Radio & Radio Promotion:
An interview with Jocelyn Kane & Dani Eurynome, presenters of the B.A.N.D. Workshop Series
by Alex Walsh
September 2006
What does a person need to do to get on the radio?
D: First off all there are a number of different types of radio that need to be explained. There’s standard commercial radio, mainly FM, internet radio, satellite radio, and non-commercial radio, like public radio, Pacifica, and college radio. So there’s all different types of ways to get on the radio just as there are all different types of radio.
J: Excellent. So the point is people turn on the radio in their car and they don’t know exactly what they’re listening to and they think “I want to be on that”, and they have to understand what they’re hearing and where it comes from to know how to get there.
D: Right.
J: and then determine the accessibility of each type (of station), and they’re very different in terms of accessibility. In terms of a hierarchy, commercial--Live 105, Alice, KFOG-- are the hardest as an independent artist, and then at the other end is internet radio, which is the most widely accessible, for the moment. And all the others are in between.
Why are they the hardest?
J: The reason is, just for generalities, the word “commercial” tells you their business model is essentially to sell ad space on the air, and their secondary function is to play music. The alternative to that model is the internet radio, whose function is primarily to play music, and possibly there are ads or not, to give it a little bit of a revenue stream. And again everything in the middle falls in-between, non-commercial radio is what it sounds like, non-commercial, and college radio is what it sounds like.
D: And the other thing about commercial radio is that any number of stations, let’s say in San Francisco, are all owned by the same small pool of companies. So there’s Clear Channel, Cumulous, Bonneville. This small handful of companies own virtually all of the radio stations and they decide in some board room or other, not necessarily a board room, but in an office building, what are the main things that are going into rotation in all these different radio stations. So let’s say Clear Channel, they own Live 105, they own KFOG, and they decide, “Okay, well, this is really a Live 105 song, it’s not a KFOG song.” And never the two shall meet, except for a very narrow stream of music. And so these decisions are being made outside of the people that live in the area, outside of people who play the music, and outside of people who appreciate that genre in the first place.
J: Right. Mostly the decisions are made by contracted companies that decide what the mainstream of America will listen to as the demographic falls into the advertisers that are the main function of why they’re there--and never forget that—because if people who buy tires listen to a certain kind of country music—
D: Everybody buys tires, not just country music people—
J: You know what I’m saying, the demographic is appropriate for the type of product, they’re going to match those two together. So if eighties music has come back for a reason it’s because of the demographic that they’re selling the products to, end of story. To move forward, into the area where people have more accessibility, certainly anything non-commercial, where the income stream is donations primarily, there is a freedom to program. And that’s what you need as an independent artist, programming freedom.
And so that is the focus of your workshop-- how do you get on that independent, free programming area, because there are a whole ton of other things that have to happen before you can get on commercial radio, even though you can walk down to KFOG on a Thursday morning and pitch your stuff. I guess you’re pitching it? And do they still have to pass it through the national?
J: KFOG in particular has some ability to do local stuff. They have a website.
Like once a year they have a local month of local--
J: That’s better than nothing. And to be honest it could be nothing and to some extent we should be grateful that there are specialty radio shows on commercial radio. But it’s really minor. The benefit is too small to weigh against the time and effort.
D: Every single commercial station will have some degree of local programming or new artist programming and it behooves people to do that research to figure out currently what the stations are offering. And usually it’s a really bad time slot like “Sunday’s at Midnight, listen to Local Lounge…”
J: Right.
D: But it’s possible. So what we try to do (in the B.A.N.D. Workshops) , because we’re dealing with musicians that are in the beginning stages of really promoting themselves and trying to get airplay, we focus on the more realistic and tangible goals of college radio, non-commercial radio, internet and satellite radio, in the local programming shows that allow new people to be showcased. And there’s a number of different ways to go about that. The main thing which we stress in every workshop is research, research, research. And I recommend keeping a database of all the contacts.
J: That’s what we title all of these: “I recommend keeping a database”.
It should be on your business card. That’s your tagline.
D: People pay tons of money for these contacts. The reason people pay money for it is it’s a lot of research.
