GET RADIO AIRPLAY - A RADIO PROMOTION GUIDE FOR MUSICIANS
GET RADIO AIRPLAY - A RADIO PROMOTION GUIDE FOR MUSICIANS
Pick the Right Songs for Radio Airplay
When you're implementing a radio promotion strategy with your album release, it's important to pick the song that's going to perform best on the radio.
Radio stations want their current listeners to stay tuned in to their station, and want those who are flipping through stations to land on theirs and keep listening.
When choosing which song to promote to radio stations, pick one that has a low number of skips, and a high listener retention rate. You can get metrics like this by uploading your music to YouTube, applying some music video promotion strategies, and analyzing viewer metrics. The song that keeps viewers the longest and has a low number of skips is most likely the one that you should promote to radio stations.
If all of your music has low listener retention, you're probably not ready to promote your music to radio stations.
Start Small - Promote Your Music to College Radio Stations
There are two types of radio stations - commercial, and non-commercial.
Non-commercial radio encompasses college radio and community radio stations (like NPR). Commercial radio is everything else.
The most popular commercial radio stations are owned by huge corporations that are good friends with the major labels, but community and college radio stations are more friendly to newer artists. Because of this, college radio is a great starting point for artists who are new to radio promotion.
Promoting your music to radio stations is all about having the ability to sell your music to program directors. If you don't have much sales experience, reaching out to smaller radio stations allows you to learn from mistakes that are less costly.
Once you have your music playing on smaller radio stations, and it's performing well for them - keeping listeners tuned in - you can leverage this when pitching your music to bigger radio stations.
How to Send Your Music to Radio Stations
Remember, pitching music to radio stations is a sales process. Before getting started with your radio promotion efforts, I'd recommend educating yourself on the arts of cold calling and direct mail, as these strategies will be heavily used when promoting and selling your music to radio station program directors.
When you're ready to get started with radio promotion efforts, make sure you start reaching out at least four weeks before you'd like your song to be added to their playlist.
Note: make sure you're earning public performance royalties for your radio airplay. The purpose of ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC is to pay out royalties for public performances, so make sure you join one of these organizations.
1. Make a List of Target Stations and Program Directors
It's important to choose radio stations that are actually going to be interested in your style of music. It doesn't make sense to spend your time reaching out to hip-hop stations for your new rock song.
First, look for lists of radio stations. If you're promoting to non-commercial radio stations, check out this list. Alternatively, you can use this radio station finder to locate commercial and non-commercial radio stations by state (in the U.S.).
Once you find a list, go through and identify the radio stations you intend on sending your music to. Create a spreadsheet that contains the following information for each station:
- Station name
- Station mailing address
- Website
- Program director's name (if available)
- Phone number (of program director if possible)
If you can't find the program directors name and contact info on the radio station's website, you can try searching LinkedIn or Facebook for the info.
For Facebook, you can enter a search term, then select the "people" tab for profile results. Here are some search strings you can try to find a radio stations program director:
- people who work at radio station name
- people who work at radio station call sign (for example, WXXJ)
- people who work at radio station holding organization (such as a school or church)
On LinkedIn, you can simply find the radio station's page and see who their employees are, or search the radio station's call sign or name, then filter search results by location.
2. Send Your Music
After you've put together your list, it's time to start sending promo CD's to the radio stations.
Be careful about confusing promo CD's with demos. DO NOT send demo's to radio stations. You want to send complete, well produced tracks since they will be using the music from the promo CD's on the air if they decide to add your music to their rotation.
Here are some things to look out for when sending your promo CD's to radio stations:
- If you're sending to college radio, send your full album on the promo CD.
- If commercial radio, only include the single you're promoting.
- For singles, send four different versions of the song:
- Standard, explicit lyrics and all.
- Radio edit/clean version.
- An a capella version (for use in commercial breaks).
- Instrumental version (also for use in commercial breaks).
- Only send one release to each station - your most current release.
- Send CD's in standard, plastic jewel cases.
