0 vital [at] vitalweekly [dot] net is the
one and only contact e-mail address for Vital Weekly. Addresses
mentioned, and most curiously more than one person used to contact
Vital Weekly, have nothing to do with Vital Weekly. Rightly so, they
are extremely annoyed if you contact them for issues dealing with Vital
Weekly. So, please don't.
1. You can send your material for review
to:
Frans de Waard
Acaciastraat 11
6521 NE NIjmegen
The Netherlands
2. Yes, we review everything get. But if
you intend to send your entire label's catalogue, please don't. Pick
your highlights. No more than three releases at a time (which is not 3
DVD-Rs with 52 website/mp3 releases. Also stuff should not be older
than six months. If older we will not review it. This is not subject to
discussion. Please send the real thing, and not a CDR copy with bad
xeroxed artwork. Don't expect a review if you do send a CDR. The real
thing as released. Marked promo is fine. Also there is no point in
sending a e-mail with 'your review download copy is here' - we won't
look at it.
3. Ok, so not everything. We don't review
demo's. We review stuff that anyone can buy (or download, see also 4th
answer), no matter how small the edition is. A demo will not be
reviewed. But we review only physical products, stuff that people buy
and can keep in their hands.
4. We no longer review free MP3 releases.
They are free, and we will list them for interested downloaders, but we
don't review them anymore. Its becoming to time consuming.
5. If you want to be a writer for Vital
Weekly, then mail a couple of your reviews to vital [at] vitalweekly
[dot] net If you are accepted, you must arrange your own promotional
material
6. Staalplaat hosted Vital Weekly for ten
years, but Vital Weekly is an independent newsletter. We have no ties
to Staalplaat, nor are we the buyer for Staalplaat. There is no point
in asking us anything about Staalplaat. Sending material for review, is
for review only, and not to be placed on the Staalplaat catalogue.
7. Vital used to be a paper magazine,
from 1986-1995. We'd very much like to make these accessible in some
form on the net. Anyone with a good idea, please come forward! write
to: vital [at] vitalweekly [dot] net
8. We select material for the podcast,
but we always ask permission with the label (not the artist). If the
permission arrives too late, than it's too bad. We send Vital Weekly
out usually on wednesday (give or take), and prepare the podcast
tuesday afternoon.
9. Material for announcements should be
with us well in advance, say a week before the event (or some such)
happens. Don't place us on regular mailings, as we usually ignore them.
Also please don't send any JPEGs, PDFs, we will trash them right away.
Language should be english, all other languages will be ignored.
10. Vital Weekly is a labor of love and
devotion. No label pays us, we don't have adds, we pay postage to send
out material to other reviewers, we pay for our server space. The
editor has more or less a full day job doing Vital Weekly, but does
that without any extra income. Therefore we don't keep everything we
get, we sell some of the stuff to devoted musiclovers. That's how we
can preserve our independence. This is not a thing that is open for
discussion. Basically if you read this after you have found, then you
should have it earlier, for instance when you were sending a promo.
Like it says in every Vital Weekly, read this page, means you agree
with these terms. Feel free to make a donation!
11. Feel free to communicate, but usually
people get in contact after what they feel is a negative review. There
is really no point in starting your discussion with: 'You get too much
music, so I doubt wether you heard my thing more than once' - I can
only reply: 'how do you know we played it at all?'. Sometimes once is
enough and sometimes a dozen is not. And, no, we don't keep record of
how often we play a certain release before reviewing. If you don't like
reviews to be bad, then don't send anything for reviewing, or seriously
try to blackmail the reviewer.
12. Vital Weekly holds no copyright. Any
review may be published anywhere. Please be kind and tell where it came
from. If we do run a review with copyright, we'll tell you.
13. Yes, we do seem to know a lot here at
Vital Weekly HQ, but no, please don't send us your requests for labels
to release your demo or to put up your concert. We don't act as the
yellow pages. Firstly we don't have the time for it, and secondly,
do-it-yourself is still the keyword. Find here some names of people
that organise concerts in The Netherlands:
