Most PR people will sell your music without ever having released any of their own. Stephen James Moore isn’t one of them. The same year he was running Music With Depth PR, one of the world’s most respected names in independent music promotion, he also put out three double albums with his industrial rock project Post Death Soundtrack. That’s not a side hustle. It’s the reason his agency works the way it does.
Moore knows what it feels like to make something and then have to go sell it, that strange vulnerability of putting your art in front of people and hoping they care. Most folks in his line of work have never sat on that side of the desk. He has, and it shows up in how Music With Depth treats the artists it takes on.
The company goes back to 2011, when it started life as Independent Music Promotions, and over the years it’s become one of the names people actually trust in a field that’s earned its share of skepticism. The whole operation is musician-run. Real humans write the stories, no AI doing the heavy lifting. Moore works art-first, which in practice means he gravitates toward the experimental and multi-genre stuff that scares off agencies chasing easy wins. He’s not after the next obvious thing. He wants music with something underneath it.
And people have noticed. Two Story Melody put the company on its list of the 10 indie promotion services worth paying for, and Jon Anderson didn’t hedge about why. “Stephen is a good dude who also happens to be an expert at music promotion and PR,” he wrote, nodding to Moore’s network and his book. The agency turns up on lists from Prowly, Sound Campaign, and Influencer Marketing Hub too, and Voxfeed ranks it number one. It also picked up Corporate Vision’s Most Innovative Music PR Marketing Firm award for Canada in 2020, and it’s an official partner of the International Songwriting Competition. Somewhere in all that, Moore became one of the more influential voices in the business, the kind of name that gets cited when people talk about how indie promotion actually works.
A lot of that authority traces back to the book. Moore wrote the bestselling “Your Band Is A Virus,” a marketing guide that’s become a go-to reference and even landed on the Harvard Book Store’s list. The Huffington Post summed up his thinking pretty well. “The ultimate goal and intention of Moore is to save independent musicians years of wasted time, through what has worked for him through trial and error.” He learned the hard way so his clients don’t have to.
But here’s what really sets the work apart. While half the industry is busy selling Spotify streams that vanish the second you stop paying, Music With Depth chases permanent coverage, the stuff that sticks around. Moore will tell you that guest posts and interviews he did back in 2011 and 2012 are still sending artists his way today. That’s the long game. Real reviews, real interviews, radio adds, podcast features, playlists, all of it building an artist’s actual footprint instead of faking one. Even Spotify’s algorithm goes hunting for genuine mentions and embeds, which is exactly why this matters right now.
Moore runs his music and his agency on the same idea, “be the change you’d like to see in the world.” Coming from someone who just spent a year making three double albums while building one of the most respected PR firms in indie music, it doesn’t land like a slogan. It sounds like a guy who actually does it.
You can find Music With Depth PR at musicwithdepth.com and follow along on Instagram and Facebook.
