It seems like the radio promotion industry couldn’t care less about the independent musicians. Well this doesn’t have to mean that you can’t grab hold of the reigns and snatch your own air time using a well planned campaign.
In order to start your radio promotion you will absolutely need:
- Money to fund your campaign. There are not a lot of things worth anything that are free.
- You need time to spend to work the radio stations. Hound them with your demo’s. Get the person in charges information and respectfully ask for some of his time. Demanding will get you nowhere.
- And last but not least you will need recording studio quality materials to give to them or they won’t even waste 5 full seconds on your demo.
Sometimes you have to reach for the tops of the trees before you go reaching for the sky, so instead of going all out and contacting the major radio stations, try getting in touch and building a relationship with the less familiar end of the dial. College stations, community stations and even public radio is better than no air time at all. And you never know who is going to hear you and want to hear more!
So to get your plan off on the right foot try to follow these guidelines.
Prepare a list of stations that are more realistically likely to play your music. Then distribute free demos to them. Always give reasons to the radio stations you approach to explain why your music in particular is beneficial to their station. Make sure you set up marketing strategies such as building a web site and asking any station who will agree to play your music to link to your web site. The last thing you want is a consumer who wants to buy your music but has no idea where to find it.
