I say "Precision hits", without a shadow of a doubt
exactly one week ago i had a phone call from sweden, someone confirming he wanted a track of mine for a compil. At one stage I thanked him at which point he said, "no, no, i thank YOU, for sending me this music..."
he proceeded to explain that he receives dozens of awful demos with no relation to his label... apparently all the ibiza kids send a demo to perfecto, then when they hear nothing, send it to every other label whose website has the word "trance" mentioned, without bothering to notice they mean goa trance or psytrance... he ends up with a stack of music he's not slightly interested in... So, take the time to research labels' styles and send only to the related ones so u dont waste anybody's time.
other than that i got 3 bits of advice.
1. regarding walking into a club and hearing your tune. labels arent necessarily the (only) way-- i've never actually heard any of psy played at clubs or parties, but i know it has happened - in uk, france, belgium, canada, india... and thats without them being signed... Just hook up with djs who like your style. How? Erm...well they come to me usually. I just post my tracks on loads of forums and so on, and get PMs saying "can i get a cd of that"... send em CDs... voila
2. presentation
well... the basic demo package is pretty simple. a CD: probably no point in putting on more than, say, 4 tracks, as they dont have time to listen to an albums worth. Clearly tracklisted. Whilst some people say "the music speaks for itself", i like to include a brief bio...
Speakafreaka, a 23 year old from Azerbajan, began making psytrance 3 years. With a distinctive style that blends tribal full-on with Bulgarian Polka, his tracks are rapidly becoming legendary in the Azerbajani scene, with dj support from...
Or whatever. Any 'credibility' you can crowbar in here to prove you're not a total joker, the better.
3. contacts. sending to labels 'blind' is likely (but not entirely guaranteed) to achieve nothing. sending to someone you 'know' and who is expecting your CD is much much more likely to get listened to. if you're trying to harvest destinations from the web, then try emailing them instead of just copying down the postal address. ask if they are interested in a demo, and (if it doesnt already say), the NAME of the A&R guy who you should address it to.
It is worth chasing people up if you expect a response, too. (Again, in theory, you could say they will simply never get back to you if you dont prod them, but in practice i have actually had that rule broken, and some very nice people got back to me without reminding, after i sent it to them blind... only 2 out of dozens of demos though)