“Follow your heart before you follow the money” — advice from indie rock’s #1 publicist

The TPF Q&A with Motormouthmedia's Judy Miller Silverman.

Motormouthmedia owner Judy Miller Silverman at this year’s Grammys.

Judy Miller Silverman is an indie music industry legend. I first met her as an assistant at Vanity Fair, when I couldn’t get any publicists to return my emails unless my boss was CC’d. But Judy always replied and treated me like a Real Writer when no one else would. It also helped that her boutique PR firm Motormouthmedia reps some of my favorite indie bands (Animal Collective, Deerhunter, Destroyer, among many others). Whenever I wrote about her bands she always asked, “So, Bill, can we get this in print?” The answer, as print magazine pages dwindled and/or went extinct, was pretty much always, “No! But we can do a digital feature.”

We talked about hefty postage bills for PR in the pre-Internet era, her advice for young people trying to break into the industry, and why relationships matter.

A lot of people don’t understand what a publicist does. What do you do all day?

I have to figure out where my artists fit in the pantheon of existing media. I do that by making personal connections with writers and learning their interests, tastes, and geography—and then encouraging them to write about a band, 96% of which is in digital form these days. So I am a drug pusher of music.

What is the metric for success these days? When I worked at Vanity Fair, the first question you always asked was, “Can we get this in print?”

I've seen the metric slide around for over 20 years now. In the beginning it had to be in print. A cover was king, if you could get it. But a review or feature in print was great, too. Then somewhere in the late aughts and early 2010s, independent bands started getting on late-night shows. Which opened a gateway into television for the kind of artists I represent.

Everyone still wants to see their album reviewed on Pitchfork, but they don't expect what they used to from it.

Best New Music isn’t the kingmaker for indie bands it once was?

Definitely not. Artists still want it! Does Best New Music perform as a metric for sales? Not so much. Concert tickets? Maybe. What it does do is open other journalist’s eyes to something they might have missed—and give some artists another level of recognition.

I work with Arooj Aftab. Pitchfork gave her Best New Music. That opened some doors for other people to listen to her, and she ended up winning a Grammy for that record. So Pitchfork still has its charms.

Has the way you work with artists changed over the years?

That is one part of the equation that hasn’t changed. It’s all about communication. We communicate by new mediums, but we still communicate. It was by landline, then email, then text, which eventually turned into memes, cat pictures, and baby pictures.

I've always been a small business owner incredibly devoted to and passionate about the musicians I represent. There are some bands I’ve worked with for close to 20 years, like Animal Collective, who are not a communicative group. They’re wonderful people who lead incredibly humble, cool lives—they’re just not interested in the fanfare of the music industry. They never dated models or did coke with The Strokes. That’s an example, where you don’t have to be in communication all the time, but they know I’ve been there since the beginning and love their work.

You know how client services goes! Every client is different and has different needs. There are some, like Animal Collective, who are quietly always around and I may not talk to regularly. There are other artists I’m in contact with every week for over a decade.

How have the mechanics of publicity changed over the last 20-plus years?

It’s easier and harder. Easier because of the advent of digital everything. We can just email a writer an album now. I used to sit on the floor with my staff stuffing photos and CDs into envelopes. In the 90s, we’d have postage bills of $25,000 a year. But there were hundreds of media outlets, so if you had relationships with editors you could get good press in newspapers, magazines, and alt-weeklies.

But those relationships are even more important today because our media world is literally Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. There are so few outlets for music coverage! And the barrier to entry is so low now, some PR folks are out there robotically emailing people. But building relationships over the years—some of those baby writers I worked with years ago are now executive editors—has helped me deliver for my clients.

What advice would you give to a young person trying to break into the industry?

Follow your heart before you follow the money. If you want to be in the industry for the parties and backstage passes, then go ahead and sell out and get a job for the money. But if you really love music, try to find positions—even at the lowest level—that are really catered to your tastes, because that's where you're going to grow and learn. Then, as you gain more experience and climb up the ladder the rest is negotiable.

Before we go: What are you obsessed with right now?

I love Doechii, just like everyone else. Obsessed with her. And how embarrassing is it for a total underground indie publicist who tried to ignore the existence of Chappell Roan because she was everywhere to admit I fell head-over-heels in love with her? I am the last person in the world to say any of this.