Radio Spins

Radio Spins
By, Wendy Day from Rap Coalition (www.IndieLabelBuilder.com)

Thanks to the advent of the Internet over a generation ago, the playing field has been leveled for artists. In today’s climate, an artist no longer HAS to sign to a major label (or any label at all for that matter) to succeed. One can make one’s own music and upload it to the internet to share it with the world. But if you are starting a business, meaning you plan to SELL your music, that’s a different story.

While the internet has made it easier for today’s artists to navigate the industry and sell their own music without a label, it still is a business and every artist needs some business sense and a blueprint to make it happen. Part of that blueprint involves having a budget to pay for the marketing and promotion of the music, for buying tracks or features from other artists, and for the necessary mixing and mastering to bring the music to commercial quality.

Yes, I know the story of Drake. I also know the story of every artist out there trying to replicate his success (and if Lil Wayne and Young Money put a budget behind your third mixed CD to buy radio play, you may have the same level of buzz too!). But while there is no one formula for success, nor one roadmap of how to achieve it, there are some things you can do the strengthen your chances of success. Let me say here and now though, that just getting a record deal should NEVER be the goal. Many, many, many artists who have come before you and that are way more talented than you have been signed to labels to just sit there for years and have no movement forward (on a happy side note, I’d like to point out that B.O.B. was finally given a release date by Atlantic of the Spring 2010! WOO HOO!). The goal is to succeed with a career in music, not be shelved and sit in a holding pattern once signed to a label.

Therefore, to increase your chances for success, you need to work your own project to show the labels that you are a good risk and that they should sign you to their label (if that’s your goal). I, personally, don’t see the need for a label, but not every artist is entrepreneurial enough to put out music, or to find an investor to fund their dream.

When putting out a CD, all aspects must come together to promote that release (and the timing must be on point. All aspects must hit at the same time to be truly effective).

It’s important that you plan succinctly, way ahead, and have budgets for marketing, street and club promotions, internet promotions, touring, publicity, advertising, attending and promoting at events (attendance at conventions and consumer events), video promotions (if you shoot a video), tools (posters, flyers, flats, postcards, t-shirts, etc), radio play, and of course pressing (of the singles, mixed CDs, and/or actual full length CD).

Anytime you start a business, there are costs involved. The music industry is no different. If you plan to put out your own music, you must be able to properly afford it or you are just wasting what little money you have. It’s also important to have someone reputable on your team if you aren’t going to hire a consultant to guide you. While I set up a free website years ago to help people put out their own CDs (www.rapcointelpro.com), no website can tell you whom to hire, which service companies are best, or who is genuinely good at what they do. Experience, connections, and being inside the inner circle in this shark-infested business are the only ways to know who’s who.

Truth is, even the folks who are at the top of their game today may slack off (or be too busy to help you properly), or be replaced by a newer, more hungry and aggressive person only to become the worst at what they do in a matter of months. In addition, there are a slew of folks in this business who make gobs of money from taking advantage of people who don’t know, aren’t experienced, and who can’t smell a con man a mile away. Most people lose money in this business.

Independent radio promotion is one of those treacherous areas where an artist or label can lose a lot of money. Hell, experienced people can lose a shitload of money here, too, not just new people.

It’s important to have a goal when going to secure radio spins. That goal must be more significant that just wanting to hear your song on the radio. Radio spins are not for artists trying to secure a record deal, nor are they for people without a healthy promotional budget. If radio spins led to a good deal that secured an artist’s career successfully, everyone with $50,000 to spend would have a successful career in the music business. And they do not.

If you look at the top selling artists with careers (NOT the one hit wonders), not one of them got a deal from having radio spins. There’s a good reason for that. Having radio spins does NOT guarantee CD sales, only selling your CD is a true test of CD sales. However, spins do often equal ringtone sales ($2.99 each) and single download sales for 99 cents each, which make the record labels salivate at the thought of quick one-off money, but it has yet to build the career of a serious recording artist. Would you rather be The Shop Boyz or Jay-Z? Would you rather have one hit song like “Laffy Taffy” or be putting out your 9th CD like Snoop with multi-million dollar touring opportunities, film and TV deals, endorsements, and other income producing opportunities?

So there is really only one reason to go after radio play: to sell CDs. Any other reason, and you are just taking away a potential slot from an artist who has his or her shit together and who came with a plan.

There are two kinds of radio promotion people:
1) The kind who promise you 300 spins a week (no one can promise you an exact number of spins because it depends on who else is at radio when you are, how hot your song is, and how well it researches at radio), take your money ($15,000 to $40,000), and then deliver whatever spins they can get you (usually 45 a week to 230 a week) at any radio station where they have a key relationship.
2) The kind who understand what your plan and goals entail, and deliver the stations within your marketing territory with which they have relationships, in a time frame that meets with when your other promotional efforts are hitting. These promo people are few and far between.

If you are releasing a CD independently, and the south is the market you are targeting, radio spins in the Bay Area, St Louis, Milwaukee, or Detroit are not helpful to your goal. No radio promoter should deliver spins solely where they have relationships unless you are a major label targeting the entire US. And even then, the majors work region by region so as to impact their limited budgets. So should you, on a smaller scale!

