
Recently one of our readers called independent Black/Latino content creators, artists and event organizers: “lazy.” On one hand, I totally disagree. It takes a lot of blood, sweat and tears to create works from very little resources. But on the other hand, when it comes to marketing, promotion and presentation; I would have to agree, a lot of Black/Latino indie artists are fucking lazy. Cypher Avenue has become one of the most visited websites created by & for particular men of color in the country…with that growing popularity comes a platform to help independent artists (like ourselves) gain exposure. In the last year we’ve received many-many-many requests from artists, event organizers and content creators to feature them or their work on our website…through Twitter.
Time and time again we see that these individuals are considerably lacking in the basics of marketing and promotion that we see in abundance from their Caucasian counterparts. These inadequacies factor heavily into our decisions to feature a request or not, usually the latter.
So this list is meant to help all of you step your game up. Outside of this website, we have jobs related to entertainment and business. So this advice actually comes from experience. Some of the tips may seem like common sense but I promise you they need to be said to 90% of the people reaching out to us for exposure. We share these words of advice not to shame or preach down to, but to encourage and to help uplift.
Namechk.com was designed to instantly show you if your desired or branded username was available at the majority of the top social networking websites. By typing your username into the “chk” search box, it will search all the social sites listed on the page and display whether the username is taken or available.

- The name of the project/event
- Short Bio information
- Release dates and/or times
- Short synopsis for the web series, movie or video
- All relevant links to the video, music track, fundraiser, website, etc that you are promoting
- High Resolution photos associated with you or your work (Screenshots, Photo-shoots, etc)
- Press Passes to your screening, event, performance, release party, etc
To date, the only content creator to send us all of the information we needed in a single email (not a Tweet) was Sean Anthony, creator of the web series, No Shade. He sent us the email below along with 3 high resolution photos attached!
Email Submitted to Cypher Avenue:
Doing so may eventually land your project on the eyes of someone that can change your career forever.
Same applies to all other content creators and event organizers. If I want a rapper to perform at an event, how likely is it that they will have a website with clear booking information? Not very fucking likely based on what we’ve seen.
You need a website featuring your work and contact information! If you don’t have the money to build a site, there are many easy free options out there like Tumblr, Weebly, Wix and WordPress. Just make sure your site looks clean and professional.
Side Note: For God’s sake, don’t build your website with music or videos that automatically play when a person visits your site. I ALWAYS automatically leave those pages without a second thought or care for what I might be missing. Give me the option to play that media or don’t have it on your site at all, don’t force it on us.
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Nick Delmacy
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I found this to be very insightful. These are procedures that are so simple yet very often EASILY forgotten or worse, overlooked. I was kinda teary eyed and inspired when reading this. My gratitude stems out to you guys. This is definitely on my bookmarks and reading list haha. Got a busy day when I wake up I guess hahaha!
this was so on point, but is seems like at first if you gonna release a project you need to have the small , medium, and the big picture in view, and market to Gay prides but you have to nail sum buzz before you get there, it is like most things that are worth doing, a process and to know that the music business is both creative (the music) and pointed and deliberate the business aspect the real deal. oh don’t forget the clothing line that goes with every song lol…. peace.