R: It’s a lot of work.
D: But once you have it and you start using it, it’s just updating. So it’s really important. A good tool is www.radiolocator.com. They not only have a searchable database that comes from FCC records, so it’s as accurate as the FCC, but you can also pay them and they’ll give you email contacts for every radio station, but it’s like $600. You can start research that way and just cut and paste. You say,”I want, anything within hearing range of this zip code”, and it will list them all for you.
Is that how they do it? By how strong the signal is?
D: Yep. It’s a great little database.
R: And the reason you want to think of radio in that regard is that, why be on the radio if you’re not touring in that area, or aren’t physically present, or have some product there? You want to be smart about how you work your markets. So you only need to find out about stations in those markets. Some radio stations have an incredibly strong signal, they will go so far out that you can work two or three markets. Which I think is incredible. When you get outside of the bay area there are some stations that you can hold all the way down I-5.
D: Being on the radio, in and of itself, is fine, but it’s not necessarily serving any sort of career goals. What you really want to do is be strategic about the work you do, the research that you do, the sending out packages for review, and the follow-up. If you’re going to be doing all of that work you need to pick your markets that you are going to be working in because you can only do so much as an individual or as a band.
Pick them based on where you can be physically.
J: Or if you have a record release and it’s being worked in certain places with publicity, and you can’t be present, if you get radio airplay and then you have something in the paper and it’s in the store, that’s almost as good as physically being there, in some cases. We all know there are artists that virtually never play live but get tons of radio.
So that’s what people do, let’s say you pick a place and do a campaign, you say I want to do all the radio that’s appropriate, and advertising and get it in a few record stores and then…
J: Absolutely.
D: Right.
And then you don’t have to show up to play a gig…
J: But you have to remember that income from all of these things comes to you in a variety of ways—radio is not really income. You don’t get much.
It’s advertising.
J: It’s advertising essentially. So lots of spins, if you’re really big, would yield you some income via your performing rights society. But publicity that you pay for doesn’t yield you anything, and record deals with distribution only yield you a little bit. So what people do if they really want to make money is they play, because the income from a live show is the biggest chunk, theoretically, and any merchandise sales at that show. In the sense of a record label, big or small, wanting to push your product, it’s worth it to them because that’s the deal. If you spend a million bucks maybe you’ll sell half a million records.
D: And product meaning not only units of CD’s but also butts in seats. I always tell people, once you have a CD you can actually play on the radio, spend some time getting it on whatever radio is appropriate because more people are going to hear that song on the radio that have ever heard you play live. It’s really important and the more people hear it the more they’re going to recognize it and the more they’re going to recognize your name and the more they’re going to say, “I like that, let’s go see them live.” Or, “I like that, I’m in the record store and I’m going to look for it. So radio is a super important tool for people who are trying to amass a buzz about them. So be strategic about where you can be. I know lots of musicians who are bi-coastal. I know lots of musicians who live here or they live in New York and they do both coasts, at least a quarter of the time they’re on one side or the other. They can reasonably do it. The important thing is once you pick a place, whether that’s one place where you live or a second place, you need to make sure that you can follow a very simple plan and do the follow-up to make sure that you’re actually making progress. You want to find out where you are and how often you’re being played. You want to encourage different DJ’s who you think might like you to play you more often. There’s a lot of follow-up work to do.
What would be a good Radio Promotion Plan?
D: So, you have your CD. You create a package. It’s not the same as a booking or press package. It has a few different items in it including a song by song play list so that it’s labeled whether it’s FCC friendly or not. If you use the word fuck in your song, it’s not FCC friendly and you need to let them know where in the song it happens to make it easy to beep out. Every station, whether it’s a tiny college radio station or otherwise, they have someone whose job it is to listen to the whole thing, think about what tracks are the best for their radio station, and also to say which ones can be played and which ones need to be beeped. In the case of a college station, if you have tracks that are not FCC friendly, then it’s usually up to that individual DJ at the moment to listen and beep it, and they have to like you that much to actively be doing it while they’re playing your song. They’re not going to create a whole new CD with a little beep for you. So give them the Walmart version.
