You or your band spend hours and even days producing your music, but to be successful in the music business, you'll also need music promotion. Having good music is not enough. Doing promotion is an essential part of being a musician, especially nowadays that there’s so much content online. One of the many ways to promote yourself as an artist is getting your songs played on the radio. In this article, you’ll learn how to promote your music to radio stations and increase your visibility.
Music promotion is nothing more than raising awareness about your music. You can have a pretty good song and a consistent style, but if you don’t promote yourself, no one's going to hear about you! Pitching your song to a radio station is a way to start changing that. To elucidate, playing on the radio is still a symbol of credibility. It means your work has the same quality as songs from big labels. It's also a way to find a new audience and gain royalties.
Radio is not dead
Even though streaming is the new deal, the radio is still a way to find new music. According to the international online research group YouGov, in 2022, approximately 36% of the people interviewed seek new tunes on Spotify. At the same time, 33% of them still look for music on the radio. The small difference on both percentages can’t be ignored, radio isn’t dead as most think.
Some people might despise the influence of the radio nowadays, however, there’s a lot of advantages in having a song on radio airplay. First, is the credibility. Listeners will understand that your music has enough quality to be selected by professionals of the area. Then there’s the possibility of reaching a greater audience.
Those interested in your music will try to find you on social media, streaming platforms and online stores after hearing you on the radio. That can end up increasing your royalty earnings. It’s important to submit your music to streaming before pitching it to a radio station, or else the audience won’t find you. Need help with that? We've got your back! Magroove offers free music distribution to over 40 digital platforms, such as Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, iTunes, Instagram, TikTok and more.
Let’s promote: finding the right stations for your music
The first step to promote your music is finding the radio stations that best fit it. Make some research on the local and national radios in your area. See who the target audience is. Take time to listen to the station. If you're a rock singer, you’re not going to offer your music to a country station, for example. You wouldn't attract the right crowd.
Local radio stations are better for starters, since most of them have a sense of community and will help you promote your music. Also, the chances of people going to your gigs are bigger if they know that it’s someone local.
There are also some radio stations that specifically feature independent musicians. Seek for them. They're more likely to accept your songs than big, mainstream radio stations. Don’t forget to look for online radio stations, too! There’s a great variety of stations on the internet, some even dedicated to specific genres and subgenres. These radios usually attract a more global audience, since they're accessible everywhere through the internet.
Make a list of all the stations that you think will dig into your work and pitch to all of them.
Even though you think you have a great set of music, you have to find the right one to pitch to the radio. The song chosen is going to be the front door for your other projects. Be sure to select something catchy, with a strong message and the best audio quality possible, of course. Radio stations won’t take music with poor quality.
Remember, you're competing with big artists here. These artists have a team of experts to promote their music for them to radio stations, so make sure you’re up for the game.
Be aware of the guidelines
Most radio stations have guidelines that artists must follow in order to pitch their songs. Read all the procedures before sending your track. Usually, the songs played on the radio have a 2-3 minutes limit. That’s why some artists also have radio versions of their songs aside from the original ones. Some radios are more open and accept songs longer than that. It’s all written down in their guidelines.
In some stations, you might have to submit a physical CD, others will ask you to send a digital copy. Either way, it’s important to have your songs available on some platform before pitching them to the radio. You’re trying to sell your song and the audience has to find you somewhere.
Contacting radio stations
You've already sent everything the radio asked for, but still didn't receive an answer if your song was accepted or not. Well, that can happen in big radio stations. They receive a lot of requests per day and your email can be easily lost in the mix.
For this reason, it’s good to have connections. You can try to call the usual “friend of a friend”, however, if you don’t have a network that big, don’t worry. Search for people working on radios on social networks like LinkedIn. Seek for titles like “music director” or “host”. Check if the person you’re trying to connect with can help you in some way.
A direct contact is sometimes more worthy than sending an email, since people usually prioritize checking their Instagram accounts instead of the email. For that, it’s important to follow the next step.
To increase your credibility, make sure you have an active account on social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok or Youtube. Only sending your song to a radio won’t help you to reach the big parades, you’ve to work out a little.
Establish an online presence and an artistic identity. Try to post something every day and engage a lot with your fans. Some radio stations may look for you on these platforms. After all, most of the radios profit from advertising and need a big audience to maintain itself.
Let your fans know your song is playing on the radio. If their audience increases, it's likely that the radio station will play your music more times.
Build an EPK to have an effective response
EPK stands for Electronic Press Kit and is a package of information about a band or a musician. The EPK is usually sent to festivals, venues and event bookers to assess the worth of the artist. It’s also sent to bloggers and journalists in order to promote a new album or single.
When pitching your music to a radio station, they will give more attention to your request if you send all the important information about your work. An effective EPK has:
- A short bio about the band or the artist. Nothing too large, maybe two or three paragraphs;
- Where to find your music online, so this is why it’s so important to submit your music on platforms like Spotify or Apple Music;
- Photos for promotion. Usually for blogs, but nowadays radios also use social media and can request photos to post online;
- Social media. Be sure to link all of them like your website, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and more;
- Contact information;
- Branding. It is the face of your band, and it has to be a design that communicates something about you and your music.
You can build your own EPK. The internet has a lot of tools to help you with that, if you don't want to hire a professional right now. But remember that music promotion is an investment. In order to be successful in music, you need to start treating your work as a business.
Conclusion
It’s not easy to promote your music to radio stations being an indie artist. You might receive a lot of negative responses at first, but don’t give up! Use them to improve your work and your pitching. Take your time to make contacts and be present on social media. Radio promotion is nothing more than expanding your network and getting out there.
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