Radio Play | Wendy Day Breaks It Down

Hi guys, so many of you have been asking me about radio, and I think we're gonna need to break this up into like 5 videos. Um, so many of you aren't ready for radio yet that I hate to cover it. But you've asked me about it, so I don't want to ignore your, um, your requests, right? So radio play, you know, the thing about radio is it's still very effective. Um, it's, it's, it's declining slightly, not as much as you would think. Um, it is declining slightly, but there's still a large amount of people that listen to terrestrial radio. And my feelings on that are, you go into a store and a radio station is playing, or you go into somebody's workplace and radio is playing in the background. You go into somebody's house and they've often got the radio playing in the background. Whenever I get in my car, I turn the radio on. Um, I know that a lot of people stream music. I know a lot of people prefer to have other background noise, and with the advent of the internet, it's been really easy to have other background noise. But radio is still relevant in this day and age, so it's definitely a resource that I utilize for my clients who make radio records. And what I mean by that is if you have a song that sounds has a similar sound to what's already playing on the radio, then you know exactly what I'm talking about. You've got a radio record. But the last thing you want to do is if you've got a record that's not right for radio, you don't want to spend that kind of money to, to fail. It's a lot of money. Radio is very expensive. Um, when we start at radio, we start with $30,000. For urban radio. And that's just to start getting spins at urban radio, to get into rotation. And that's at about, you know, 20 or 30 stations depending on what region of the country that we're hitting. In order to prepare for radio, you don't just make a record, come out of the studio, and, and go to the radio station. That's not how it works. You start promoting your music on the streets and at the club level, and you get your record hot. You get it so that it's starting to grow. We call it growing legs. It starts to grow legs, and it, and it spreads amongst fans to the point where when somebody comes into the club and they request a song, they're asking the DJ to play your record. They're requesting your song. And the more catchy and the more simplistic your song is, the easier it's going to be to spread, because human nature is to sing along or dance to a record that is basic, right? If you have something that's very, very deep, or where you're educating people about a certain topic, it's not as fun to dance to something when you're learning. That's more of a song that you listen to than you party to, right? So I'm from Atlanta, and— well, I'm not from Atlanta, but I live in Atlanta, and I've been here for over a decade now. And the thing about Atlanta music is that We break it in the clubs, we break it in the strip clubs, and it spreads to the regular clubs. And then radio picks it up mostly naturally, very organically. That doesn't mean you don't have to pay to get your record played. It just means that your record is being tested on the streets and the streets are embracing it. And once the streets embrace it and the clubs embrace it, then it's a little bit easier for you to work it at radio. At that point in time, you hire an independent radio promoter, and there are a shit ton of them in the industry. Um, sometimes I think there's more radio promo guys than there are fans, but unfortunately not all of them are legitimate. There are even some guys who have been in this business for years and years and years who will take your money, promise you something, and then not deliver. And this is the area where I see most people lose money, either because they didn't fully test the record and they don't have a record that's going to react well at radio, or they hire the wrong person who then tells them that the radio is not reacting well at radio. And if you don't know how the industry works, it's really, it's really hard to know whether they're telling you the truth or whether they're bullshitting you. So all that to say, you hire a legitimate independent radio promoter. I suggest that you ask around, um, if you can develop a relationship with the program directors at the radio station and you explain to them that you're getting ready to work a record at radio and you ask them to recommend an independent radio promoter to you, they will more than likely give you the names of some of the people that they interact with on a daily basis who are legitimate. Their goal is to help you build to a level of success where they can get free shows from you, basically, where they get something in return. So once you meet with your independent radio promo guy, he or she will tell you— and it's mostly guys— but he or she will tell you the markets that they've got relationships in, and then the markets where they have co-workers that have great relationships. So they'll give you kind of a menu of the markets that you can expect to reach. And a smart boo will work radio stations, will choose radio stations that are within your area so that you can back up this record at radio easily. And what I mean by that is you want to be able to market and promote in the areas where you're going to radio and the areas where you're getting radio play, because you want to use that as one of the promotional tools to help you build your artist career, or your career if you are the artist. So if I'm focusing on an artist like— let's use Trouble as an example for a change— if I'm focusing on, on radio spins for for trouble, I'm going to focus on the Southeast because he's based here in Atlanta and the Southeast is where we have spent most of our time. As the record grows, I'm going to then inch up into the Midwest, and then I'm going to go out towards the Southwest like Phoenix, Arizona, Las Vegas, uh, San Diego, and then I'm going to hit the West Coast. So I'm going to do a natural progression from the Southeast up and then across the country. But I'm going to start out in the Southeast. I'm not going to get radio play in Seattle, Washington, Miami, Florida, Atlanta, New York, Chicago, because