J: The thing to remember is that these are just people who like music. Especially in the college world, it is fairly easy to use the web to figure out who’s playing what kind of program. What these DJ’s are spinning, and then figure out someone who knows them or just send it to them. They’re always looking for new stuff to play--they always want to be on the cutting edge. You’d be surprised who’s listening. People all over listen to college radio even though they’re not in college. So I think it’s something you shouldn’t approach as “Oh My God, the big scary radio station”. These are people that want to get into radio as a career starting point.
D: So you do the research, you figure out where you’re going to be sending it, you make the package.
So what’s in the package?
D: The general stuff you would want to include, an introduction letter. I always recommend that you send a general one to the radio station, but if there are DJ’s that seem like they’d like your type of music that you play, you also send them a copy because they can often speed up the process of getting your CD reviewed, make sure they play it more often, that it doesn't get lost in the library--
Would you send your product or a burned copy of your product?
D: Your product. They need a real copy for their library. So you send the intro letter, the actual product, the FCC friendly sheet. You can include on that, track 1, title, whether it's FCC friendly or not, and if it's not, where in the song it happens.
J: The length of the song.
D: And also the feel of the song. Uptempo, pop.
Do you let them decide what goes on the radio, or do you say these are the hits, or we're pushing these?
D: You can say that, but again I'm always suprised at what different radio stations pick. And it's really regional. I mean at least for college radio which is what I've focused on for most of my radio promotion attempts. For example, when I was really pushing the second Bite Size CD, the Berekeley station picked totally different tracks than the Seattle station. Seattle is much more into upbeat poppy kind of stuff. Berekeley really liked wacky weird sounding stuff, more artier. So it's just very different. And neither of the tracks were the bands favorites. So they were like,"What the--they don't know what they're doing." But people like what they like. And when you're dealing with college radio you're dealing with a bunch of individuals, and they play what they like. And that's what I like about college radio to be honest, there's no formulaic playlist.
Would they do that at KFOG, or one of the other commercial stations?
D: In the local show they would.
They would listen to the whole CD or you'd have to tell them which tracks to listen to?
J: When you go pitch Kelly right now at KFOG, she likes certain stuff. So you'd be best advised to not play stuff that she doesn't particularly like. And it's a personal like. As opposed to just going in there randomly, she doesn't have time to play the whole CD.
What does she like?
J & D: (Laughter)
Do you know?
J: I don't remember. I mean Rene told me. You can find out what influences these people. You can find out about any of these, what influences these people.
So that's alot of research.
J: And don't forget satellite radio. Serius and XM. There's two satellite radios, they have a hundred channels each or whatever. They're subscription based, but that doesn't mean no one's listening to them. Alot of people are buying it. I know XM has an unsigned bands channel, 24/7. And it's relatively easy to get on it, at least the last time I checked.
D: And anyone who has Direct TV has XM, because I have XM on my TV.
J: There you go. So there's actually quite a few listeners now to what they call extraterrestrial radio. Ultimatley all of these stations in their formats have the proper way to access them on their websites.As far as sending something to somebody.
So with those you don't really need to think about a campaign so much, because they're extraterrestrial. They're in other planets, is that what you're saying?
J & D: (laughs)
D: They need to be part of your campaign as well.
J: But they're national so it's a little different. Access in the past was easier, so it was just another hit. You never know who's listening. In the early days of XM all of the A&R were listening to it. I don't know if it's saturated now. But in LA, anyone who was looking for new stuff had Serius or XM in their offices because it had no commercials on it. So they would just listen to constant music. There are only two companies, so it is a little easier to manage. But they aren't local so you're also getting a wider dispersion. So as far as "what is this doing for me?" it's a little more amorphous.
D: I would say send it to them but you don't need to have a strategy. You don't need to include that in your plan of following up and seeing how you're charting.
Would you treat NPR the same way, because they're national?
D: No, because there are local NPR stations. When we were talking NPR, we were talking about KALW, KQED, Pacifica, KPFA, the local stations. And, once you deal with the local programming, you'll find out about similiar programs that are nationally syndicated that you can provide music to, but that's more of a licensing thing. We're actually talking about promoting your music as-is in a pure form, not as background.
