Commercial Stations: Don’t bother sending your music to commercial stations blindly.
#John mails musique plus
Plus being added to ANY station’s rotation is a feather in your promotional cap! Red Hot Chili Peppers were once college radio faves, and the list goes on. The first time Nirvana was played it was on a college station at the time (this station).
Should you just discard these stations and not submit your music? NO! You must send them your music! For their sake, for your sake, do it. Just remember they are understaffed, under-appreciated, and have no budget in most cases. These stations need your music and in a lot of cases will be the nicest people you’ll deal with in this area. Other excellent student-run stations include Radio K in Minneapolis, and KALX, WXYC, WRAS, and KJHK. For instance, at the University of Washington you have KUOW (news and information) but for the students, you have the online-only Rainy Dawg Radio, which is a fantastic student-run station. Non-Commercial Stations, like Student-Run Stations: More and more of these stations are online and a great place to get your music to (usually the wattage is pretty low). Student-run stations are great, great, great (listen and support them), but a big part of their mission is on-air training so you won’t necessarily get consistent programming, but in a lot of cases you will and it’ll be the best radio you’ve ever heard!
#John mails musique license
There are others for sure, but these are some of the primary stations that hold a non-commercial license that aren’t run by students. There a handful of these stations including KCRW, The Current, WXPN, and WFMU. More than anyone else they are the ones who want to get your music into the ears of their listeners. There are some other excellent public stations out there doing amazing work and you want to make sure that they get your music. Why does THAT matter? For me, it matters because it’s the listeners who listen for the love of music, while commercial sponsors are interested in dumbing down the music in order to sell their products. Why does this matter? It matters because we answer to listeners. We don’t have commercials - so guess what? We don’t have to answer to commercial interests. We sound like cool robots, yet ironically we’re not programmed by them. Non-Commercial Stations, like KEXP: “Non-Comms” is what we’re called and we like that. Here are the different types of stations: Seattle’s KPLU (now KNKX) was able to part ways with their college license holders to become self-sustaining for the low, low price of 6 or 7 million dollars (again, thank you, University of Washington!) so while not cheap at times, it’s a GREAT trend. They are your best bet for airplay along with the new lower power FM stations popping up. More on that later… While KEXP is a non-profit, non-commercial, and (since we last talked) INDEPENDENT radio station - meaning we own our licence and answer to the public (thank you, University of Washington!), - there are a number of different types of stations that may not be independent but are non-commercial and, in many cases, are licensed to a university. They answer to their corporate overlords and while there are some great people at those stations on the air, their hands are tied to what the suits decide is what the public needs to hear. I can’t give you advice on these stations other than to avoid them. While there have been some great strides in lower power stations, the commercial stations continue their slow march to generic death. I thought by the time I updated this article radio would be one of two things: dead or much better. You’ve worked hard on your music and the world should have the chance to hear it.
Our hope is others will play you as well. There is a bar and if at least one of our 44 DJs thinks you’ve risen above it, you’ll be heard at this station. That doesn’t mean we’ll play you just to play you that doesn’t benefit anyone.
We here at KEXP listen to and give every artist a chance. The way we do things is different from most of the other stations out there, but as far as we’re concerned, our way of doing things has gotten us to a place where we’re considered the premier music station - a station where DJs actually program the music on their shows, and if our model works, we hope other stations do the same. The follow-up was just three or four years ago, and things have changed so much even that is outdated now, but the fundamental idea and question are still valid: how DOES one get airplay on stations like KEXP? First off, you have to remember that KEXP is a one-of-a-kind station. When I wrote the first version of “How To Get Airplay” (in 2011, see here) the landscape was much different than it is today.
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