Radio stations receive a large number of CDs each week. Non-commercial radios (which include college, public, community, and most web stations) get between 10 and 100 CDs each per week, while commercial radio stations get 50-300 each per week.
Non-commercial stations are run by volunteers or students who may only be at the station for an hour or two each week; they are very hard to reach. Only after several weeks of pursuing them (and providing artist information to them) do they finally start considering your music.
Non-commercial stations are run by volunteers or students who may only be at the station for an hour or two each week; they are very hard to reach. Only after several weeks of pursuing them (and providing artist information to them) do they finally start considering your music.
We contact many (but not all) of the stations every week on a rotating basis for this purpose.
Commercial radio stations are difficult because they receive far more CDs per week, and they play far less new music (most of these stations add only two or three new songs per week to their playlists.) On top of this, larger commercial stations wait until many other stations are playing your music before they will consider it themselves.
So an airplay “story” must be developed, starting with the smaller stations first. And at commercial stations, any music that is not followed-up on is not even opened. Consultants are also a factor with commercial stations. The main decision that will have to be made by you is whether you want to go for non-commercial, commercial specialty, or commercial regular-rotation airplay (larger labels go for more than one.)
All campaigns can sell records if you have a sales staff on the phones, calling the stores. But if you don’t, you can still generate a lot of other results which can be used as a tool to secure gigs, distribution, record deals, publicity, or can be used as a stepping stone to regular rotation (and thus, it’s great training for new artists and new labels).
A note about non-commercial radio:
College/non-commercial radio, IF IT FITS your genre, should always be part of your campaign even if you simultaneously do commercial radio. Noncommercial radio is so low cost (and so responsive), that for each dollar spent it is the best overall value for generating awareness among the people that work in the music/radio/retail/press business. Also note, however, that non-commercial radio is NOT designed to reach many listeners. As just stated, it is instead designed to impress ONLY the people who work in the music/radio/retail/press business.
Station selection:
Radio Promotion companies keep a comprehensive database of over 1,700 broadcast (plus cable and web) non-commercial radio stations, along with 11,000 commercial stations, in the U.S. and Canada. Stations are selected based upon format, AM/FM/Satellite/Cable, rating, city, state, and chart-reporting status. Regardless of which stations are chosen, a complete listing of the selected stations is provided each week in your report.
Charting:
If you are looking to “chart” your music in the radio trade publications, then we will choose an appropriate chart for you, depending on what you are trying to accomplish. Note that you do not need to subscribe to these charts yourself, since we supply you with all the information, both in your report and also in your chart copies that we send you.
Mailing:
You are provided with mailing-labels and ID stickers; you simply mail these items with your CDs. You buy the postage and the mailers. (A bubble-cushioned self-sealing mailer is recommended, and can be ordered for 30 cents each.
CDs:
Non-commercial radio is very forgiving about what you send them; CDR’s…the type that are “burned” on a computer, are OK. But for commercial radio, professionally finished CDs are required. This means the CD must be of the mass-produced glass-mastered variety (usually with a 500 minimum run.) The CD must have a silk-screened or thermal printed label (not a stick-on label,) and the inserts must be lithographed (not color-copied or computer-printed.)
Compilation CDs (featuring different artists) are only acceptable for noncommercial radio, and only if you are trying to promote/chart the whole package… not just one particular artist; to promote a particular artist, you must send a single/EP/album of just the one artist.
The exact song lengths should be placed both on the outside of the CD package, and, on the CD itself. For commercial radio, 3-minute songs are great, 4-minute songs are acceptable, and 5-minute songs should be avoided. College radio is wide open, however. The artist and CD name should be printed on both CD’s, the case, and the spine of the package, where it can be EASILY READ in a dim room on a wall of 5,000 CDs.
Albums, EPs, or singles may be sent to either commercial or noncommercial stations, depending on what you are trying to accomplish. But regardless of which one you send, use a REGULAR SIZED plastic jewel case with NO plastic wrapping. Period!
Resends:
After the initial mailing, some re-sending will need to take place. This is due to lost mail, packages misplaced at the stations, changing personnel, consultants that need copies, others at the station who need their own copies (non-commercial stations especially,) etc… Having enough CDs is critical for a promotion. You must have enough (without having to wait for a production run) to be able to do resends WITHOUT DELAY. Resends require about 30 percent extra copies; they start occurring at the second week of the promotion, and continue on to the end. All resend info is provided each week in your report.
