The Radio Promotion Blues

Jerry Diaz & Hanna's Reef, the band i work for, released a new album in November of 2009. It's called Home On The Gulf Coast, and features 11 songs written by Jerry. It also has 4 songs that were produced by Austin based guitarist John Inmon, who use to play with guys like Jerry Jeff Walker and Ray Wylie Hubbard. As a group we were (and still are) very proud of the project. We spent a lot of time discussing ways to expose it to people outside our existing fan base.

After some motivation from our friend Jim Hoehn, we decided to try our hand at promoting HOGC to the radio. More specifically, I decided to pursue the DIY (Do It Yourself) method of radio promotion, and Jerry gave me his blessing. I knew that trying to reach any major radio stations would be pointless, so i decided to focus on public radio, college radio, and specialty show. I spent a couple months reading everything i could find on the internet pertaining to radio promotion, while also researching different music charts and organizations. I eventually came to the conclusion that our best shot was to push HOGC to Americana Radio. Then i settled on the FAR (Freeform American Roots) chart as my primary target.

I didn't want to jump in over my head, so i kept my first effort small and sent promotional packages to 21 outlets. 19 radio stations and 2 podcasts, most of which report to the FAR Chart. The packages were mailed on February 9. I waited about 10 days, then began contacting them, (mostly via email) to confirm that they had received the CD's.

A Hot Start

Success came almost immediately. On February 22 Garry Morse played "Captain Jack" on his Lost Music Saloon show on WRIR in Chester, VA. That got me pretty excited about our overall chances for successes. The momentum continued a few days later when we were added to the music library of KPFT in Houston, TX. On top of that several other DJ's and stations replied to my emails with some form of "your cd is in the pile, we'll review it when we get a chance." In the end, a little less than half my targets responded to my initial round of emails and phone calls. I was thrilled about getting our first play and felt pretty good about the entire campaign, if you want to call it that.

After my initial round of followups i waited a couple weeks, then started another round of inquires. This time things didn't go so well. No plays or adds. Two DJ's declined to play our album because it didn't fit their format, but that didn't really faze me as i had expected to get that response from some outlets. Their wasn't much in the way of good news - just one more station to the "It's awaiting review" list. What irked me was the lack of response period. Less than 20% of the outlets contacted responded to my second round of followups.

Looking Ahead

I had no doubts that going the DIY route on radio promotion would be easy. Everything I've read online has mentioned the numerous phone calls and emails it takes to each station in order to get a project played. But even with that knowledge I've still be shocked to get such a small response to my phone calls and emails. I've actually had a much harder time accepting that then the outright rejections.

But I'm not giving up easily. I plan on working my current list into Mid-April, or until they play the record or tell me they won't. I also hope to do a second, but possibly smaller mailing, probably around the first of April. After that I'll talk with Jerry and decide if we want to continue working radio or not. 

But until then I plan on giving this campaign everything I've got, and hopefully picking up several more plays along the way.  I do plan on changing one thing, and that's my method of contact. I've tried to use email whenever possible, but I'm afraid that might be to easy to ignore or forget about. So I plan on hitting the phones hard this week, and fighting to get the album played. After all that is what radio promoters are suppose to do.

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