Petcord happily accepts submissions by musicians that meet minimum requirements concerning production, encoding and - naturally - music quality. What criteria are considered relevant shall be discussed in this article. But apart from that, it is also meant as a general guide for a better production and therefore maybe of interest to those, who do not have any plans to release on the Petcord netlabel.

• Petcord considers itself as a niche label, with a focus on experimental electro acoustic sounds, often influenced by contemporary classic. Music in general has good prospects if it contains a wide range of dynamics and sounds. Additionally it should work as standalone music, that is containing enough substance to do without supplemental multimedia support in order to leave an impression. Whilst these are personal preferences the makers of Petcord share, the most important condition is that they can agree on the submission. So even if you are unsure whether you fit into the concept, you still can try, as chances are that your particular way of creating music is what does the trick.
  
  
• As the makers of Petcord happen to be audiophiles with a proficient background in music production, there may be stricter criteria applied to a work than elsewhere. To avoid unexpected results in your final mixes, you are well advised to use high quality earphones, that are capable of reproducing a transparent frequency spectrum throughout the ranges. This precaution alone can save you from most headaches that result in wrongly adjusted sound and frequency levels which can cause considerate unease whilst listening to your music.
  
  
• When mixing down your master to 16 bit/44100 hz stereo, you should make sure that your loudness levels are adjusted in a way that no clipping occurs, which is responsible for distortion or unwanted frequencies. Too much limiting or compression can severely impact the music's dynamic range and make it appear flat and mushy. Depending on the music genre, the best bet is to use an RMS value located somewhere between -20 and -16 dBfs and to normalise the source to at least -0,1 dBfs to make efficient use of the entire 16 bit range and avoid an unnecessarily high noise floor.
  
  
• Another critical process is mp3 encoding: As a rule of thumb, "standard" does not really make it ;-). You surely want to use the best possible quality levels and invest in more encoding time to have a more ear-pleasing result at the end. Using lame, an open source encoder that is generally acknowledged to produce the highest quality mp3 files, this would involve the "-q 0" switch and for vbr encoding "- V 0" as additional option. VBR encoded files should make use of the highest quality settings, whilst CBR encoded files should have at least a 256kbit bitrate to avoid audible flanging artifacts at passages with a broad frequency spectrum.
  
  
• Petcord as a non-profit netlabel can only accept submissions that fall under a Creative Commons licence which at least grants the right to share, copy and present the music for non-commercial purposes. Without profits, there are of course no royalities to be collected, thus if "monetising" your work is a primary concern to you, you may find Last.fm's royality programme for musicians more suitable for your needs.
  
  
• You need not submit an entire CV, as the Petcord team does not care about qualifications or prior achievements, but solely about your music. Nevertheless, a brief description of yourself can vastly improve the quality of your information page and release liner notes. We need both a working email address and links to your music, because after all that is the reason you contacted us in the first place ;-). In case you have no possibilty of uploading your music yourself, individual arrangements are possible, too.
  
  

• The preferred way to contact Petcord is via the contact form using a meaningful subject line and a message, which consists of more than just a link or promotional slogan one-liner. Petcord reserves the right to ignore messages which are essentially indistinguishable from spam, thus it is in your best interest to keep your message at a sensible level. In general, a response should be underway within three days, clearly stating approval or rejection. In case it is the latter, the Petcord team will describe what the production lacked of.
  
  
• During the preparation stage, the Petcord team will keep you informed about drafts (artist description, liner notes, cover art) and will be open to your suggestions, so that the final product is acceptable for everyone involved. For cover art suggestions, it is vital that you own the copyright of the images, else this would open the label up to legal liabilities (copyright infringement). For this matter, the Petcord team will reject any image that is of unknown origin and not known to have been released in a way that allows its usage for cover art. Petcord does treat submissions equally by abiding to a simple "first come, first served" principle and is striving for preparing a release within 14 days.
  
  
• A final release will be accompanied with complete liner notes and immediate announcements via Earlabs, Internet Archive and Last.fm. Whilst this basic promotion is provided as part of the "package", you may wish to extend the degree of promotion for your release yourself. It is a good idea to comply to the terms of forums, newsgroups or services and their restrictions concerning promotional activities and to be responsive to inquiries by community members, moderators or adminstrators. If people know you from other postings where you proved to be a useful member, your announcements will have more weight and credibility.
  
  

• Yes, please do not spam to drive traffic to your release page! Apart from unsolicited emails, spam also includes inappropriate mass postings in Google-, Yahoo-, or Usenetgroups, forums, wikis, weblogs or via instant messengers. We hate spam and object to any redefinition of spam as something that excludes your activities. Any complaint or sighting by ourselves which provides evidence of using spam as promotion means will result in immediate deletion of your release, because it is the label's vital interest to keep itself operational with a positive reputation. You can see it as part of the deal: The label provides you the necessary means for publishing your music and your ethical behaviour will help spread the word of both your and the label's work.
  
  
• When linking to your release, please do not copy the liner notes as full quote without linking back to the label site. Unlike the music and cover artwork, the articles of the Petcord netlabel site are not released under the terms of Creative Commons. Not following this practice is not only rude behaviour and in violation of copyright laws, multiple copies of a text can also have a negative impact on search engine results and make your music harder to find. The best way of linking and citing third party sources is to use a few key sentences or paragraphs and then name the source and point back with a link to it.
  
  

The Petcord netlabel team hopes you found this description useful, however in case there are questions left not dealt in this document you are welcome to contact us and ask for clarification.