Every week we say it on our upload page when people send their music to Fresh On The Net: “For radio play your track must be uploaded to BBC Introducing. No upload = no airplay.”
Every week people send excellent new tunes to our inbox which I can’t include on my BBC Introducing Mixtape because they haven’t been uploaded to, erm… BBC Introducing. Obviously – since you need a valid UK postcode and IP address to upload tracks – this does make things a bit hard for non-UK artists.
But mostly we’re talking about UK artists who simply don’t read the instructions. We receive hundreds of tracks a week – so if we come looking for your tune and isn’t already on the BBC Uploader, then your slot will go to someone else’s track that is. The following week will be too late – hundreds more tunes will have arrived by then, and the opportunity will have been missed.
As mentioned elsewhere, I choose tracks for the BBC Introducing Mixtape from our entire inbox – not just songs featured on our Listening Post. So here are eleven personal favourites from last week (most of which you won’t have heard) and which I would certainly have featured on 6 Music this month… if only they’d been uploaded in the first place 🙁
DECENT LOVERS – Keep It Together
STEREOTOPICS – Irreplaceable
RAEL JONES – Lacuna
M-A-P – Baby Let’s Go 2
REMI MILES – Something
HEAD OF LIGHT ENTERTAINMENT – Dwindle Dwindle Little Hope
TYPE – The People Without Tears
BENTCOUSIN – 2014 (edit)
GEETARCHURCHY – Better City
NIMZO-INDIAN – Uninvited Guest
THE HOUSE OF JED – Everybody Lies
Really interesting! That’s your frustration Tom! These are songs that you Love, But cannot play. Like having an album that’s banned by the State! Thank goodness for FOTN ‘The Peoples music box’
Ape love to great music!
Dan xo B-)
Maybe there too good for 6 music 😉
Stereotopics – Irreplaceable
Liked this, philip glass, music concrete .. that really goes somewhere and grows into a synth monster. Most original..
Rael Jones – RAEL JONES – Lacuna
This is just beautiful, how this didn’t make the cut i don’t know…
@skopje it’s simple – Lacuna didn’t make the cut because Rael still hasn’t uploaded it to BBC Introducing.
Wow. What a massive dingus I am. I have now uploaded Lacuna to the BBC Introducing site Tom, so if there happened to be time for it in future weeks it is now available. Thanks for the support anyway, much appreciated!
Dear Tom,
I feel your pain also, but I can offer hope:
One way to look at it from my perspective as an enthusiastic and passionate champion of fresh original music who promotes emerging music through my own show, is that the Listening Post is an invaluable source of the freshest most original tracks which have already gone through a quality control process via Tom and the FOTN team, so a large number of these tracks will make my playlist and get played on the radio, albeit not the BBC, but Internet radio nonetheless, with a growing audience across the UK, Europe and the rest of the World.
If it wasn’t for FOTN I wouldn’t have this resource because the BBC does not make available the tracks uploaded on the BBC Introducing system for general access unless it is those tracks that have been chosen by BBC producers and people like Tom to play on air. The rest of the tracks presumably end up bouncing as MP3s and WAVs in perpetuity in some remote server.
Amazing Radio does give access to tracks that have been uploaded, but I personally find the system cumbersome and of course it requires registration and log-in which are a pain I have to say.
I am forever grateful to Tom and the FOTN team for this fantastic resource, which I will continue to unconditionally support and promote to all new artists I meet.
Happy Sunday!
David
Under The Radar Live Sessions