How To Get Radio Interviews For Music

I Really Want To Interview Anyone With Any And All Forms Of Careers And I Want To Interview Voice Actors Mainly About Theyre Careers

Posted on December 01, 2021|Permalink

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Know How To Submit Your Music

Have you found the contact details of the decision-makers at the stations youâre targeting, but thereâs no clear information on how you can submit tracks?

Sending an electronic press kit, music press release or one-sheet including links to 1-3 of your best tracks is the most common way to approach radio stations, as well as press publications and blogs. The key is to make your email or press pack stand out and grab their attention. Make sure your tracks are clearly named and donât send mp3 files. Instead include links to your songs.

Some people prefer to send or receive physical copies of their music to radio stations, but this is becoming less and less prevalent. Generally, DJs and stations receive the majority of their submissions and demos in digital format.

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How To Get Your Music Played On The Radio

We may be living in an age of instant access to music, where playlisting is key, but despite the rise of streaming and songs on demand, getting your music played on the radio is one of the most effective ways to reach the masses.

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Getting your tracks played on the radio can make a big impact on your career, so itâs important to approach radio stations in the right way, to give yourself the best chance of making it onto the airwaves. Airplay is tricky to secure, so be patient, make sure your tracks are water-tight and donât be too discouraged if you donât the results you want immediately.

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Identify What Is Most Compelling About Your Music Or Story

Do you know what your musician story is? Whats your hook? Why should someone whos never heard of you take an interest in your music or story? Find it. Know it. Boil it down. Be ready to tell the interviewer something interesting about yourself.

On the other hand, dont give it ALL away. You need to save some good stuff for other interviews. For instance, one interview could focus on your songwriting process, or the stories behind the songs. Another could focus on the recording and production process. Another one could deal with life on the road, or your personal life, or your inspirations.

Another point thats worth making, and its something that weve talked about a lot on this blog: your musical persona should enhance what is most interesting about you. You cant convey every little thing about yourself, so super-size a few of the most dramatic aspects of your story.

Plug Your Website Upcoming Shows Email Signup List Etc

What are you hoping to get out of the interview? Whats your top priority? More YouTube subscribers? More people to come to your show in San Francisco? More CD sales? Say it! Dont be shy. False humility seems a little weird when it comes from someone whos agreed to be interviewed. So mention your YouTube channel. Plug your show. Tell listeners where they can purchase your music online. I mean, dont be obnoxious about it maybe just give yourself a single shout-out during the discussion but what Im saying is, no one will fault you for pimping your music in a directly actionable way if youre gracious about it.

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Have A Solid Musical Project To Get Your Song On The Radio

Before approaching any music professional, you must have at least some professionalism yourself in order to stand out and, above all, appear credible in your approach. Refer to the following criteria:

• Build a strong and singular visual identity to support your musical project.
• Have a press kit at your disposal or a good biography presenting your project and your background.
• Be active and have a certain visibility on social networks .
• Have recordings of impeccable quality .
• Fill in the metadata of your tracks .

And:

How To Get A Radio Interview

New, independent musicians are always trying to get their name spread throughout the community. Its important for every musician to try to get radio interviews. If you are without a manager or promoter, no worries. These tips will allow you to get an interview for yourself or band.

Here is how to get an interview at a radio station.

1. Master your music.

Before initiating an interview, send your music into the station including all of your current tracks. Make sure that all of your music is high quality and represents your best work. Also, market your music through other platforms so the station will know that you are actively gaining an audience.

2. Contact radio stations.

Reach out to radio stations via e-mail or phone. Also, continue actively promoting yourself in as many ways as you can. If radio stations dont respond, keep trying to get in touch with them. By contacting radio stations and telling them about you and your music, you have a greater chance of getting an interview.

3. Connect with DJs personally.

Connecting and networking with professionals will ensure that an interview happens. By meeting the DJs or anyone who works at the station personally, it will help you get an interview. Be yourself and let your true colors shine. By allowing your personality to show, you will not only establish an interview but potential friends and connections for the future.

4. Target the right stations.

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Radio Interview Tips For Musicians

Practice makes perfect, so a good radio interview tip is to perhaps have a couple of radio interviews on the local community, student-based or hospital radios to allow you to get used to the scenario.

