I cannot stress how much getting your music heard on the radio is important. This is how you will convince people to subscribe to your music. I must explain when I use the phrase “subscribe” I don’t actually mean signing up for a newsletter or giving you their email address so you can spam them with emails – I’m talking about in their mind.

It is through the magic of radio you will get your songs onto playlist for spot plays and how you go about approaching radio stations depends on the time scale of success.

You could start looking on line or via the Music Week directory for radio pluggers, make a few calls, meet a few, check their past success rate (this is important) and then spend tens of thousands of pounds for a 3 month campaign.

An important aside to remember if you do decide to employ a radio plugger to push your music is that you’re not doing radio pluggers a favour – you’re paying them to do a job and for that reason you’re in control. Some radio pluggers have had major success and sadly it has gone to their heads and they now confuse their position with that of world leaders. I just hope they have a parachute when they fall from grace.

You must remain in control at all time and if you don’t like their attitude or they start to get antsy when you start to ask them questions, which you’re entitled to do if you’re going to give them thousands of pounds, then walk away. They may be the only one who has shown an interest in your project and music so far, but there are plenty of them about so just keep ringing and don’t stop until you find one who is on your side. They’re not above you – they’re your business partner.

Radio Plugging Yourself

Equally you can undertake this task yourself. If you’re a radio plugger and you’re reading this and scoffing at this notion ask yourself why? You started somewhere and I don’t doubt you now say to people “There’s no luck in life except the luck you make yourself!” With that in mind, what’s your problem?

No one can be as passionate about your music as you can so shout from the mountain top, pick up the phone and get calling all the radio stations you can and get the names of the Heads of Music. This is discussed more in our article about running your own record label but you need to make those contacts if anything is to happen.

Summary

So it is possible to be a radio plugger yourself and there will be no one who can do your music justice as much as you at this stage – so forget hiring radio pluggers, you just don’t have the money to waste right now. Get the community radio station list from Ofcom and get calling.

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