Reports:
You receive an airplay report each weekend which tells you what each station’s status is with regards to airplay (low, medium or high), resends, comments, etc. Stations are sorted by state, city, and call-letters, and include a history that goes back eight weeks in your campaign. You can use this information to coordinate your airplay with any publicity, performance, or retail/street promotions that are occurring. (Or, you can include these reports in your demos that you are sending to labels.)
Focus weeks:
After the promotion has progressed, you may want to spend a few weeks focusing on something besides simply “airplay”. Station ID’s (i.e., “Hi, this is the John Doe band, and you’re listening to KXYZ”), station visits, telephone interviews, CD give-aways, or station-recommended-pointers to clubs, retail or press, may be chosen if you decide to extend your campaign. To focus properly, ONE of the above focus topics should be chosen and worked for at least one month. Results are printed on your weekly report.
Role of the internet:
For the new artist or new label, the web is the best invention yet for helping you to make your printed information available. It is also great for such things as offering CDs to those “outer lying” areas that you cannot get regular distribution to. You will not, however, make a lot of money using the web as your only “airplay”, because less than one percent of listeners (web OR radio) buys CDs. Web-listening is very limited because only a few hundred people will get to hear your music, and even then, they will probably hear it only once and then move on. So your sales are going to be less than one percent of this number that hears it. If you want many thousands of people to hear your music, you must go to standard broadcasters. That is what they are for. And that is what radio promotion is for.
Distribution:
If this is your first release, you may have the urge to “set up traditional distribution” so that you can use your airplay to sell product. This is a good long-range (3-year) goal, but for the time being we recommend using “tour distribution” instead. Tour distribution is where you use radio to get more and bigger gigs, and then you sell your product ONLY at these gigs. This process works every time, and, there are no delays and hassles like you get when you attempt to set up traditional distribution. Plus you get paid in cash each night!
Quarterbacking:
This includes the hiring and managing of the individual promoters for artist/labels that require radio, retail, press, and booking. This is a turnkey service.
A Record label, PR firm, music manager, music publishing company, entertainment agency, music distribution firm, entertainment lawyer, music magazine, and most any other entity in the music industry are all part of a “mass media” wheel that generates airplay, publicity, gigs and record (CD) sales. All this is part of a record deal (from a record label), or, it can be used to get a record deal. Alternatively, you could decide just to keep as much of it inhouse as possible, thus creating your own operation. This is a realistic option if you will be in the business for five or more years, and you are willing to work at least 30 hours a week at it. A real record company handles four basic areas of music marketing: Radio, PR (public relations), gigs, and music retail. The radio portion is what this entire site is about; radio is the most complicated part of the music industry, and the most expensive part of the budget of a major record label. If you hire an independent radio promoter, they can also help a little with PR, gigs and retail, provided the airplay campaign is large enough.
The PR (publicity) portion of the entertainment industry is obtained by hiring a PR firm (or PR person). A large record label has these people on staff, but will still hire out for more push. A smaller independent record label sometimes will just try to do its own publicity, maybe by just focusing on some local music magazines. Big mass media music magazines, however, will be beyond what an independent music label can get. The gig portion of your music marketing is obtained by partnering with an entertainment agency who book gigs for you (good gigs can get you some PR too.) Small music labels will just try to book their own gigs. Note that an entertainment agency for gigs is not the same as an entertainment agent that an actor would have.
For the retail part of the music industry, a record company would hire a retail promoter, whereas a small independent record label would just call stores on their own. Note that this is NOT the same thing as music distribution, which is simply a middleman between the record company and the music retail stores… they just take retail orders once the retail promotion person causes the sales to happen. If you have no retail promotions person, you will have no sales, regardless of the radio that you do.
The entertainment industry has a few other entities you will have to work with… like the music manager (i.e., personal manager) and the entertainment lawyer. While they are not into music-marketing or mass-media details the way a record label or radio promoter would be, they are needed with things like music publishing and general operation once you are on the road (but probably not before.)
