A conversation between myself and my good friend [and new leader of Fresh on the Net] Del Osei-Owusu brought my attention back to an age-old problem we both frequently come across. Artists, who probably have an unrealistic idea of what it takes to get onto national radio playlists, moaning about not getting onto national radio playlists! It seems that, firstly, they underestimate how many new tracks are sent to the likes of BBC Radio 6 Music, BBC 1Xtra et al each week. Then, secondly, they probably have even less idea what it takes to get onto the radar of the teams who decide what goes onto the A, B and C Lists of these stations every week. It is not as if the BBC publishes an instruction manual on the subject.

I understand the frustration faced by grassroots artists. I am one too and, at 60, I hardly fit the model of exciting young prospect even if I did once get to play the BBC Introducing Stage at Latitude on my 54th birthday! The problem is, in today’s digital world where hundreds of thousands of new tracks are uploaded to streaming platforms every day, the competition has never been more fierce. When you consider how many tracks I receive every week as an internet radio presenter with around 600 weekly listeners (live and podcast combined) and blogger, imagine the scale of submissions for a station like BBC 6 Music that has 2.8 million listeners. That alone should provide some sense of perspective. Of course, every artist thinks their track is outstanding and should stand out even when put up against the thousands of others released that week. Yet even if they are right [in what would inevitably be an extremely small number of cases!], that is still not enough to find themselves on the A, B or C List of a national BBC or equivalent station.

The Truth About National Radio Playlisting

Even a station like 6 Music that has the aura of being vaguely alternative, or at least non-mainstream, is not going to stick its neck out over an unknown artist with no track record. To stand any chance of being playlisted for daytime rotation, an artist typically needs to be playing headline tours, achieving monthly streaming statistics in the high thousands, demonstrating continuous meaningful engagement on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube and generally gathering a big reputation. Getting yourself a spot play on a BBC Introducing Show is not an indication that you are knocking on the door of national recognition. The only way it might be is if the presenter of the BBC Intro show in question picks you as one of the tiny few they single out and recommend to the national Introducing team. Even then, it does not mean you are about to go viral on national radio. Less so now with the swingeing cuts to BBC Introducing that were implemented last year.

The other route to national playlisting is to be signed to a big label that decides to prioritise pushing you to the key media as an upcoming artist. With a major label budget behind you and all the associated trimmings, you are guaranteed to receive favourable treatment at national playlist meetings. But, for most grassroots artists, getting to that point is also likely to take a similar combination of achievements to those mentioned previously. Money does talk and always has.

In reality, while I would always advise grassroots artists to send their music, accompanied by well-presented emails and EPKs, to dream target radio shows and stations, we also need to encourage artists and those in their wider support networks – small labels, managers etc. – to ease the obsession with national radio airplay and focus on what media offers the best support, exposure and fanbase development for independent music.

Airplay is great for the feelgood factor. But a one-off spot play on any radio show, regardless of audience size, is not going to equate to significant sales or fan engagement. That is why, even on my little radio show, I give priority new releases 4 – 5 weeks’ rotation. And while the quarterly RAJAR figures suggest a very high percentage of the over-15 population in the UK still listens to some radio, its status as the essential avenue for discovering new music has long since disintegrated in the digital era. Sure, if you are able to achieve A or B listing on 6 Music, you can and will see your national profile and your fanbase grow dramatically. But, as that is not a realistic expectation for the vast majority of independent artists, it is pointless pouring all our energy and resources into trying to achieve it. There is a story I sometimes share with my students about a veteran plugger who charges four figure sums with the lure of a spot play on daytime BBC Radio 2 [because he has a mate who is a producer of one such show]. It sounds great. 14 million listeners; the nation’s favourite radio station. But it is an illusion. Firstly, it is entirely the wrong audience for most indie artists. People do not generally choose a station like Radio 2 if their interest is in current alternative genres. In any case, by the time the news bulletin it led into has finished, the vast majority will probably have forgotten they even heard it! Money well spent? I think not. You would gain more followers and maybe even a few Bandcamp sales being played on a little internet radio show with a few hundred listeners who are there because they are engaged and want to hear new music. And that would hopefully cost you nothing or, if not, at least result from the services of an affordable indie plugger or PR outlet.

Alternative Avenues For Exposure

So okay, you may ask, what are the best avenues for building followings and putting yourself on the radar of people who can make a difference to your career aspirations? The answer may seem convoluted but it does necessitate a multi-pronged approach. It includes playing live. I appreciate there are a significant number of artists who, for reasons of mental health, well-being, mobility etc, find it impossible or at least highly challenging to play live. If you fall into that category, there are alternatives. You may find it more comfortable to use Twitch or one of the social media avenues to live stream instead. This has two advantages. Firstly you control the content so it doesn’t have to be conventional live performance. It could involve demonstrating how songs are constructed. It might be a combination of live tracks and other media. Secondly, you cannot see an audience. You broadcast and those who want to engage can do so. So you are unlikely to face any hostility or nastiness. Alternatively you could just produce video content and focus on building your online presence through YouTube and social media.