I get calls from folks every week asking me to refer a radio promotion person. Hell, muthaphukking NO! I will give up EVERY aspect of how to put out a CD for free, but I will not give up my radio folks. First of all, they are too hard to come by and if you don’t pay them, I’d have to kill you. Secondly, there are only so many open slots in any playlist, and I don’t need anymore competition than I already have.

Lastly, although not guaranteed, radio often drives sales in our business when used in conjunction with other promotional opportunities, and if you don’t have your shit together, you are wasting their time and your own money. Just because my radio guys do great for me, doesn’t mean they’d do equally as well for you. My experience and the amount of records I bring to them every year sets me way apart from what any of you are doing individually. There is far more incentive for them to deliver on one of my records, than on yours.

Besides, all of my guys will take your money to get you radio play so you can try to get a deal, and if you read a few paragraphs above, you will see that no successful career has ever been created from getting a deal based solely on radio play. In fact, very few deals have even been inked from radio play alone. Yet, every single one of them will take your money to try to get you enough spins to attract label attention. They have families to feed. If you are stupid enough to try this route, they have every right to deliver to you what you are seeking: radio spins! When it doesn’t work, you will call me complaining that my radio guy took your money. It would now actually cost me less to hire him because he made more money from my referral, but I don’t want to hear you complain. It’s just not worth the aggravation!

Radio is expensive. There is no way around that. The way that I impact radio is to work the region on the streets and club level getting the record hot long before I ever go for radio. I build it from the ground up so that it has legs. Then, I take it to radio in smaller markets first. For example, I would hit the smaller markets surrounding Atlanta like Macon, Albany, Greenville, Columbia, SC long before I ever went into Atlanta. Atlanta is an expensive market to work on the streets and at radio, so I prefer to get my record bubbling in the smaller, more affordable places.

If the market favors club hits that people can dance to, that’s what I work. If the market favors more calm ride-to-it type songs, then that is what I work. I match my singles to the markets and bring what the market wants. I never try to force records on people because you’ll lose unless you have Def Jam or P Diddy sized budgets. Kanye’s Jesus Walks was a huge hit for Def Jam. It most likely would have been an expensive failure for an indie label.

Once I see that the record has legs, I take it to the bigger markets. This gives me a story to tell at radio in the bigger markets. It’s much easier to get the attention of a program director once I have spins in smaller outside markets, than it is to show up to a music day and say “Play my shit, it’s hot!” Very few records are really hot and there is no rhyme or reason to what catches on. So it’s important to test your record before you go full out on the budget. Better to lose $10,000 or $20,000 to find out you didn’t have anything than to spend $80,000 out the box to find the same thing out. Once your song begins to spin, it’s important to keep supporting it in the marketplace. I offer the artist for free to the station for a show, or back up the spins through promotional tours or by doing give-aways with the station (tenth caller receives a free give-away from my artist. This can be a t-shirt, a gift card from a store, a contest, etc, or even just a free CD before they become available in stores).

There are also times when you have to believe in your record even if it isn’t catching on quickly. Songs that took a long time to catch on were Webbie’s Girl, Gimmee That, and his Bad Bitch, Souljah Boy’s Crank That, Nelly’s Country Grammar, etc. The key is being experienced enough to know when it’s a good record and when to stop throwing good money after bad.

There’s a term in radio called RESEARCHING. Research is when a radio station does a telephone poll (market research) amongst listeners. They play a portion of numerous songs and ask people if they can identify the song or the artist. If the market research comes back that listeners don’t respond to your song, the station takes it out of rotation saying it isn’t researching well. If the research comes back positive, the program director will often bump up the spins because it means listeners like the song.

It’s important for radio stations to play what the mass of listeners want to hear. Radio is based on ad sales (commercials) and those prices are set quarterly by how many people in the market are listening. That’s called share. Share is all that matters to the radio station because that sets their pricing or income. If Gangsta Grillz Radio in Atlanta has a 10 share, and their biggest competitor in urban music has a 40 share at the station across town, the radio station that airs Gangsta Grillz will make moves to replace the show, no matter how much you or I enjoy listening to it. Everything in radio comes down to numbers and money. Everything!

Lastly, I want to remind you that as you go for radio spins, you MUST have a competitive song. The sound quality must be as good, or better, than everything else at radio. This means it must be made in a professional quality studio, not your basement. It needs to be professionally mixed and mastered. I use Tony Rey at Dirty South in Atlanta for mixing (I manage him) and Big Bass Brian and Bernie Grundman in L.A (I wish I managed him) for mastering. They are the best at what they do for me.

If everything currently at radio is at 92 BPMs, don’t bring in a song at 80 BPMs. It won’t mix with the other songs properly. On the flip side, if everything currently at radio is slow, don’t come in with a super crunk dance record trying to get it spun. Learn how radio works and you are that much more likely not to lose your entire life savings going after the all-important radio spins. And for heaven sakes, don’t ever offer anyone at radio money to play your damn record! That’s illegal!!