Ariel Publicity

My phone rang last week and it was Tom Silverman from Tommy Boy calling to discuss my panel for his upcoming Chicago New Music Seminar. Tom was half amused and half disgusted. “Have you seen Billboard this week?” He asked. Since Billboard is a publication I largely ignore, I fessed up: “No. Why?” “You have to see this article,” he said. “It’s the most ridiculous thing ever.”

In a few moments, I was reading it and I was laughing out loud.

Here are a few excerpts: From the September 26 edition of Billboard:

BILLBOARD’S 2009 MAXIMUM EXPOSURE LIST

“Today the ways artists can promote their music have proliferated so rapidly that it can be hard to keep up with what’s new — what’s actually cutting through the clutter. It’s in this context that Billboard decided to geek out with 25 promotions and publicity experts across genres and mediums to create the ultimate multimedia metric: Our first Maximum Exposure List.”

I sampled a few random ones from the 2009 list to give you a sense and the whole 2008 list can be found here:

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