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The artwork
for your latest CD has been completed, your finished master is off to the pressing
plant and you're pondering what your first single should be. You know you need
a solid plan to garner some radio support and a buzz behind your project. Of
course I would recommend you hire a professional tracker or radio promoter which
means you must budget $1500 to $2500 per single. For an indie artist the life
span of a single is about 20 weeks, more if you are established and less if you're
up against a similar, well known artist releasing at that time. Currently
we have a number of tunes at radio which means I follow the charts and receive
reports from various PD's which reminded me about the all important TIMING of
releases, but more on that in a bit. Here's
how it works at radio. Every
week at every station they hold a "music meeting", where the MD/PD and his lead
staff listen to the past week's, CD submissions and they decide who they will
play and who they won't play. I've never actually sat in on one of these meetings
but I have been told, they will play their current hits against your submissions
and if your production is of lesser quality you've lost your chance. Stations
aren't out to persecute you, they simply must maintain a quality standard. If
they like you (you fit their format, production standards) they will start playing
you or, they bring your CD back to next weeks music meeting. As mentioned in previous
articles, stations have 1 maybe 2 new adds per week max, so if they received 10
new CDs that week your chances are greatly reduced, and there is not guarantee
they will add you at all. You must also detail what song you are submitting as
your first single. I did a radio show for a year and was surprised at the number
of CD's sent in with no bio, no cover letter no contact info or even a mention
of what the requested single was. What are they thinking…??? In
order to climb to the top of the charts your single MUST be picked up by the BDS
stations and be put on HIGH rotation. Nielsen BDS information is utilized exclusively
by Billboard, Billboard Radio Monitor and the Canadian Music Network in determining
their radio airplay music charts. As
a management and label, we used to send singles out to the BDS stations first,
and give them a week before we sent it out the rest of the stations. This way,
when the smaller or non BDS stations see your single getting play on a BDS station
they are more inclined to add your song to their play list. It takes several weeks
from mail out (or digital relay) to finally receive play results. Some stations
will bring your CD back to 3 music meetings all the while watching what the other
stations are doing, before making their decision. Trackers are truly invaluable
at this crucial period, as they have a relationship with the Program Directors,
they know when the music meetings are held and generally call that afternoon or
the next morning to find out if you have been added and talk you up. Trackers
then send you a weekly report of what stations are adding you, and what kind of
rotation they offer (light, medium or heavy) or if they took a pass on it and
why. All of which is important information. Another
item to consider regarding the timing is the number of stations who pick you up
within a certain time period. For instance, if you decided that you would send
out your single to a few stations and get their feed back and they went ahead
and picked it up AND these stations happened to be BDS stations then your song
appears on everyone's radar that week. So you call them in a couple of weeks,
see if they liked it, and you find out its already charting you are in big trouble.
You begin to scramble to send it out to all the other stations, but it's almost
too late. Why? Well what happens is, you appear on the charted at #67 ( you had
2 major stations) on May 30th then nothing happens for weeks… it doesn't move…
so when the other stations get your disc on June 21st they are not inclined to
add you because you've been sitting on the charts at 67 for three weeks. It is
imperative you get your product out to radio consistently within a short time
frame. 1 week BDS the next week the rest of the stations… take boxes and boxes
of addressed bubble packs to the post office and get it done! Our post office
was great and it was never a problem. Although,
I will add, about 1 third of the discs never arrived at their destination and
we used to get calls from stations wondering why they didn't get a copy of the
current single (so maybe the post office did mind!) More
next week on when and when NOT to send to radio. Jana
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