anyone’s guess whether they can actually be corralled.

But for a company that is increasingly touching every part of the live experience, it makes a lot of sense to consolidate this vestige of the business.

Perhaps these publicists will give me something new to write about; I’m running out of new things to say about Cokegoat and Goatwhore.

Fore more, visit Amplify at www.ampthemag.com.