Radio promotion FAQ

Find stations that program your genre, identify the right contact — usually a music director, genre director, or show host — and send a short personalized email with one streaming link and a one-sheet. Following the station's published submission process, where one exists, is the single biggest correctness point. Our step-by-step guide walks through the whole sequence.

Doing it yourself costs time: roughly 30–60 hours across an eight-week campaign, plus whatever you spend on contact research. Hiring an independent promoter for a college/noncommercial single campaign commonly runs from the high hundreds to low thousands of dollars. The DIY-versus-promoter comparison covers the trade-offs honestly.

Plan on six to eight active weeks per release: pre-release pitching, release-week pushes, follow-ups, and chart watching. Radio works in weekly programming cycles, so shorter bursts rarely give stations time to review, add, and report your music.

Not directly, in most cases. In the United States, terrestrial radio pays songwriting performance royalties to writers through their PRO (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, GMR) — so register your songs and your performances with a PRO. Unlike most countries, US terrestrial radio does not generally pay performers or labels for broadcasting a sound recording. Registering the song is what matters.

Yes — and for chart-oriented campaigns it is standard. Music directors often want music two to four weeks ahead of release date so they can review it and add it the week it is public. Just make sure a private stream is ready before you pitch.

Quality over volume: a first campaign of 40–80 well-matched stations with correct, current contacts will beat thousands of unverified addresses. Expand as you learn which station types respond to your music.

Modest percentages — a handful of adds and a scatter of spins is a genuinely good first campaign, and each confirmed spin is evidence for the next release. Beware anyone promising specific results; legitimate promotion reports what happened, never what will.

Targeted, personalized, relevant outreach is standard industry practice. Identical mass emails to unchecked addresses are spam — reputationally and legally. One personalized pitch plus one polite follow-up per station is the professional standard our templates are built around.

No. College, community, noncommercial, and internet radio add independent releases every week. What labels provide is manpower and relationships — both things an independent artist can build with organization and repeated campaigns.

An add is a station's decision to put your song into rotation. Adds are the visible milestones of a campaign because they are public, countable, and — at reporting stations — feed the weekly charts other programmers watch. The glossary covers adds, spins, rotation, and chart reporting in detail.

DIY wins for first releases, local scenes, and niche genres where the station map is small enough to work by hand. Hiring wins for chart goals, tour support, and releases already showing traction. Many artists land on a hybrid: DIY relationships at favorite stations, professional help for defined campaigns.

Check the station's playlist logs and any charts it reports to, searching your artist name weekly during the campaign. Confirmed spins are also worth a short thank-you email — the most underused move in radio promotion.

One streaming link that doesn't expire, a clean radio edit if there is profanity, a one-page one-sheet, a 100-word bio, and a working contact email. Our EPK guide covers the full kit stations expect.

No. The Radio Reach Vault is a research tool: 18,000+ organized radio station contacts so you can build your own targeted campaigns. You keep control of every pitch — which is exactly how stations prefer to hear from artists.