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If you are hiring a promoter to push your artist to radio, here are a few
things you can consider which will help you have the greatest chance of
success. (And when I say promoter, I mean an airplay promoter, not a club
or booking promoter.)
If you are hiring a promoter to push your artist to radio, here are a few
things you can consider which will help you have the greatest chance of
success. (And when I say promoter, I mean an airplay promoter, not a club
or booking promoter.) The big concern with this process is, if you choose
the wrong person(s) to work promote your artist... and end up with bad
results... you can't just go back and do it over again. That's it for that
CD (at those stations). That CD is now "an old project" at those stations,
and you can't go back to them until you have a new release.
USING A FRIEND: Non-experienced friends sometimes offer to work artists to
radio for free or "for a few dollars". This is fine as long as you use them
for the right tasks... like helping with the mailing, etc. If you are
working college radio... say, no more than 20-30 stations... then they could
make some calls too. But if they try to call any more stations than this,
or if they try to call commercial radio, they will probably stumble after
just a couple of weeks. And forget any capacity of doing reports or trade
charts.
SOMEONE FROM THE MAJORS: Staff promoters at major labels sometimes offer to
"help you out on the side" for a fee. On their days off, or on the weekend,
they say they will "make some calls for you". What happens is that their
company finds out and disallows it, or, the person gets tied up on their
days off and can't do it. You are then stuck. Either way, it is a conflict
of interest for them.
PR PEOPLE: Public Relations (or "publicity") people sometimes offer to work
an artist to radio for airplay. But don't, however, confuse PR with
airplay. A real radio campaign has nothing to do with publicity. They are
two separate techniques, with different contacts, lead times, terminology,
call frequency, and so on. A person who is good at one is usually terrible
at the other. This is why they are always separate departments at labels.
STATION PEOPLE: Station employees are sometimes recruited to work an
artist, and will tell you that "they know what stations want." This sounds
convincing, but in reality, taking the calls (which they do/did at the
station), and making the calls, are very different animals. Until station
people are trained (at a label or indie), they make poor promoters.
OWN CHART: When you do hire a real promoter, make sure he/she is not
affiliated with the chart that they say they are going to promote you to.
Some promoters actually publish their own chart, and they can put you on it
wherever they want to. And they can take you off just as quick. Worse, any
advertising money you place with the publication actually just goes straight
to them. They won't make any of this clear to you... you'll have to ask
around.
BIG CLIENTS: The most-often used sales technique of promoters is to tell
you they have worked "some big artist", and that this would benefit you.
Ask them what they mean by "worked". Were they solely responsible for
charting that artist? Probably not (you will have to ask the artist to
verify this... the promoter is just not going to tell you the truth.) More
than likely, the promoter was probably just partnered with a label or
another promoter, or worse, was just an assistant or sidekick. Again, they
WILL NOT tell you they were not the only promoter. You will HAVE to ask the
artist or the artist's management directly.
Promoters who really do work major label projects just do not like to work
with entry-level projects. With major label projects, the indie promoter
ALWAYS has staff promoters at the label doing a ton of the work, in addition
to heavy retail (the CD is on the shelf at most bookstores), touring (20-200
cities in major venues), and press (10-100 articles in major publications
like Spin or Billboard, along with 50-500 articles in small publications.)
And all this is on top of TV appearances. So if you think that the indie
promoter is the one person who made the artist chart, think again. He will
not be able to do the same for you.
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