Radio Promotion Companies
These are independent companies who will promote your record to radio stations. Most companies tend to specialize in either college or commercial radio promotion. For most independent records, college radio promotion alone is more than adequate. To hire a quality college radio promotion company, expect to pay upwards of $1,500 for a single and $3,000 for an album project.
OK. Lets say we get a good one at $3000.
1st Does the band have a radio promotion company? Probably not.
2nd The Band has to know we are doing this.
3rd Money, do we do a chip in, or take the money out of the song.
4th Do we need a promotion company, wouldn't it be better that the grassroots are the promotion company?
5th If we (lets say 100 people) are the promotion company, what do we need? Phone numbers etc
6th What do we say when we call a radio station to promote it? (Im not talking about simply requesting the song)
Our story is great, "hey I'm calling to promote a song that the Ron Paul grassroots are going to buy on mass, you can be one of the first to mention it on air....etc etc"
Ok.
Does the band have a radio promotion company. Let's say no.
2nd. The band will end up doing this.
3rd. take the money out of the song. or not. The money from the song goes to the band. after that, it supposedly goes to revpac, but let's just assume that
everyones cool with the band spending money on radio promotion.
4th. Yes, you do need a promotion company. I'm not the expert of experts, but one of the main things that the radio promotion company does is get the music in a useable form into the hands of the radio stations. In the proper format. Etc, etc etc. Often, radio stations really don't want to deal with anybody but promotions people. When radio stations say they want requests, they mean "from the songs we already play". If you're a local band, you might get played on the local show, but it's rare to get play in regular rotation. Now, the grassroots can help with the radio promotion people.
5th. nope, we shouldn't be doing that.
6th. One of the things is "did you get the CD I sent you" If memory serves, they have call hours.
What "we" would do in terms of radio is do research on who "we" think the band should hire. You could call all those people, the radio promotions people, tell them the story, and they would tell you what they thought. They could tell you "yes, if you get on the top 100 singles chart, I should be able to get you on the radio" or they could tell you "radio stations won't play political stuff". They tell you whatever it is they tell you. You've researched the credentials of these people, and then you contact the band with your recommendations. Basically, you're interviewing radio promotions people for the band.
What we should be focusing on is doing what Ron Paul Grassroots does. Hyping something on the internet. Buy Bombs (The Ron Paul Song) Get Ron Paul on the itunes chart. Jumping up and down. Get excited, get excited, get excited. Buy, buy, buy. It's like spamming an internet poll after a debate, but it costs $1. It's like a moneybomb but it only costs $1.
After it becomes big, then the band has a lot of money in their pocket. I can't remember off hand, but the label, or the band, gets something like 80% and Apple gets 20%. They'll get money quick. 10K sales - $8K or something like that.
After that happens, the band, if they want to do that, hires the radio promoter.
Same thing with video, except that Rive is the way to go. Guys I know were just on MTVU the freshmen. They aren't on a label, but Rive was able to get them in a MTVU contest, and they got airplay.