There are hundreds of Internet radio stations out there. Some of these stations are good and some of them have hardly any listeners. How do you determine which radio stations are the best ones for you to submit your music to?
Start with Local Radio Stations
By this, I don’t mean the stations that play on the radio in your car. I am talking about College Radio stations in your local area. These stations are probably familiar to you and you can usually contact College stations pretty easily.
How to Find Contact Information for these Radio Stations
Start off with a Google Search for “College radio stations near me.” This will give you a good list of sites to get you going. I like to keep my search results open on one tab and then right click on each station and open the link in a new tab.
Once you have found a station that suits your genre, look on their website for a “submissions” or “contact us” page. Like I said, college radio stations are pretty easy to contact. Once you have found their contact information, you’re going to want to keep track of what stations you have contacted, whom you contacted and how you contacted them. A simple google sheets or excel spreadsheet document will do the trick.
Here are a Few College Radio Stations that you Might Want to Try (Depending on where you are)
What Do You Send to these Radio Stations?
If there is a submission form on the site, fill it out and send them what they ask for on the form. If there isn’t a form, read the “contact” or “submissions” page carefully. There might be a list of things there that they want you to email them. If you can’t find specific information on the “contact” or “submission” page, send them a press release.
If you’re not comfortable with writing your own press release, email me at admin@nevernaire.com and we can work something out.
Creating a Press Release
When creating a press release, you’re going to want to choose a track (or event, depending on what the press release is for) that you want to promote. Once you have decided on the track that you are going to promote in the press release, you’re going to have to write up a short, but engaging biography.
Your biography should have a catchy headline. The headline is the first thing that people are going to read, make it a good one!
Next, you want to create a bullet list of points that you want to touch on in your biography. This list should include your musical accomplishments. For instance, have you won any awards? Have you performed any really exciting or important live shows? You’re going to want people to know about that.
Start off the biography with a sentence about where you are from. Then, you need to provide some highlights about your life and your music career. Keep the biography short, but informative. When you read it, does it grab your attention? Is your headline something that pulls the reader in and gets them engaged? Because you’re one shot is that headline and biography.
What to Include in the Press Release
After perfecting your biography, you’re going to want to include a paragraph about your track. Keep this paragraph even shorter than your biography, but remember that if it’s not engaging, the person is going to stop reading it and go on to the next press release.
Here is where a good website comes in handy! You should have a website that is your central hub and has links to all of your music and social media accounts in one place. If you don’t have a website, I strongly recommend making one.
If you’re not tech savvy and you need a hand creating your website, email me at admin@nevernaire.com and we can figure it out together.
At the bottom of your press release include:
– the hyperlink to your track
– your email address
– your website address
Linktr.ee
If you don’t have a website, you can create a linktr.ee account and that will give you one place to keep all of your links together and the ability to give out one link that leads to all of your music and social.
Submitting Your Press Release to Radio Stations
Alright, so you have your press release together. The press release is well written and engaging. What are you supposed to do with it now? Now, you are going to email it to radio stations.
The first thing that I want to mention before you actually begin emailing your press release out to radio stations is this, please create a professional email account. Don’t send your press release out from an email that looks like this, sxyddy69@yahoo.com. It’s just not a good look. You can create a Gmail account for free. So, go do that and make the email address something like yourrapname@gmail.com or as close to it as you can get. If that name is not available, use your first and last name.
So, What’s Next?
Now, you send out the press release. Be sure that your email is well composed.
- Don’t use slang terms like “Bet” or “Word”
- Don’t address the email with “Dear” use “hello” instead
- Be professional, but not stuffy
Here is an example email for you to use:
Hello (name of recipient if you have it),
I am submitting a track for your review.
PASTE YOUR PRESS RELEASE HERE
I hope that you will consider giving (TRACK NAME) some play time on your station.
Please let me know if you need anything else from me.
Talk soon,
(YOUR NAME)
That’s all. I get tons of press releases in my inbox and I’ll admit, if they’re very long, I sometimes don’t read the whole thing. Am I missing out on some talented musicians? Yes, I bet that I am. But, I’m busy just like you and I don’t want to read a 300 page novel that someone emailed to me out of the blue.
Wrapping it Up
Ok, so you have what you need to get started. Once you have some college radio stations agreeing to play your track, I recommend branching out to local radio stations. The worst that they can do is say no. They’re more likely to ignore you all together, but you won’t know until you try.
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