Comparison
Heard vs. The Indie Bible
The Indie Bible has been around since 2000 and earned its reputation honestly — plenty of working musicians got their first press through it. This isn’t a takedown. It’s a format comparison: what a bought-by-edition directory offers versus a continuously verified database you search, filter and run campaigns from — and what each costs.
$19
a year on Heard · 11,580 live contacts
$99.95
for Indie Bible online-database access (per their site)
40
genre categories in the Indie Bible (per their site)
| Heard | The Indie Bible | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $19/year | $99.95 for full online-database access (per their site) |
| Searchable genres | 300+ genre tags | 40 genre categories (per their site) |
| Format | Live web app — search, filter, sort in the browser | Online database + PDF editions |
| Updates | Continuous — dead contacts removed, new ones added | One-time purchase per edition / access |
| Contacts | 10,000+ across 13 types, each showing a "last verified" date | Thousands of listings across categories |
| Your campaigns | Build lists, track who you’ve contacted, then export | Export search results into your own database |
| Coverage | One membership covers curators, blogs, radio, labels, venues, PR, supervisors and more | Spotify, YouTube and Apple Music guides sold as separate products |
What each directory covers
Both cover the classic promotion channels. Where Heard goes further is the people you reach after a release starts moving — the producers, engineers, publishers, managers and sync supervisors who make up a real career. That’s thousands of contacts in categories the other directory doesn’t list.
| Contact type | Heard | The Indie Bible |
|---|---|---|
| Live venues | ✓ | ✓ |
| Radio stations | ✓ | ✓ |
| Record labels | ✓ | ✓ |
| Playlist curators | ✓ | ✓ (separate guides) |
| Blogs & reviewers | ✓ | ✓ |
| Booking agents | ✓ | ✓ |
| Music festivals | ✓ | ✓ |
| Only on Heard | ||
| Mixing & mastering engineers | ✓ | — |
| Record producers | ✓ | — |
| Music publishers | ✓ | — |
| PR & marketing firms | ✓ | — |
| Artist managers | ✓ | — |
| Music supervisors (sync) | ✓ | — |
| Communities & forums | ✓ | — |
“✓” and “—” reflect the categories listed on indiebible.com. Their directory also covers distribution services, which Heard doesn’t.
Why a database beats a document
Music industry contacts rot fast: blogs shut down, curators move, station staff change. In our own verification sweeps of public directory-style listings, roughly one in ten turns out to be dead, moved, or a different entity within 18 months. That’s not any publisher’s fault — it’s the nature of a fixed document. A living database can re-check and remove them; that’s the whole reason Heard exists.
Heard currently lists 11,580 contacts across playlist curators, blogs, radio, labels, venues, publishers, managers, booking agents, PR firms, music supervisors, producers and mix engineers. Every profile shows when it was last verified. Filter to “indie-folk blogs in the UK that accept submissions” in three clicks instead of a night of Ctrl+F.
Full access — $19/year
A fraction of the price of a bought-once directory. Alive all year.
See what’s included →