Why Radio Won’t play Indie Music

And What You may Do About It

As I clicked on a popular music business forum, I was greeted with a question. “Why won’t commercial radio play music by Indie musicians?”

My reply to this individual has been as follows:

“As a former Operations Manager and Music Director on both the Comm and Non-Comm sides, Let me break the reason down for you.

Commercial Radio needs ratings to get paid from advertisers. Virtually all advertiser’s, on radio, are ad agencies. Ad agencies base their buys”" (sponsorships) on a cost per point (”"CPP”") basis. CPP is based on how a lot of thousands of fans a radio station could obtain in a 15 minute period (or cume).”

a lot of commercial radio [Program and Music] don’t want to put thier ratings at risk, by airing an ‘untested song’ on the air. So what these commercial radio directors do, is, air music based on the national charts provide d by Radio and Records, Broadcast Data Systems (BDS) and Billboard.

These charts are mainly influenced by the major labels via promotions and strategic alliances.

Your optimum optimum is to do prefer Knarles Barkley. Knarles Barkleys’ single “Crazy” went #1 on the Web and radio could not endorse but to get them the single on the air.

Get your music on music submission website s, make some noise one the net, and get a CD Baby.com account so you can get your music on iTunes and start promoting.”

I suggested this because the music business is going digital. Clear Channel has a partnership with GarageBand.com where they’ll feature a certain amount of new performers every week in on their website. Since Clear Channel is the biggest and most innovative expansive caster in the music business, it is just a matter of time before the other cowardly copy-cat expansive casters will follow suit.

The world is going digital, while radio continutes to operate using an analog business model. You may be successful in the music business if you change your marketing model from analog to digital.