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This page: The Approach
'Music might end up with a dual life, one as private property in the material world, and the other being a non-proprietary 'vapor service' on the Internet.'
There's no mystery to connecting with the radio station that's best suited to your sound. "Find out things about the station," Barton advises. "If you're a local band, find out who handles local music there. Don't call and try to work them on the record before they have it. It doesn't matter what you tell me about the record before I hear it, because what matters is what the record sounds like. Find out the appropriate time to make music calls. Every radio station, the music director, and/or the program director have set call times, which is the time of the week they take calls from people working records -- that's when you call."
Lenny Diana, music director of commercial modern rock station WXDX-FM, disagrees. "I would never hold an unsigned band or a regional band or an indie band to call times," he says. "All the bands are hustling out there and they want their music to be heard. They can call all they want. I won't always be there to accept that [call], but I can't fault them for it."
Adam Klein, manager of Boston band Entrain and director of public relations and event marketing for Greater Boston Radio Group, says cold-calling stations is a hard route to follow; what a band should do instead is find a believer at one influential station who will help spread the word, as WXPN-FM's Bruce Warren did for Entrain.
But MDs aren't always the only people who'll be listening to your music and making decisions about whether to broadcast it. At some stations the entire air staff gets involved. "At WYEP," Barton explains, "if I hear something I like, it then goes on a stack of CDs that goes into our weekly music meeting -- that's where you sit and listen to somewhere between seven and 15 different songs, out of which we'll usually pick about five ... if there are five that we think are strong enough to be in regular rotation. If it's a slam-dunk and it's just a great song, we'll all just go 'Okay, fine, that's an add.' If it's something that we have issues with, or something I like about it but I don't like this or that part about it, or I don't really like it but there's this reason or that reason or the other reason to possibly play it, then we will sit and discuss it, maybe listen to it again. Sometimes something won't make it through on the first pass but we'll decide that we're gonna think about it again next week or the week after."
John Schaefer, executive producer for music programming at public station WNYC-FM and host of New Sounds with John Schaefer, says it's often best to send separate CDs to each jock at the station, particularly at less-structured college radio, where some stations don't even have music directors.
You can't always know who you're pitching to at any given station, but you can take steps to make sure you're delivering your best pitch possible. "Know what you want to say to them. If there's a particular song on there that you think is stronger, tell them," Barton notes. "You're talking to people who get a hundred or more CDs across their desk in a week, so the easier you make it for them to find the right track to play on their radio station, the more chance you have that they will actually pay attention to it. But the trick is not to point out your favorite track or the one that means the most to your heart; go for the one that's the most radio-friendly."
Not every programmer is going to jump to the song you recommend. For many, it's easier to put your CD on and let it play. For these types, it's important to think about how you sequence your demo. For the consumer, Barton notes, "The track listing has to flow in a way that's going to be entertaining and diverse enough to hold the attention of the person who buys the disc, through somewhere between 40 and 70 minutes." But to appeal to programmers, "You need to put your strongest stuff up front, because if the first three songs either aren't very good or have absolutely nothing to do with the radio station that you sent it to, or just are not radio-friendly, you may have a great song buried there for the radio on the seventh or eighth track that nobody's ever gonna hear."
The Packaging
'Don't send me the press kit. Say whatever you have to say on one piece of paper, because everything else is going into the circular file.' -- John Schaefer
Though the music is the most important part of your pitch, don't neglect the advantage that a good-looking package can give you. The rule to follow here is simple: Less is more. Barton, Schaefer and Diana agree that sending anything more than one concise page of information about the band, including contacts, is extraneous.
"Don't send me the press kit," says Schaefer. "Say whatever you have to say on one piece of paper, because everything else is going into the circular file." Adds Barton: "I don't know many MDs who sit there and read through the press pack to decide what they're gonna do with the record."
On the other hand, he says, "If you have a lot of money to spend and you want to play around, I don't know any program director or music director who doesn't love getting tchotchkes in the mail." (Diana says he doesn't; they just clutter up his office.)
Also, be sure to submit your music on CD, not cassette or MP3, unless you know the MD accepts MP3s, as Diana does. (Schaefer won't take MP3s but does accept DATs.) "You're dealing with people whose time is precious," Barton explains. "Most programmers are doing an air shift five days a week, four hours a day, which requires an hour to an hour-and-a-half of prep, plus they have another full-time job, which is their programming job. Short and sweet, the easiest way to listen to it is the best way to listen to it. CD is the way to go. In most cases, unless somebody makes a really good case to me and is looking for help and feedback, I won't even listen to a cassette because I can't air a cassette. Same with an MP3; the harder it is for me to actually listen to it, the harder it is for you to get me to listen to it."
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