I’m asking this question on behalf of a friend. She’s a professional folk musician who has just released her third solo CD. It’s already gotten lots of good reviews, and all but two of the songs have had radio airplay. Now she is looking to get a little wider distribution and is planning to send it out to more radio stations (apparently she has a list of prospects). She is trying to decide which would be the better approach so as to have the best chance of a programming director/DJ/what-have-you actually open the package, give the CD a listen, and put it on the air:
(a) Send the CD out (with other promotional material, press kit, whatever) under her own name, or
(b) Have it sent in the name of the label that distributes the new CD as well as her two previous releases.
She is leaning toward (b) as a better means because (so she has been told) a PD is more likely to consider a CD if it has an outside label, which gives a more professional appearance. (In other words, any yutz can record and burn a CD; having a label represent you at least gives notice that you’re serious and may actually have some chops [which she most definitely does].) But she is also thinking of the cost to pay the label to do the mailing.
I’m thinking that she is right about (b), but I’d like to hear opinions from the other side, and will pass them along to her.
I’m a DJ with my university’s college radio station, and I also function as the “children’s” music director.
As far as my station is concerned, it really doesn’t matter how the CD gets to us. We at least screen all the music that we get, and the stuff we like goes on the air.
As in any industry, we get promoters that are wonderful and send us the stuff they know we will use. There are also lousy promoters that send everything and demand to know why most of it isn’t getting airplay. (Truth be told, we get a LOT of crappy music. One promoter was genuinely stumped that a CD he sent us wasn’t getting airplay. The CD we got wasn’t the “radio clean” version, and virtually every song had at least some profanity in it. If a band isn’t willing to send out a radio-clean CD, we’re not going to make the effort to edit the language.)
If your friend understands at least a little bit about the radio markets she’s wanting to send her CDs to, and is willing to do the research, there’s nothing wrong with sending them herself. However, if she’s not sure where her CDs should go, then her label should be doing the work.
Thanks, Robin! I don’t know if she’s planning to send the CD to any college stations, but I imagine she certainly could. (At least her songs are clean!)
MsRobyn basically beat me to it. Radio PDs will listen to everything they can, hoping to find that “next big thing.” It’s a point of pride to premiere something that later becomes big, so many PDs aren’t afraid to listen to small independent stuff. They’re hoping to launch that “next big thing.”
Still, one of the most important things is to make the CD stand out in some way. That includes a professional appearance. It’s less important how the disc gets there, than it is how it looks. You know, so it doesn’t get thrown under a bigger stack of discs with colorful packaging and pictures, and forgotten.
I was a program director/music director of an FM station for a while, so I figure I’ll chime in with my .02.
Most people in my position at radio stations - the person you need to go through to get on the air - are already swamped with CD’s from legitimate labels and promotion companies that they’re used to dealing with, so it’s very hard to get them to even give something unsolicited a listen.
Her/your only hope is to call/contact the person BEFORE sending the CD, tell them about it, and ask if they’ll give it a listen/consideration if you send it in. If they say yes, they’ll be expecting it and will probably find the extra 30 seconds to at least pop it in. The most irritating thing for any person in this position is recieving unsolicited, unsigned CD’s - they go directly into the garbage because we just don’t have the time to listen to them, and past experience shows that there’s a 99.9% chance they wouldn’t get on the air anyway.
If the woman’s record is being distributed through a legitimate, well-known label with a reputation, then by all means send the record with that label’s stickers and literature. But no matter what she does, do not do this if the label is fake/unheard of/just started to release her one record. Anyone working that job at a radio station knows all labels, from the biggest majors to the tiniest indies, and they can smell bullsh*t a mile away. If it has bad Microsoft Word fonts and they’ve never heard of it, it’s almost guaranteed to go into the trash without a listen.
95% of music that goes to radio does so through promotion companies, whose sole job is to put a handful of new records together in weekly packages, then “work” those to radio. When it comes to mainstream, commerical radio stations, forget it - there’s a monopolistic relationship between labels —> “independent promoters”—> stations with payola involved that guarantees only major-funded stuff gets on there. You have more of a chance with NPR affiliates, college radio stations, independent stations, and community stations. They work with a lower echelon of promotion companies (like
1Team Clermont and AAM) who get them packages of new records each week. Securing promotion through one of these companies is pretty expensive (check out their rates), and even then, the product has to be good enough that they’ll be willing to put their name/approval on it.
Good luck! You can really only “break in” to readio if you’re involved with an already-established label, but there are ways to do it on your own.
If she’s going to do this herself, she’s going to have to follow up with the program director/music director to remind them to listen to the CD. If she can make suggestions on other, well-known artists in the same genre, it also helps. (For example, if she’s similar to Shawn Colvin, she might point that out.)
Shouldn’t be any problems there – she has a very talented graphic artist friend designing all of her print materials – CD booklet, concert posters, photography, what-have-you. It’s all very sharp.
Freejooky: That’s kind of the situation she and I are envisioning – a huge “slush pile,” as in publishing, where all the unsolicited “no-name” stuff goes.
The label/distributor (perhaps I am not using the term correctly) is real – he’s been around for 12 years and has a few dozen folk artists in his catalog. I’m not familiar enough with the general folk world to know if he’s well-known.
My friend is on vacation right now, so I can’t ask her for clarification, but I’ll be sure to send her a link to this thread when she returns. I’d like to thank all of you on her behalf for chiming in with your expertise!