Music Funding 101
Radio Airplay (not radio ads)
While it's probably the most-wanted thing that can happen to a band, radio airplay is very tough to get. It's probably the toughest part of a band's life; so much so that many bands just give up on it. Radio is difficult because the people that work in radio have been taught to make it look like it works one way, while in reality it works in a totally different manner. So, bands listen to radio broadcasts and try to set their careers up based on just what they hear. A word of warning: most sponsors will "think" that they understand how airplay works too; i.e., "Oh, you just send them the song, and if they like it, they'll play it," or "Well, you just send a little payola their way and it will get played." This is the exact opposite of how it actually works.
Radio airplay's difficulty has to do with the fact that radio wants to build a "hit." The definition of a hit is the same song played by all stations across the country at the same time. Since that won't happen when a band's sponsorship is local-only, the stations in your local area will resist being the only ones that are playing the band's music. It's kind of like making a movie and then releasing it to only a single theater. The theater manager is going to think "What? How can this be a hit if I'm the only theater with the film?" Or like opening a restaurant for only a single day. How much of a "hit" can the food ever be if the place is only open for a single day? (No matter how good the food is). This is how local stations feel when they are approached by local bands. There's absolutely no chance of creating a "hit" because the song is not being promoted to stations outside the local area. I should point out that TalentFunding.com was created by Bryan Farrish Radio Promotion, of which I started in 1998. That's all we do: promote to radio.
Radio has some powerful benefits, but it must be done properly to make it work. Without a sponsor, a band can still make use of a radio airplay campaign, but probably without the sponsor-friendly items like shirts and banners. With a sponsor, however, the band needs to appeal to the sponsor first; a radio airplay campaign spread out over the country (playing just the song with no ads) is harder to "show" to the sponsor, and thus has less of a chance of being approved by the sponsor. Plus, with just airplay (and no ads) there will be no on-air mention of the sponsor; thus the band loses some of the power of the in-your-face exposures mechanisms like t-shirts and banners. With this in mind, I recommend that the very smallest sponsorships (under $5,000) do not include airplay campaigns.
However, when the sponsorship becomes large enough (or if the sponsor or band is set on it) then it makes sense to look at a radio airplay campaign. Very few bands get a national sponsorship, so you may ask why a national airplay campaign is needed if the band is not involved in a national sponsorship. The answer is (as mentioned above) that radio operates on making a "hit," which is the same song played by all stations across the country at the same time. It's actually easier to work airplay nationally than it is to do it regionally, or especially, locally. As a matter of fact, "local" airplay is so difficult that we personally don't even offer it as a campaign; instead we recommend radio ads for this. But when you do get some form of national radio airplay, what do you do with it when you only have a local or regional sponsorship?
The way to use national airplay results is to show the results (charts, playlists, comments, etc.) to the local people that you need to get approvals from. For example: if you are trying to book a certain club, but they are not taking your phone call, show or tell them about your current airplay results. If you do this to ten clubs that are not talking to you, you'll get through to one or two of them by using this technique. And no matter what size clubs (and how many people) the band has been playing, there's always the next bigger club that the band would like to play but can't. After being shown and/or told about the current radio airplay results, some of these clubs do open up. After all, they want bands that are getting some kind of airplay; just the fact that a band is getting airplay tells the club that certain music business folks are accepting the band.
Radio airplay is the most complex and expensive part of the music business, so we'll leave further explanation of it to our radio airplay site www.radio-media.com. It contains over 60 articles (www.radio-media.com/song-album/articles/main.html) on getting airplay, and it also has a list of radio markets for the U.S. and Canada (www.radio-media.com/markets)
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