For those who do want to get out and gig, there are some considerations that too many artists overlook. The first and most frequently overlooked of these is the problem of playing too many gigs in the same areas. A short time ago I had an interesting conversation with the manager of three successful rising stars of Indie/Shoegaze in the UK. She told me that, even though the bands in question are all from London and are now enjoying widespread success, they still play a maximum of three gigs a year in London. The reason is because this guarantees that they can pack out the venues on each occasion whereas, if they were playing London every few weeks or even once a month, the numbers at each event would be smaller because even your biggest fans are not going to keep paying to see you live when there are so many other events they could spend their money and time on.

Of course, getting gigs outside your home area is hard because promoters want artists who can pull a local crowd. But you can hook up with artists from other areas and help one another out by giving each other support slots so that all concerned get to play to new audiences. That is the essence of our Arts Council of England-supported Linking Up project. And there are venues who will accept artists from further afield. So putting on your own mini-tours can get you in front of a lot of people and, if you put the rehearsal and writing time in to offer your best version of yourselves, this can help you to win new fans in new places. It does mean often having to take on the role of promoter as well as artist but it affords more power to artists to curate events how they want them to be.

Playlists also offer a potentially useful means of gaining exposure. You may not like the streaming platforms for the minimal royalties they pay but you need to treat them as what they really are; a modern equivalent of airplay. Streams are not going to net you any significant cash unless you are selling bucketloads of them but being on a popular playlist has the potential to significantly increase your monthly streaming numbers which, in turn, increases your chances of getting attention from bigger radio shows and from the industry. I cannot pretend to understand how the algorithm works on Spotify, Apple etc. but I do know that the more you get played and playlisted, the more you are likely to be suggested to further new listeners. You should always try to make sure your forthcoming releases are uploaded in plenty of time so that the track(s) become(s) available on your Spotify Artist Page for you to pitch for playlists at least one week prior to the official release date. If you leave it any later than that, it is too late to pitch.

You can also seek out suitable playlists that support music similar to yours and which have good followings and see if you can find the curators online and ask them how to submit tracks for them to consider for their playlists. Some might ignore you or refuse to engage but you get nothing for not trying!

The plethora of online journals and blogs about music also offers an avenue for exposure. Those of us who have been around a long time (!) may partly miss the days when the weekly music papers were all-powerful and we longed to land rave reviews with the likes of NME, Melody Maker and Sounds. Yet, with so many indie journals operating on the internet now, there is greater scope for generating reviews and interviews and this offers another means of reaching suitable audiences. Moreover, where slating new artists and sometimes effectively strangling their careers at birth was practically a popular bloodsport for music journalists in pre-digital times, the current crop of indie media, myself included, tend only to write positive reviews. I would not write a review of an artist or track(s) if I had nothing nice to say about them and I think that is thankfully the prevailing view of most bloggers and online journals.

It is not difficult to look up who the editors, reviews editors and features editors are and how to email them. Of course, this comes with a word of warning. There are a number of blogs that simply reproduce your EPK word for word and put it out in the hope that you will do the work for them in getting your followers to read it. These people usually have no discernible followings and are relying on you providing them with new readers, not the other way around! But there are plenty of very credible and widely-read blogs. You should be able to tell from the quality of the content and the sizes of their followings whether they are worth submitting your music to.

You do also need to think carefully about how and when to submit your music to the various target media. Be very wary of paying pluggers or PR outlets for this service. The consensus among experienced A&R folk and similar that I have met through my own activities is that artists should wait until they have achieved a few milestones and have genuine momentum before paying for these kinds of services. There are quite a few good ones who know how to pitch your work in concise emails, focused on key elements of your story and with all the requisite tracks and links nicely embedded and easy to access. But there are a whole lot more who will take your money, present shoddy promotional material and simply turn off the media people you are hoping to engage. Even at the level of my radio show, I receive an enormous volume of submissions from pluggers and PR people so I have the advantage of being able to compare the quality of their work and also to see which ones clearly operate a degree of quality control over whose music they will agree to represent.

The best thing to do is take advice and test the water as much as you can before parting with your hard-earned cash. Alternatively, learn to do it yourself and rely on the fact that no-one better understands your story, your vision and your idiosyncrasies than you.

Social Media

Social Media obviously offers the greatest scope for building followings and engaging fans. You have different platforms with different strengths. My advice is to use them all. And, if you are genuinely someone who finds being on social media a real challenge to your mental health and well-being, I can fully understand and appreciate that but get someone to handle this area for you. You cannot be an aspiring but, so far, little known artist and not be visible on social media platforms. They are an essential part of the journey. You should be able to agree a fair means of sharing any subsequent successes with the person who takes that role on for you. In today’s world, it is one of the most important services you can engage.

