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Radio Airplay 101 - Sacrificing Older Releases For Radio
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Here is the typical scenario: A new artist/label wants to do radio, but their current album is a year or two old, so they feel the material does not represent what the act is all about. The new "better" album is almost done, so they want to wait to start radio with the new one when it is finished. Unfortunately, how good the new album is doesn't matter to radio... what matters is how well radio knows who you are. And if this is your first release, then right now (today) nobody at radio knows anything about you. So the quality of music is irrelevant.
Next, consider this... you're first push to radio will be your worst. That's right... everything else equal, your first promotion to radio is not going to be as good as your second or third. This is because (again), with your first release, nobody at radio knows who you are. Radio always puts preference on acts that they've played/heard before... it's just how human beings work. Plus, radio knows that this is how their listeners work. Given a choice, people always want to hear the next tune from an artist that they've heard before, more so than they want to hear a song from someone they've never heard before. Listeners have this preference even if they haven't heard the new songs yet (thus, the quality of the new songs is irrelevant... the one from the already-heard act is the one that will get played.) These are some of the reasons that all labels want multiple-album deals... because even they can't make money on the first release since nobody at radio responds well to a first release.
This is where a sacrifice comes in. Since you know that your first release at radio will be your least-performing, you make use of an older release that you are not totally happy with. Remember, it's not an old release to radio... anything that you promote to them, will be new to them. And since you have your newer release almost done, the new material will become your follow-up release. This is important, because you want to keep the momentum up at radio by having the second release come out right after the first. This applies whether you are promoting albums or singles.
Some people worry that the date on the older release (i.e., "copyright 1999") will cause some problems at radio. It won't. You have months of promotion to go through before some of the stations will even hear the material, much less spend any time reading the small print.
Another objection to an older release is that "it's not available for sale." Well, it's not supposed to be. You are not doing your first radio release to move product... you are doing it to build your awareness with radio station personnel. Your follow-up releases, however, will be what you make all your movement with. If you think that all your action is going to be with your first release, you need to re-think what you are doing. And you can't use major-label new-artist releases as examples as to how first releases can perform... their methods of operation don't apply to indie releases like yours, just like the operations of McDonalds don't apply to you opening your very first restaurant.
Try to view your first radio release the way you view your first live gig: You know that your very first live gig was not very polished, but that was OK, since you expected it and since you knew you were going to have follow-up gigs which would be much more refined. But, if you mistakenly thought that your very first live gig was going to (a) sell tons of CDs, (b) get great reviews, (c) get investor offers, (d) get management offers, and (d) end up in a label deal, then you had a very skewed view of how the business works.
Same with radio.
© Bryan Farrish Radio Promotions |
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