This article is an excerpt from CD Baby’s free PDF “Getting Radio Airplay: a step-by-step guide to DIY radio campaigns.”
Podcasts, Pandora, satellite, and internet radio have a powerful reach!
Non-traditional forms of radio (satellite, internet, and podcasts) are growing in popularity every day. Many of the popular music streaming sites like Pandora are even jumping from the internet into people’s mobile devices and cars. The good news is that getting significant play on these new types of radio formats is a far easier task than the commercial campaigns of yesteryear. The trade off is that you will have to do a little more research, as each individual station/program/podcast will have their own submission guidelines. The best part is, they actually want artists to submit their music!
Where do I find podcasts and internet radio?
For podcasts, a good place to start is the podcast section in iTunes, where you’ll find music podcasts of all shapes and sizes featuring just about every genre you can imagine. That will give you more than enough to get started. For internet radio, iTunes can be useful as well. It’s easily overlooked, but there is a Radio link under the Library header in your iTunes navigation menu. Click on that link and you will be taken to a vast catalog of hundreds of internet radio stations, all of which are categorized by genre. Just so there is no confusion, iTunes does not produce the podcasts or internet radio stations that show up in their directory, but merely provide the directory to bring many stations and podcasts together in one place. Locate the shows that are right for your music and then hunt down their submission guidelines on line.
What is Pandora?
With over 50 million users worldwide, Pandora uses the Music Genome Project to delivers customized radio stations to each of it listeners. Once the Pandora system learns the users musical preferences, it serves up a continuous stream of music that should be exactly what the listener likes. For many, this has been the #1 place to discover new bands. Check Pandora’s submission guidelines here – http://submitmusic.pandora.com
Note: For every submission at Pandora, there needs to be a track list tied to your physical CD listing on Amazon.com. This is Pandora’s requirement.
[hana-code-insert name=’radio-played’ /]