frequently given answers0 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 Netherlands2. 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 (marked promo, puncholes etc is fine of course) with bad xeroxed artwork. Don't expect a review if you do send a CDR.
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
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.
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:
Nijmegen:
Extrapool. contact Joyce: <geluid@extrapool.nl>Rotterdam:
Worm, various locations. contact: <worm@wormweb.nl>Den Haag:
Garage. contact Micha Poppe <mischa@goldcoast.nl>
or
Obscuriosa. contact: <w.out@wanadoo.nl>Maastricht:
In Situ. contact: Kim Laugs <cim@laugs.com>Did we already say that none of these e-mail addresses deal with Vital Weekly, so don't contact them for Vital Weekly. Use:
vital [at] vitalweekly [dot] net