it would be very costly for me to move my team around or move Trouble around in those areas. I'd have to fly him everywhere. And we're not at that level financially where I want to spend money on flights when I can spend money on marketing and promotion and building his fan base and doing things that directly bring income into his company, right? So once I hire the radio promoter, he's gonna go and secure the spins. He's gonna tell me what the ad date is, and that's the date where, um, he's trying to get as many radio stations as possible to start playing the record on that date. You won't get all of them to start on the same date, it's not realistic, but he's going to try to get as many of them added on that date. And then he's going to report back to you with either Mediabase or BDS, and those are the measuring tools that we use to see exactly who's playing the record, when they're playing it, how many times they're playing it, and the audience that they're reaching. And, and what we mean by audience is the number of listeners. So if my artist is spun at 5 o'clock in the evening, he's gonna have far more listeners than if it spins at 2 o'clock in the morning or 3 o'clock in the morning. That's called overnight play. And there are always less people listening to radio in the middle of the night than there are during the day, especially at times during rush hour, which is morning drive and evenings. Those are the busiest time for radio because so many people listen to the radio in their car. So I'm not gonna overload you with a whole lot of stuff about radio, because I don't want you to be completely overwhelmed. Just know that once you are at a level where your song is popping in the clubs and popping on the streets and you feel that it'll do well at radio, you maybe even went to a couple of radio days at the local stations and they felt that you had a shot with this record, that's when you're gonna find an independent radio promoter and definitely one who's well recommended and well referred, and there are a lot of people co-signing that person with good experiences. Um, and then once you hire that person, you want to make sure that you're backing up your song in the marketplaces where you believe you're going to secure radio and where you're getting spun. Um, very often we will actually trade shows from the artist to garner more radio play. As most of you know, the radio DJs in almost every market have a club night that's their own. And for example, it might be DJ Play It Loud, right? And he's got Wednesday nights at Club Prosper. And wow, Club Prosper, that's a cool name. I should start a club called Club Prosper. Anyway, so he has Wednesday nights at Club Prosper If you do a deal with that DJ where he will play your record a little bit more than what you're paying for, you may come through 4 weeks from now and do a free show and let him keep the money, let him keep the door, you know, whatever he normally gets. And there's incentive for him to play your music more during that 3 to 4 week period, and then he might play it quite a bit afterwards because more people will have heard the, the song and they— there will be more reaction to the song. There may also be people that are calling in organically and requesting the song. And for those of you that are slick, don't hire people to call the radio station and request your song. Like, dude, they're on to that. They know it's bullshit. The thing about the people that answer the radio, the, the phone at the radio station, is they know who the frequent callers are. They know they have caller ID. They can see if somebody's calling in from a different city to request your song. It needs to be organic. It's not really something that you can force. It's not really something that you can buy. The truth is, if you have to buy success for a record, you're You're not going to make any money with that record anyway. You're not going to get a deal if that's your goal. So why force it? Why not just keep making music in the studio until you create a song that is a hit record or just a really great record? Not good. It has to be better than good. It has to be great. And ideally you want a hit record because with a hit record it's going to cost you less. You're still going to pay but it's going to cost you less. When you buy radio, you're usually getting about an 8 to 10 week promotion depending on how great the song is. If your song's not good, you'll get about 8 weeks and then it'll drop off, you know, at that 8th week at most of the stations. Build relationships as your song is playing at radio. Build relationships with all of the DJs at that station. Build relationships with the music director or the program director. If you need a list of who they are, you can go to rap-resources.com. There are lists for all different genres of radio there so that you can learn who the players are. There's no list of DJs because the DJs change pretty frequently, or at least it would be too much work for us to put together a list for the DJs. But you will have the program directors and the music directors. Definitely build a relationship because people work harder for the people that they like. If you are an artist and you've got a really great song and there's another artist that's got a really great song but they've got a relationship with that artist, when they're filling the slot at the station, they're going to pick the artist that they've got a great relationship with. It's very much a relationship-based industry. So definitely do the work, back up your record, hire the right people, and be really careful with radio because it really is an area where you can lose $30 grand or $50 grand like that. It, it goes very quickly. So make sure you get something for your money. Um, I wrote a blog all about radio play. You can find it at industryreport.com. It's free. Um, go to industryreport.com. If I remember, I'll actually post it underneath this video. Um, but in case I don't, go to industryreport.com and in the search box put in radio. And I think it's called The Most Important Article You'll Ever Read About Radio. And that's it, guys. My dog is barking. I gotta go feed him. Have a good day and I'll talk to you soon. Bye.