When sending your promo CD's, use first-class postage so you can properly manage follow-up timing.
3. Follow Up With Phone Calls
If you want to get your music heard by the program directors, follow-ups are a must.
About a week after sending promo CD's to radio station program directors, follow up with a phone call to make sure they got the package, ask if they got a chance to listen, and solicit initial feedback.
If they haven't gotten a chance to listen yet, ask when would be a good time to follow up with them again. If they say Wednesday at 2pm, mark your calendar and follow up at exactly that time.
If they did listen, and the feedback sounds positive, ask if they're going to add it to their rotation. When trying to convince them to add it, speak in numbers - use results from rotations on similar radio stations, or sell them on metrics about how your music is performing online.
Here are some things to keep in mind when making phone calls to radio stations:
- When you make these phone calls, it's important smile. Even though the person you're talking to can't see you, smiling creates a higher frequency in your mouth and changes your tone.
- Don't apologize for interrupting their day. Remember, it's their job to choose the best possible music for their station, and if your song is the best option, you're doing them a favor.
- Take note of common questions so you can prepare answers in the future.
For more tips on communicating over the phone, check out this infographic.
Program directors are sent hundreds of CD's, and most of these never receive a follow up call because independent artists follow the thought process of "If they liked it, they'll play it." Odds are, if the submission never receives a follow up call, the program director never listens.
Radio promotion is a numbers game. For every 100 radio stations you send your music to, maybe only 1 or 2 will play it, but if those that do play it have a large number of listeners, it will be worth it.
If you've never promoted music to radio stations before, it's likely that you won't get many results from your first attempt - and that's okay. Learn from the experience, and apply your newfound knowledge to your next release.
Hiring a Radio Promotion Company
Promoting your music to radio stations on your own can be a daunting task that takes away time from creating music.
If you have the budget, hiring a radio promotion company to manage the campaign for you will allow you to focus on other things, and may result in better conversion rates.
The cost of outsourcing radio promotion is estimated to be around $1,800 to $2,400 depending on whether you're promoting a single, EP, or full album. Another expense to account for is postage, which would be around $750 to send out 300 CDs.
If this is the route you want to take, here are some reputable radio promotion companies you can reach out to: https://blog.dozmia.com/get-radio-airplay/
10 Best Places to Promote Your Music Online
It’s no earth-shattering news that the internet has changed the music industry for good. Technologies like file sharing, streaming, social media and eCommerce are giving artists more opportunities to expose their music to larger audiences and increase their fan base. The downside of having so many options is that choosing the best ways to promote your music online can be challenging.
So, to help you make good choices, we put together a list of the 10 most popular and most effective online hangouts you should join to get the word out about your tunes. Here are 10 ways to promote your music online:
- Create your Music Website with Wix Music
- Promote your Shows on Bandsintown & Songkick
- Get your own YouTube Channel
- Host your Music on Apple Music / iTunes
- Add your Music to Last.fm
- Familiarize yourself with Reddit Music
- Upload your music to Spotify
- Use Hashtags on Twitter (@TwitterMusic)
- Find Music Blogs
- Spread your Music with Dozmia
01. Create your Music Website with Wix Music
When it comes to promoting your music online, Wix Music doesn’t skip a beat. An all encompassing online marketing solution, Wix Music has you covered with all the tools you need to promote, sell and distribute your music online. Why do we love Wix Music so much? Here are some of our favorite liner notes:
- Sell your music 100% commission-free, directly from your website. Easy music sales, means more money in your pocket.
- Spread your music to over 120 of the most popular music channels on the internet, without leaving your Wix account. Distribute your tunes to top online stores and streaming services like iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, Rdio and more (distribution is a premium feature).
- Wanna push your gigs? No problem! Wix Music offers seamless integrations with BandsInTown or Songkick so you can promote your shows and sell tickets directly from your website.
- Sell your merch by adding an online store to your website.
- Include industry essentials like an EPK (electronic press kit) in your Wix Music site. This password protected page is the easiest way to give labels, press and other industry heavy-weights the most pivotal info about your band.