Like All Things Considered, you can send that in.
D: Yeah. Then you get BUCKS, man. Not really. (Laughs) So when you're doing your research, look for the local shows. There are two different types of local shows, the ones where you play live, usually in the studio, and they're less common. Then there are times when you can go into the studio, play CD tracks and be interviewed which is very common. Lots of DJ's love that because it doesn't require alot of advanced planning on their part, it eats up their air time so they don't have to do alot of work. They love it love it love it. In the case of commercial radio you have to do it in a specific time frame. But for college radio, if you make friends with the DJ, or a DJ really likes your music, you can do it whenever they're on and they're on once a week, so it's totally worth it to do your research.
So what do you do when you give a radio station your stuff, like at a booth at a conference, and you follow up, and they don't like it? Do you send them another CD soon after?
D: Who is they?
The Program Director?
D: The thing is that's one person at the radio station. Let me use the Berekeley station as an example, the Berekley station is probably one of the better and more eclectic college radio stations I know of, and that's country wide. They have so many different kinds of DJ's that play completely different things from one another. Just because the person that listened to the CD to do the intitial review said,"Uh, don't play this one, or, this one's okay."--If it's not the kind of music that they like they're not going to describe it in glowing terms. So that's why I say do the research to find the individual DJ's that occur, in the case of KALX and most college radio stations, they have a regular schedule on their websites, look to see who there is, they describe what they play, and then listen.
Even if they're not in the area you can do streaming and listen to their show and say,"Yeah, that sounds like I would fit in very well." And send them a CD. If you send them a CD and say, "This is also in your library, I'd love to not only get on the radio, but I'd love to come and promote my show that's happening." Give it some sort of anchor. Send them a CD in September and say you'd like to promote your October show. Alot of DJ's are really happy to do that. They want to support local artists. If they like the stuff that you're playing they're happy to have you on and it eats their air time. Don't act like this is too scary to do. They're just people who like music and they're usually musicians themselves. So, be persistant, find a different person.
For someone doing a campaign, what is a reasonable expectation to have? What would you consider success? You want to sell your CD's, you want to get people to your live show.
D: You're working on building name recognition.
That's why people do radio, right? Is there another reason?
J: Even if there is a long term goal of exposure, there has to be some short term goals with each radio promotion push to know whether it's succesful or not. There are people out there called radio promoters who try to take your money and help you do these things where they already know these people and they will charge you alot for the follow-up, essentially. They'll tell you they'll get you into rotation in these markets, and the point being you want to spend that money wisely, and you want to know what the short term goal is because one or two spins anywhere ain't gonna do you any good.
It seems like alot of work to get on the radio, and it may be to promote a show, but as soon as you get that one or two spins, it's over. It's over after those 3.5 minutes. How many spins is success? Is there a way to judge that?
J: I don't know how to answer that necessarily. If you're going somewhere and you get on a radio station to get some traction and your show has got more people in it, that's a success.
D: You need to define success so you know if you're meeting it or not. You can define success as number of spins. Let me give you an example. When I was working with a spoken word artist I got them on a live program at the Stanford college radio station. It was on a Wednesday at noon. Whatever, like who's listening Wednesday's at noon to the Stanford station? So we go down there, they do a live in studio thing, and they announce we have a show coming up and if you call in you can win free tickets. Well, who calls in but Blog Dahlia, the lead singer of the Dwarves. He's like,"Man, that was fucking awesome. I really liked it" We gave him free tickets, and they ended up opening for the Dwarves in LA. So, that's success. It was not anything we ever shot for. We were getting on there for exposure, and we were exposed to someone really cool. You need to figure out how radio fits into a larger goal, and not the uber uber goal of being successful, because that's too nebulous. You need to break it down smaller and smaller and smaller. You don't necessarily see direct tangible results from radio right away. If you get a few more people at your shows that you don't know, if you sell more CD's, if all of a sudden someone tells you that they heard you on the radio last week. Those are things that are not tangible but they're starting to have a cumulative effect. It's hard to define.