It is tempting to write off certain social media platforms but I would strongly advise against this. Not only does, for example, Facebook offer a simple and efficient means of creating free artist pages that function like mini-websites but it also makes it easy to create events and invite contacts. Moreover, while artists may prefer to see themselves as appealing to the younger Gen Z audience, the overwhelming research evidence, including that commissioned recently by Live Nation Entertainment, shows that they are only the fourth highest buyers of concert tickets and merchandise. The 25 – 34 and 35 – 44 age groups are the biggest spenders and even the 45 – 54 group outbuys the under 25s. Facebook Ads can still be an effective means of targeting potential followers by age, taste, location etc.

Likewise, I see a lot of artists shunning X [or Twitter as most of us still call it]. Again, this makes no sense. X still offers the most effective platform for engaging with or building communities and the more love you show for other people and their works and ideas, the more you receive that love back when you have music of your own to share. It is a great way for everyone to share and build followings without anyone losing out in the process. A word of warning though. Jumping on other people’s threads and trying to make them all about you so you can bang on about yourself is a massive red flag and will quickly get you a bad reputation as an irritating narcissist. So watch your behaviour! And, as a general rule, be kind.

Instagram and TikTok clearly offer quick and large scale engagement if you are savvy about posting short video content, storying your important events and ideas and allowing people to enjoy the sense that they are in on your evolving tales. YouTube Shorts also offer a good level of engagement and, with certain territories already outlawing TikTok and others threatening to follow suit, they will grow in importance in the immediate term.

Reviews In Blogs and Journals

Coming back to the issue of media exposure, one thing that has definitely changed for the better as a direct consequence of the digital revolution is the development of a large network of internet-only and, in some cases, DAB/FM independent radio stations and shows. Granted, not all of them have genuine audiences but you can usually tell which ones are worth courting without too much work. These radio shows are generally much more sympathetic towards grassroots music artists and want to show support for as many as they can. But, if they are asking you to pay for a fixed number of plays, give them a wide berth!

Blogs and journals can be tougher to crack but there are far more than there were music journals in pre-digital times. Among the leading independent journals supporting new music are Louder Than War, The Skinny, Dork, Clash, The Line Of Best Fit, Gods In The TV Zine, Clouzine and Joyzine (and lots more). And it would be remiss of me not to mention my Trust The Doc monthly blog and Del’s Platinum Mind one. Del and I both have radio shows too so you can submit tracks for us to consider for both these media.

As for the others, find out who the Editors, Reviews Editors and Features Editors are [which you can usually do by looking at their websites] and make sure you send emails about new releases far enough ahead of scheduled release to be able to give people time to write a review or engage you for an interview. And submit new releases to Fresh on the Net because, even if you don’t make it through to the Listening Post [or the faves], you are still going to be listened to by a bunch of people involved in different parts of the independent music sector.

The Future

I would love to see the grassroots music community find ways to join forces and encourage a joined up alternative media. One that can finally begin to do what it has been threatening to do for so long and rid us of all of this desperate nagging need to get onto national radio or big playlists. Those obsessions, in turn, so often lead artists to pay far too much money to be inevitably disappointed by the modest results they receive from the plugging and PR folk they hire. That is not to say that hiring plugging and PR folk is always a bad idea. I know only too well how hard some of the best ones work and how professional they are about the way they present their clients’ work. But artists need to know when to use these kinds of services and not to try to run before they can walk in terms of the hard endeavour involved in building reputation, fanbase and track record. So, as mentioned previously, save your money until you have already achieved some milestones and feel like you are gaining traction so that, by the time you bring in this kind of paid support, they have a story to share about your evolving journey and successes.

Finally then, where am I going with all this? I guess some bullet points would not go amiss. So, fellow grassroots artists, we all need to:

-Take a deep breath and make an honest assessment of where we are on our journeys before we moan about lack of airplay from the likes of BBC 6 Music.
-Slow down and work on making our tracks as strong, nuanced and imaginatively executed as they can be instead of banging out half-baked demos in needlessly large quantities
-Think about just how many tracks people with radio shows, blogs, journals and playlists are having to wade through before getting arsey about not being picked for playlisting or reviews
-Strategize properly, making use of all the digital avenues and combining them with traditional ones like gigs and merchandise as well as producing as much short form content as possible to retain a strong presence on social media
-Be good community members and remember that it isn’t all about you!
-Make good judgement calls about when is the right time to spend a bit of hard-earned cash on promotion in a bid to get to the next level (whatever that really means!)
-Get involved in a wider conversation about how all us people involved in alternative forms of music media could do more to unite, become a genuine network and prove that independent artists (including those on small labels) can have careers in music without needing the approval of hackneyed old BBC production staff and others who are too easily impressed by past success and shallow statistics

There is so much we can do if we make use of the digital tools and avenues instead of treating them as being the devil’s work! But of course, for all that we can benefit from the positive side of digital democratization, we must remember that being any good at making music remains the most important element you need if you seriously want to try to do this for a living! So work hard and be self-critical but not to the point of punishing yourself. Be supportive of fellow artists; join forces where possible to put on cool events and share useful contacts. Our community has so much potential to achieve through mutual support and encouragement. We are not there yet but the potential to build our own joined up networks is real. We just need to figure it all out.