frequently given answers1. 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.
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. No, don't send us MP3s, nor it is usefull to point us to sites with MP3s. We simply don't have the time to download it. If you want MP3s to be reviewed, please burn them to CDR and send them to the address above.
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 don't keep everything we get, we sell some of the stuff to devoted musiclovers. That's how we can preserve our independence. But feel free to make a paypal donation! write to vital [at] vitalweekly [dot] net and ask how this can be done.
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>