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requirements for getting my song played

K

ken white

Guest
requirements for getting my song played

What are the requirements for getting my song "Hollywood ft Demico and Mike Jones" played on the radio station in Austin,tx (The beat 102.3)!! Please I need some help.
 
Re: requirements for getting my song played

Unless the station has a segment dedicated to local musicians, its damn near impossible. Stations do not like to take risk on indie artist/music. The #1 goal for any station is to make money. They realize they have to attempt to please the masses as much as possible to further assist them to land those potential clients. Granted not everyone can be pleased which further justifies why they do not play the lesser known musicians and only stick with major recording artist.

The music industry is crazy hard... I know, I used to be in it.

My advice, do not rely on radio play. If being a professional musician is seriously what you want to do.... Just go and put yourself out there and try to land yourself a major deal. (A lot easier said than done) Also, don't waste your time and money mailing promo cds to station music directors. Most MDs i know toss them on the trash.

Sorry if this wasn't what you wanted to hear... its just the truth.
 
Re: requirements for getting my song played

This is got to be the saddest and perhaps most revealing thread in a long time. Remember when radio used to "serve the public interest"?

Today, a local musician can't even get a song played.

Social networking indeed. Combine it with an iPod and who needs radio?

:mad:
 
Re: requirements for getting my song played

Thank you for all the reply's so far. I my self and Dstatus Music Group will never give up unless the sun refuses to rise in the morning. I still would love to hear more insight from my fellow board members. Thanks once again.
 
Re: requirements for getting my song played

mmnassour said:
This is got to be the saddest and perhaps most revealing thread in a long time. Remember when radio used to "serve the public interest"?
Click to expand...

Apparently serving the public interest has taken a backseat to making money. In all honesty I cannot blame them. People forget that radio is a business. And just like any business, they are in it to make revenue.

I am all for stations dedicating a local artist segment, however randomly throwing indie artist into a major/medium market station alongside recording artist with major record deals just doesn't seem logical.

I know how that makes me come off. But the reality is that in 2010, the economy has changed the radio industry forever. With the addition of PPM, it is far more likely you will get meter drop offs when an unknown comes on versus if you play the hits.
 
Re: requirements for getting my song played

Have you visited with any of the folks at KSYM? I'd start there...
In the meantime, make as many friends as you can. get your music in front of as many people as you can. Then come up with a song that is topical, novel, unique, sublimely humerous, and catchy. The last local song to make it on SA commercial airwaves might have been 'Hey Baby Kep-Pas-so', by Augie Meyers.
 
Re: requirements for getting my song played

mmnassour said:
This is got to be the saddest and perhaps most revealing thread in a long time. Remember when radio used to "serve the public interest"?

Today, a local musician can't even get a song played.
Click to expand...

In what way is playing any unknown artist a service to the public? It is very easy to see how much unknown, unfamiliar songs hurt the programming on most stations.

Making people tune out is not a public service. Keeping them entertained is...or at least it is one of the ways to serve the audience.

Programmers generally will cull the new songs that come in, and separate the good songs from the rest (which is why perhaps 19 out of every 20 songs gets played). Then, given a group of songs that all fit the station and "sound like hits" the first choice will be a song by a core artist. The second will be one by an artist who has had a number of recent hits (definining "hit" as "a song my listeners have been proven to like") and then, on the rare occasion when there is an opening on the current list, a new artist may be given some spins... And, of course, we often let someone else take the risk most of the time, and watch the playlists of other stations carefully on BDS or MediaBase, etc.

Radio's business is not selling records. Radio's business is selling commercials. If too many unfamiliar songs are added, the commercial inventory will be harder to sell because fewer people will listen.

Most programmers know that when they get a song with a home-made label on it in the mail that 99.99% of the time listening to it will be disappointing, and PDs are busier than ever these days.

At the label level, having a song played on the radio somewhere is not a big deal. Label people know that most such plays are due to someone who knows the band, or that the band plays at station events, etc. Instead of wasting time hounding radio stations, spending those efforts finding a label that will work the song is more useful. The "let's drive around to radio stations to get them to play my record" of "Coalminer's Daughter" is not likely to work any more. Small stations are on satellite services, and bigger stations either do their own research or copy the lists of a similar station that does.
 
Re: requirements for getting my song played

DavidEduardo said:
mmnassour said:
This is got to be the saddest and perhaps most revealing thread in a long time. Remember when radio used to "serve the public interest"?

Today, a local musician can't even get a song played.
Click to expand...

In what way is playing any unknown artist a service to the public? It is very easy to see how much unknown, unfamiliar songs hurt the programming on most stations.

Making people tune out is not a public service. Keeping them entertained is...or at least it is one of the ways to serve the audience.
Click to expand...

Oh my God.....how dare a radio station play something not heard before! Ooooooo.....it's unknown......it's, it's, it's...oh no! Unfamiliar!

