Indie Production - Radio Play?

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misterx

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Hello,

1)
How would one go about getting radio airplay from an indie production? Indie being me-myself and I making the music. Usually the artist gets royalties for radio play. Or do we just let them play it for free and hope it triggers cd sales?

2)
Say you have enough songs for a cd, you have the means to do it ALL yourself. (cd's, selling, etc..) What advantage would you have if you got signed from a real indie label?

Thanks for your comments.
 
1) I dont know where you are from but in Australia we get royalties if our music is played on radio. We have this organisation called APRA which works it all out, we even get royalties for playing our songs at gigs, not much but still, when you are doing heaps of freebie gigs it is better than nothing.

I think with comunity radio here they only do one month of records to pay bands royalties, during those months they will really push the local music so that all the money goes to local bands rather than international.

Also It is pretty easy to get your stuff played on radio here as long as the qaulity is good, you just have to ring around and make contact with the right people.


Ok Indie labels, as far as I can tell, indie labels will tend to promote your album, and find a way to get it into stores. Apart from that I think you'd have to fund everything yourself anyway.
 
Thank you for your comments. I'm in the USA, and I think it's going to be harder to get royalties from an indie production song being played on the radio. I could be wrong, hopefully someone will jump in and set me straight. Hmm.. so other than the indie label pushing the cd to the stores, everything else is left up to me eh? Interesting... thanks.
 
Man I could be completely wrong, I am only going by 2 other bands who I know that are signed by indie labels. Over here it could be completely different anyway.
 
No problem, all info is welcome. There is just alot of sh@# to research!! :)
 
I always heared you had to pay big bucks to get airplay on the big US radio's
 
BrettB said:
I always heared you had to pay big bucks to get airplay on the big US radio's
Click to expand...

BrettB,
You are very correct. I have a friend who works for a well known radio promotion co. who said that to get significant play even at the college radio level, you usually have to pay. After some of the stories he's told me, I'm starting to wonder how the mafia can't be involved in this.
Brian
 
Good old Australia. Being originally from Alaska, which is only vaguely part of the United States, I can imagine what it must be like down under. But nowdays I live in California, and I had to laugh at the concept of charging a radio station to play your indie CD. Not that it shouldn't be that way...though really they would be doing you a tremendous favour to do so. The sad fact is though, that at almost any station, even if the station manager loved your stuff and really wanted to put it into rotation, even for a single airing, he probably couldn't. That's because most radio stations these days are owned by one of the big conglomerates, and their rotation is strictly dictated. Yes, payolla is alive and well in this country, though it is thinly vailed as services provided by independent promoters. The whole system stinks, and getting airplay without a couple hundred thousand dollars is next to impossible.
Arrggh! RD
 
pay·o·la Pronunciation Key (p-l)
n.
Bribery of an influential person in exchange for the promotion of a product or service, such that of disc jockeys for the promotion of records

Str8 from webster himself
 
misterx said:
Hello,

1) How would one go about getting radio airplay from an indie production? Indie being me-myself and I making the music. Usually the artist gets royalties for radio play. Or do we just let them play it for free and hope it triggers cd sales?
Click to expand...

The writer does get royalties when a song he wrote is played on the radio.

However, it's not likely you'll get your song played on the radio. I don't know myself whether payola still exists (it certainly did at one time ... people went to prison for it), but for whatever reason radio stations generally won't play something that's not released by a real label. I guess there are exceptions, but they're rare enough to be remarkable.

I don't think letting them play it for free would be much of an incentive.

Don't try to offer payola yourself. Even if someone is getting away with it, I wouldn't bet that you could.

2) Say you have enough songs for a cd, you have the means to do it ALL yourself. (cd's, selling, etc..) What advantage would you have if you got signed from a real indie label?
Click to expand...

Someone might buy your CD. Which is a not insignificant advantage.

You can make your own self-released CD relatively cheaply nowadays (it probably won't be up to label-release standards, but you should be able to make something reasonably good). This might make sense if you draw a lot of people to live shows -- sell 'em at a table at the show. You get whatever you're selling them for, and the people who buy have something to make them remember you, and they may play it for their friends, relatives and pets.

But -- based on my limited knowledge -- you're not likely actually to make much (if any) money from a self-released CD. There are exceptions, but (like the radio air play exceptions) they're rare enough to be remarkable -- and those who do succeed probably do so as much or more on the basis of their business/marketing acumen and general pushiness, rather than musical skill.

Sure, there are record stores that are nice enough to put out a rack of local self-released CDs on consignment ... but is anyone going to buy them? Why would they? You're not going to have the things that would trigger significant buying, like radio airplay, a video on MTV, a name someone's heard of before .... You might sell significant copies if you have a big fan base from live shows (or a ton of relatives). Of course, you can probably sell to your fan base with a table at your shows.
 
But -- based on my limited knowledge -- you're not likely actually to make much (if any) money from a self-released CD. There are exceptions, but (like the radio air play exceptions) they're rare enough to be remarkable -- and those who do succeed probably do so as much or more on the basis of their business/marketing acumen and general pushiness, rather than musical skill.

If you want to sell your cd's and at least break even the set some goals mate. Say your cd only costs you 5k as a DIY job, you only need to sell 500 at $10 each to break even. Maybe get 500 printed and aim to sell every single one of them within 2 years. I know that if you aim to sell 500 in two years you can definantly do it. You'll just have to go hard. Make sure you have all contact details on your cover slip and stuff and tour within a 400km radius of your home town over and over. As an unsigned artist, Unless you have a real top recording and the right promoter to push it for you then its doubtful you will get airplay. I was told by a music programmer at a big station in australia that they get around 20 - 30 new singles each week that are sent in by BIG record lables and they only choose one new song a week to add to their playlist.

