The Low Down on Radio Play

Radio play.. such a glowing phrase.. something every aspiring singer and rapper dreams of! Imagine driving down the interstate tuned into HOT such and such and all of the sudden you hear the intro of your single you recorded last summer. Now you have to figure out how to dial everyone you can while keeping it on the road!

So now you may think the money is going to roll in.... not quite. I'm going to dispell a few myths about "radio play."

Myth 1: I'll make money with radio play! Reality: Probably not. It takes a lot of spins... a LOT of spins to even get recognized as 'potentially' getting paid. Then once you get a lot of spins, you won't get paid a dime unless you actually wrote the song, or it's spun outside of the U.S., China, Iran, etc... The only way you will see a nice royality check is if you're the songwriter for a smash hit. And unfortunately only a few of those happen a year.

Myth 2: To get radio play, I have to have BMI, ASCAP, or SESAC. Reality: Yeah, but even more important. You have to be registered with Neilsen BDS. This is the system that counts your spins. So if BMI, ASCAP, or SESAC doesn't know how many spins you got, there's no way they could attempt to distribute a royality check to you. Besides BDS, there's Mediabase which is also important. You'll need to register your songs with both of them. You can see how many times your song was spun but you have to pay for it.

Myth 3: I have to pay to get my song played on the radio! Reality: probably so. Even if it is illegal, common sense is that the only reason you hear garbage music on the radio is that someone paid someone to play it. This is called payola... very illegal but very hard to patrol. We're not going to recommend paying for radio play, but if you want instant success LEGALLY, you're probably better off buying radio commercials to play snippets of your music and point them back to your website to get the full version.

I could name some more but.. the point is radio play is nice for the ego, but there are so many other ways you as an independent artist can be successful. Its all about reaching your potential fans, and the internet is one of major alternatives to the traditional terrestrial radio station. If you do happen to hear your song on the local radio and you didn't have to pay for it, congratulations. Build on the new fans you just made. Happy Recording.

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