I'm sorry, I'm not trashing you, what you've said is exactly what happens. I just remember a time when hearing new music was actually exciting. In August, I was so bored with radio here in Austin that I actually kept track of what I was listening to. Do you know that for the entire month, I didn't hear a single song that I hadn't heard before? (This means YOU, ghost of KGSR.) There's simply no reason for me to listen to the same damned crap that's on my iPod or in my MP3 case, only with commercials. Now I catch the news at the top of the hour (maybe) then it's back to the MP3s with a little sports-talk sprinkled in. Who's advertising what? I don't know. I don't care. I can honestly say that radio advertising has no place in my life and anyone paying for my ears is wasting his or her money.

I think it was up above, perhaps in this thread(?) where I related a story about my daughter not listening to radio at all, to the complete lack of radio receivers at all among folks I know who are under 25 years old. I just can't help but feel that radio has become a complete and absolute dead end, at least around here, not only artistically but also for someone who wants a career.

Hey, who knows? Maybe this guy's song is worth a damn.

That would be a change.
 
Re: requirements for getting my song played

mmnassour said:
DavidEduardo said:
mmnassour said:
This is got to be the saddest and perhaps most revealing thread in a long time. Remember when radio used to "serve the public interest"?

Today, a local musician can't even get a song played.
Click to expand...

In what way is playing any unknown artist a service to the public? It is very easy to see how much unknown, unfamiliar songs hurt the programming on most stations.

Making people tune out is not a public service. Keeping them entertained is...or at least it is one of the ways to serve the audience.
Click to expand...


eduardo is right. Radio isnt to sell music. Its to sell commercials. and its been proven before and is solidified with PPM that listeners dont want to hear unfamiliar music.

Oh my God.....how dare a radio station play something not heard before! Ooooooo.....it's unknown......it's, it's, it's...oh no! Unfamiliar!

I'm sorry, I'm not trashing you, what you've said is exactly what happens. I just remember a time when hearing new music was actually exciting. In August, I was so bored with radio here in Austin that I actually kept track of what I was listening to. Do you know that for the entire month, I didn't hear a single song that I hadn't heard before? (This means YOU, ghost of KGSR.) There's simply no reason for me to listen to the same damned crap that's on my iPod or in my MP3 case, only with commercials. Now I catch the news at the top of the hour (maybe) then it's back to the MP3s with a little sports-talk sprinkled in. Who's advertising what? I don't know. I don't care. I can honestly say that radio advertising has no place in my life and anyone paying for my ears is wasting his or her money.

I think it was up above, perhaps in this thread(?) where I related a story about my daughter not listening to radio at all, to the complete lack of radio receivers at all among folks I know who are under 25 years old. I just can't help but feel that radio has become a complete and absolute dead end, at least around here, not only artistically but also for someone who wants a career.

Hey, who knows? Maybe this guy's song is worth a damn.

That would be a change.
Click to expand...
 
Re: requirements for getting my song played

Well, that's probably why talk radio has done so well in recent years. Don't get me started on programming for PPM because that's more than another thread.

Me, I have my tunes and my Internet radio. Who knows? Maybe one day I'll have a PPM....the first one that will register absolutely nothing heard at all ;D!
 
Re: requirements for getting my song played

mmnassour said:
Maybe one day I'll have a PPM....the first one that will register absolutely nothing heard at all ;D!
Click to expand...

Not true. About 5% to 6% of all panelists don't listen to radio in any given week's time.
 
Re: requirements for getting my song played

mmnassour said:
[...to the complete lack of radio receivers at all among folks I know who are under 25 years old. I
Click to expand...

So nobody under 25 has a car? I don't think I have seen a car at a dealer without a radio in it for 40 years or so. What this shows is that you are generalizing based on anecdotal experience.

And, diary or PPM, we see radio usage of about 93% of those under 25. Sure, lighter usage than in the 60's, but there is usage. A lot of this is about other things people have as entertainment choices, not about how bad radio is. Look at Black Ops with $360 million in sales the first day... and think wheter a gamer can listen to the radio or an iPod or watch web videos while playing. Oy, yeah... in the 60's none of those alternatives existed, did they?
 
Re: requirements for getting my song played

Leebo65 said:
Heh Heh, how do you convince a machine to play your song........ :D
Click to expand...

The same way you get a computer to send mail: somebody, a person, prepared it in advance.

Whether a format is live and manually put together or prerecorded or automated, people picked the songs, decided on the liners and imaging, where to put spots, how often to play songs, and all the other little details. And it does not matter anyway... unless it disturbs you that Leno or Conan are really not live but recorded at a different time and played back by, shudder, a machine. ;D
 
Re: requirements for getting my song played

Re-reading the first post, I realize 102.3 changed to Rythmic Oldies... so I guess the only way to get on their playlist is to go back in time to the '70s....
But here's an idea: Maybe you could have your tune played behind a commercial? Back in 'the day' I remember sometimes tunes we used for production broke out as hits, because the constant repetition on commericals made them familiar. Maybe an agency would consider using your tune?
 
Re: requirements for getting my song played

Hip Hop? I thought they swapped with KFMK...
But then again I haven't paid any attention to KPEZ since the 'Purge of 03'
 
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