Why Radio Won’t play Indie Music

And What You might 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 artist s?”
My reply to this individual was 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. Most 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 many thousands of audiences a radio station might obtain in a 15 minute period (or cume).
many 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 offer d by Radio and Records, Broadcast Data Systems (BDS) and Billboard.
The charts are mainly influenced by the major labels via promotions and strategic alliances.
Your optimum optimum is to do like Knarles Barkley. Knarles Barkleys’ single “Crazy” went #1 on the Internet and radio might n’t advocate but to get them the single on the air.
Get your music on music submission website s, make some noise on the Internet, and get a compact disc Baby.com account so you might 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 will feature a certain amount of new artists every week in on their website. Since Clear Channel is the biggest and most innovative expansive caster in the music business, it’s 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 vary your marketing model from analog to digital.