Have you thought about community radio? Or hitting up a smaller station to have an hour special at 10pm on a tuesday night or something to showcase the talents of your city?
Here in Brisbane bands get quite good support from different media avenues. Gigs are a different story but hey, at least we have one goot outlet.

As to getting paid for airplay, you do. It is called royalties. If the states dont have it, then maybe every musician there should be writing letters. We have it in Australia through a group called apra so I know it exists. It is not "charging the radio station to play your indie cd" it is the government paying you royalties for everytime your song gets played. You get paid different amounts for different exposure. I dont have the figures in front of me, but you get payed like 90 cents for every song you do at a gig (not much but at least it is something better than nothing. band raping is a big thing here) and you get a small amount for the radio, and around $100 or something for tv play. Figures are probably very wrong so if there are any aussies who know more about apra than me please correct me.
 
Cavendish,

If you want to get a better understanding of all of this, particularly how it works on our side of the pond, I suggest you get a copy of "Music Business" by Shane Simpson and Colin Seeger. It is available from Immedia ........Ph; 0295577766. The authors are both lawyers in the industry and it is regarded as "The Bible" for getting to know the do's and don'ts of the industry.

:cool:
 
Thank you Ausrock. I believe that the book launch was only just recently, I missed it unfortunately. I got to hear an interview on JJJ though which was ok.
 
It was first published in '94, but they have just released a revised version.

Shane Simpson was giving a series of free lectures (along with some industry heavyweights) to coincide with it's re-release. I'm not sure but I thought he was doing most capitals on the East coast.

:cool:
 
Yes, we certainly have mechanical royalties on this side of the pond, though it doesn't work quite the way you might think. It's not like Station X plays your song 3 times, they send you a check. Instead, you become a member of one of the performing rights organizations....BMI and ASCAP are the two biggies. They are the ones that collect mechanical royalties and distribute them to their member artists. But how do they know how big a check to send to you? There are thousands and thousands of radio stations, cable stations, satalite stations, amusement parks, elevators, etc to keep track of. The logistics are monsterous. So what they do is have paid listeners who compile a list of what they hear played. It is a small representation of the big picture, a representitive sample. From that, the performing arts organization decides how to slice up the pie. So, your song can be a regional hit, but barely register on ASCAP's radar. Certainly a few plays by one radio station won't earn you a check.
I'd be supprised if it wasn't the same system in Australia. These are international performing rights organizations.
And trust me, payolla is not the exception to the rule...it is the rule, and it is completely legal as it is practiced today. One of the national news shows just did a piece on this the other night. The fairly recent telecommunications act passed in the US had an attachment that killed the previous limits on the number of stations that a givin company could own. in the past few years, the overwhelming majority of radio stations in the US have become the property of two companies. In between the Labels and the companies are the independent promoters, which are the workaround for the payolla laws. No, you can't pay the station yourself, even if you had that much money. There are bigger powers at work here, and billions at stake. It reaches congressional levels.
The ony way this will ever change is if recording artists stop working until it's fixed, the way that actors did a long time ago. But trying to get all those coke heads to do that is a tall order.
RD
 
Cynicism

A cynical view ... sadly, probably an accurate one.
 
I think there are numerous factors which will influence anyone's chance of achieving "air-play"..........maybe it is just a case of being in the right place at the right time..........or making the right decisions at the right time.

A true story of "so close but so far" which concerned a local band about 3 years ago............
A 5 piece "commercial pop-rock" outfit in their late-ish teens who were relatively unknown locally. One guy (singer/songwriter) basically called all the shots but took another kid along because his dad had money. The other 3 were treated a bit like mushrooms. They had professionally recorded a couple of originals (in a John Sayers designed studio:) ). A local radio station which is a member of (or owned by) a national radio network heard the songs and immediately put one track in particular to air, ultimately it was on a 4 times a day rotation, being picked up by other stations up and down the coast, reached within the Top Five on the network's Australian music charts.........all of which was achieved without any promotion by the band.......and to top it all off, the local major retail stores that had the CD for sale reported that in one particular month it was outselling "Pretty Fly", one of Sony's biggest ever sellers.

What was the end result..............well the "hierachy" in the band made decisions not to try and capitalise on the success and not to look for a "Label" deal at that time. Ultimately, the "mushrooms" in the band had had enough and "politely" left the band.

It always struck me as being a bit like someone handing you a winning lottery ticket.......all you have to do is go and claim the prize.........but you think that by holding off, you might win a bigger prize.

How do I know all this..............my son used to be a mushroom

;)

:cool:
 
Sorry, I don't mean to be cynical, just realistic. The digital home recording revolution and the internet brought us the promise that we could make and distribute our own music, and gave birth to the indie label. It worked for a little while, but the powers that be saw the hole and plugged it, and made themselves richer in the process. You can make your own music, you can set up your own sales and distribution, and you can use sales and distribution from Amazon.com and others, but the labels/independant promoters/ Radio conglomerates have the air waves completely locked. Radio stations who defy this are punished monitarily and by witholding big releases. It violates the spirit of the antitrust laws, and the payolla laws, but it's above board and congressionally sanctioned (for some hefty campain and party donations).
I'm not saying sell your guitar and give up, I certainly won't. But knowing your enemy is the first step to defeating him. It's hard enough to make it in this game without not knowing the rules and the score.
Regards, RD
 
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