- Beautiful templates that come ready-made with everything you need for a professional looking website. Did we mention that they’re totally customizable too?
One of the main reasons you got into music in the first place was to play in front of a crowd. Help ensure that your next show is played to a packed house by promoting your shows on ticket purchasing channels like Bandsintown and Songkick. With location based targeting, Bandsintown lets site viewers discover the hottest shows in their hood.
As an added bonus, connecting your Bandsintown or Songkick accounts to your Wix Music site automatically updates any new tour dates and allows ticket purchasing on your website without lifting a finger.
03. Get your own YouTube Channel
Artists that you’ve probably never heard of… like Justin Bieber, The Weeknd and Karmin (Wix artists!) all have one thing in common: they were all discovered on YouTube. If you’re itching to get your music to the masses, you better believe that you need a YouTube channel to get you started.
04. Host your Music on Apple Music / iTunes
The default music service for all Apple products, Apple Music & iTunes are widely regarded for hosting the largest online music library in the world. The new Apple Music service goes one step beyond being the online home for your digital music collection – they want to help users discover new tunes based on what they’re already listening to. Could that be your band?
05. Add your Music to Last.fm
Last.fm is one of the easiest ways for new fans to make your music their latest obsession. Add your music to Last.fm, and they’ll put you on playlists with bands that your fans already love (making you extra cool by association).
Did we mention that if you’re part of Wix Music’s distribution offering, any music that you upload onto your site will automatically be spread across Last.fm too? Talk about smart online radio streaming.
06. Familiarize yourself with Reddit Music
The homepage of the underground, Reddit is arguably the biggest thing on the internet. You may not know this, but many of the viral things you see online made it to Reddit first, and that’s why musicians need to familiarize themselves with the Reddit Music thread. The grassroots-style community for content sharing allows musicians to get a genuine feel for how their music is being perceived by audiences, but be careful, the hardcore users can be harsh on noobs. Just be respectful and authentic and you’ll make it just fine.
07. Upload your music to Spotify
One of the biggest mobile and desktop apps in the world, Spotify takes the listening experience to a whole new level. Spotify has almost every recorded artist in their libraries, so you would absolutely want to be there too. With their super-amazing Discover tool for finding new artists, your channel might get connected with bigger names that play similar music.
08. Use Hashtags on Twitter (@TwitterMusic)
The front page of all things breaking, Twitter’s the perfect place for music fans to find their next favorite band. Give them the opportunity to find you first by using popular hashtags like #music, #rap, #jazz or the music style of your choice when tweeting out new tunes. Also, keep an eye out for hot music hashtags like #MusicMonday and #NewMusicFriday when operating your band’s twitter account for added exposure.
09. Find Music Blogs
Music blogs long ago surpassed magazines like Rolling Stone as the authorities on the best of what’s next in the music world. That means that getting a popular music blogger to post your latest music, hype your next show or even review your album will earn you some serious street cred, and some genuine new fans. Many bloggers have their email addresses or social channels listed on their posts, so try reaching out to them with a short intro and a link to one of your songs. Start by researching popular music blogs in your area and send the bloggers your EPK with a good professional email intro; a post on a blog in your town or city can help you generate a devoted local fanbase. The best blog for your music will differ from genre to genre, but Pitchfork, Stereogum, DatPiff and The A.V. Club are some of our favorites from the ‘music blog big league.’
10. Spread your Music with
Dozmia
For many people, the definition of a nightmare scenario is a commute without music. Music and mobile are a combo as old as the internet itself; so needless to say, it’s just as important to spread your music on mobile apps, as it is on popular websites. Similarly to sites we noted above, the mobile app Dozmia work by recommending new music based songs and artists that users already like. But why Dozmia? Being a new player on the scene, musicians have the added advantage of getting in on the action early by utilizing Dozmia’s targetting music pairings in a not-yet oversaturated music space. https://www.wix.com/blog/2015/10/10-best-places-to-promote-your-music-online
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