THE LOWDOWN ON THE BANDIT A&R NEWSLETTER
Review by Ian Cole, Editior of the UNSIGNED MUSIC MAG April 2006

This is new for us. We’re reviewing another publication dedicated to helping indie musicians further their careers. The name of the publication is the Bandit A&R Newsletter and it’s out of the U.K.

Don’t worry; just because the newsletter has an ad in UNSIGNED we’re still going to be unbiased.

First, the publications aim is to provide indie artists with open music opportunities and even though the publication is out of the U.K. and most of the opportunities are within the U.K., there are some U.S. opportunities as well.

So, what would we expect from a publication aimed at giving the indie artist leads to possible career opportunities? Well, we would expect the following.

* The information must be accurate (contact info, website links, etc)
* The information must be timely (it doesn’t help to tell me about last month’s opportunities. I need to know NEXT month’s opportunities.)
* The information must be detailed (I need to know who, what, when, where and how)
* The information must provide value to the artist (is it worth the money)

So how does Bandit stack up against our criterion? Let’s see.

Accuracy Score 97% - We checked out all of the links in the newsletter to make sure they were valid and all except three worked properly. One website link actually took you to your email app, one link was dead and the last one had a space between the website name and the dot in dotcom.

Timeliness Score 100% - All of the opportunities we checked were still very valid and not "oversold", in other words there weren’t so many submissions that the companies didn’t care anymore.

Details Score 98% - All of the opportunities contained enough detailed information to let you decide if it was something you would want to pursue or not. There’s not much they can give you in the way of compensation, but knowing who, what, when, how and where is all we can ask for from anyone. The 2-point deduction is for the inaccurate links, details...details...details.

Value Score 100% - OK, so how does all of this stack up? Well, you can subscribe to the Bandit A&R Newsletter a number of ways.

1 Issue = 10.00 pounds (app. $12.00 USD)
3 Issues = 25.00 pounds (app. $30.00 USD)
12 Issues = 77.00 pounds (app. $93.00 USD)
These rates are to have the newsletter delivered via mail; email rates are slightly less. If the issue we reviewed is any indication of the number of leads you’ll receive in each issue (24) then on average you should receive almost 300 leads per year, which equates to $0.33 USD per year per lead. Now that’s a good value, especially since just one of these leads could easily create an ROI much greater than you thought.

Bandit’s editor John Waterman has done a great job of bringing good, solid information to the readers at a very fair price. Do we recommend the Bandit A&R newsletter - YES!

Ian Cole, Editor UNSIGNED MUSIC MAGAZINE April 2006 www.unsignedmusicmag.com
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Note from John Waterman, Bandit Editor
The subscription rates above are in fact for fixed period subscriptions delivered by email or post, there is a discount for regular payment subscriptions which also offer 2 free issues to start with details on the web-site.
There are actually about 30 leads published per month covering the UK, US and world-wide Check out The Bandit A&R Newsletter at www.banditnewsletter.com