K
Keith_Lake
Guest
I visited a local big-stick FM recently gathering information for a newspaper article. During our Q&A they showed me a large pile of promo single CDs from the major labels. They recieve dozens every week but maybe one in fifty stood any chance at all of getting on the air. Most would go into the dumpster or be given away at remotes.
Also in the pile were some homebrew CDs sent in by independent local musicians. The discs ranged from impressively packaged to simply labeled with a felt-tip marker. I listened to a few of them. Some might have had a chance further down the road with a bit more polishing and marketing savvy, while the others... well, I wouldn't advise them to quit their day jobs. Nevertheless I was sort of touched by the enthusiasm and optimism they showed by sending them to the radio station.
In this day of centralized programming, does a local independent musician have a snowball's chance in hell of getting their music on the air by such methods? I understand it still occasionally happens on college stations or LPFM "community"
outlets, but from what I saw, sending your homebrewed music to the local 100-kw
Clear Channel station in the hope of getting it played is a lost cause. Save your postage for the college FMs or LPFMs. Then again, would those stations give it a second look, given copyright and royalty issues and all that?
KL
<a href="http://home.nc.rr.com/gttyson/lastradio.html">The Last Radio Station<a>
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Also in the pile were some homebrew CDs sent in by independent local musicians. The discs ranged from impressively packaged to simply labeled with a felt-tip marker. I listened to a few of them. Some might have had a chance further down the road with a bit more polishing and marketing savvy, while the others... well, I wouldn't advise them to quit their day jobs. Nevertheless I was sort of touched by the enthusiasm and optimism they showed by sending them to the radio station.
In this day of centralized programming, does a local independent musician have a snowball's chance in hell of getting their music on the air by such methods? I understand it still occasionally happens on college stations or LPFM "community"
outlets, but from what I saw, sending your homebrewed music to the local 100-kw
Clear Channel station in the hope of getting it played is a lost cause. Save your postage for the college FMs or LPFMs. Then again, would those stations give it a second look, given copyright and royalty issues and all that?
KL
<a href="http://home.nc.rr.com/gttyson/lastradio.html">The Last Radio Station<a>
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