J: I think it's worth doing.
Why is it different for everybody?
D: Because different people are in different stages of their career and what they're going to term is a success is different. It's going to translate into different things.
J: But also, there's certain kinds of music that just doesn't get played on almost any kind of radio.
D: There's like one Jazz station and they have one hour a week of local current jazz. If you're a jazz musician that's got to be frickin' tough.
J: There's no country station. Dance music and electronica have no outlets. It's been underground for 10, 12 years, as big as it was and is, you cannot hear it on the radio. So all of a sudden 92.7 is startingto do some energy, and the slow stuff on Alice on Sunday morning, but it's taken a really long time and Om records has sold a bijillion copies of records yet they never get radio airplay. So, it is what it is. Some peoples music is very "radio friendly", that's what they call it. If the genre's are more mainstream than you're going to have more Joe Blow on drivetime be happy that it's on. But there's alot of people that don't do that, so that's not appropriate for them. It's just a waste of time banging on the door when there is no door to open.
And that's part of the research you would do and then you would figure that out.
J: Yep.
When is it appropriate to hire someone?
D: When it's a huge campaign. I really recommend people do it themselves the first time and the first few times because its going to be a concentrated campaign. It's going to be local, or local and one other place. You need to know how to do this stuff and you need to know how to make those connections. Because honestly, you’re the best representative for yourself. People, at this level, need to feel connected to you as an artist in order to play your music. Because you’re dealing with people again, DJ’s. So I really think that people need to do it themselves for awhile.
What about people who have a lot of older product, older CD’s? Can you work an older CD? Is there a shelf life?
J: Old is only relative to how many people have heard it.
Let’s say you made one in 1998?
J: It may be old to you, but if nobody’s heard it it’s brand spanking new. What’s the difference? Only if you’re not proud of it anymore, you wouldn’t do it, or if it wasn’t representative of you in some way. If it’s good music and it’s recorded well, it doesn’t go away. What’s the difference?
Would you have to answer the question of why am I pushing something that was recorded in 1966?
J: Because it’s great and I just found it again. Because I love it so much that I think everyone should hear it.
D: That only applies to CD reviews and stuff--people want to review the new stuff. With radio you promote what you have that you’re proud of that you want to get on the air.
J: Also, what’s the big difference if you repackage something? You think all these artists that are “new artists” didn’t write that song ten years ago? The breakthrough record of (artist) is probably stuff they recorded who knows how long ago. Just because it was date stamped and Warner Bros. decided to push it this year—that doesn’t matter at all, if it’s new it’s new.
So the copyright date—
J: Rub it out.
The radio people don’t care.
J: Unless they’ve already played it.
Whereas the CD Reviewers, they care.
D: The CD reviewers always want to scoop people, they’re journalists.
They want the latest and greatest.
D: Radio just cares about good music.
J: People aren’t looking at it, they’re just listening to it, which is also the power of it, which is different than writing about it. Writing about it is removed. If you’re actually listening to this thing, it’s so much more powerful. It’s the thing that you should strive for. That’s why radio is so difficult because it’s the thing that everyone is going for. You want people to hear your music. So the air waves, woohoo! If you could just push a button and get it into everyone’s ipod, that would be the same deal—that’s the power of it, so it’s very very important. That’s also why it’s hard.
Do you have any final words?
J&D: Podcasts!
D: Jump on a podcast. There all sorts of them. It’s kind of like radio submissions but you’re only submitting a single. There are lots of podcasts out there that feature different types of artists. They create a podcast of like, ten new songs.
Kind of like trading tapes.
D: Right. Then people download it on itunes for free and they get to hear new artists. People subscribe to different podcasts every week and they’re like, “Ooo, I get to hear a new electronica band each week.”
Where do you go for submitting for podcasts?
J: If itunes has them available then go to the itunes store and look and see what’s there.
D: Each podcast will be linked to a website and they’ll have submission guidelines.
J: It’s work, but that kind of work is to the world, literally, because the internet is world wide.
D: It’s like satellite radio. Just something you can do and see if it goes anywhere, but radio is more geographic.
Thank You.
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