Always speak to the presenter beforehand and ask them what questions they are going to ask, what things they would like to cover and what you would like to get across so you are all on the same page.

Be Ready To Talk For 2 Minutes Or 2 Hours

Hopefully youll have a good idea going into the interview what your time commitment will be: 2 minute TV news spot, one hour phone call, etc. But there are times when things are cooking, and the interviewer just keeps the conversation rolling . But the point is simple: get ready to talk for a looooong time, even if you only need to call upon that reservoir 1 out of every 50 interviews.

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Bring It Back Around To You

But lets say you DO want to talk about your music and the interviewer gets off-topic. That happens. If they do, roll with it for a bit. Be good humored about it. But if the interviewer goes too long without asking you a question that you feel is relevant to your music career, find a way to guide the discussion back on course. After all, you only have so many minutes to get the word out, so you wanna use every one of those minutes wisely.

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Giving A Compelling Interview As A Musician

When it comes to promotion and publicity, interviews can be one of the most fun and gratifying ways to spread the word about your music since theyre all about your biggest passion: your music!

Luckily for independent artists, there are more media sources looking to interview musicians than ever before. Magazines, zines, blogs, podcasts, radio shows, TV shows, YouTube channels, etc.

As the person being interviewed, youll either be providing a writer with context and quotes for a story, or the audio/video of your conversation will be the content itself . So obviously you dont want to just go on the air or get on the phone with a journalist without having thought through some of the things youll talk about in advance.

If youre quick-witted and confident, sure, you can probably wing it and still give a compelling interview. But for everyone else, heres a few musician interview tips in preparation

Where Can You Buy Royalty

As you probably know, most music is protected by the so-called copyrights, which means that you must be very careful when it comes to obtaining this type of music, otherwise you could have several problems.

In order to avoid legal problems or platforms like Youtube to detect that you are using some music of which you do not have the corresponding rights, you have two options:

Logically, the first option is very unfeasible, either because you will not receive any answer or because they will ask you in exchange for an exorbitant amount of money. Therefore, if we choose the second way we find:

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Give The Station A Keepsake Or Two

Cultivating good relationships with the media is essential to your success, even in a DIY world, because their support grants you legitimacy and a larger audience. Taking a picture with your interviewer for Instagram should be a given, but a physical token of your appreciation leaves a lasting legacy of your visit. CDs or vinyl are ideal for this, particularly because the station can then spin your music during request programs or other shows with a flexible playlist. Stickers and koozies are inexpensive giveaways that you can hand over in bunches to all the stations employees. And if you can swing it, homemade baked goods are memorable and a key to the heart of a hungry midday DJ.

ABOUT THE AUTHORZach Blumenfeld is a recent alumnus of WRVU Nashville, Vanderbilt Universitys student radio station. Over the past three years, he has interviewed over forty songwriters and bands on his weekly program The VU Backstage, as well as contributing music commentary and reviews to the WRVU blog. He has also worked at Nashville radio station Lightning 100.

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Target The Right Radio Stations

In case you’re a country singer, it wouldn’t really be wise to contact radio stations that play rap or pop tracks.

Find radio stations that’ll cater to your sound and you would have a greater chance of them playing your tracks.

Moreover, be sure to research the demographic of the station. Matching the demographic with yours will help you make a strong case as to why you need to be interviewed.

Make Sure Your Digital Footprint Shouts Expert

When youre being considered as an invited expert, one of the first things an interviewer will do is check you out online, so you need to make sure your digital footprint leaves a great impression.

Create an About Me Page That Kicks Ass

Having a professional About me page is the first step to getting people who find you online to pitch you for interview opportunities.

I did a group interview asking some of my favorite personal branding experts how people can improve their on-site About Me page, which produced some of the following great suggestions:

Ramp Up Your Social Media Profiles

In addition to your bio page, you should also make the most of your social media bios.

has a word limit, so you should be concise but detailed . Personally, I dont like Twitter bios that contain only hashtags or list projects and interests.

Here are a few examples of professional Twitter bios you might emulate.

Rand Fishkins bio mentions his core interest and his professional motto:

Larry Kims bio lists his professional achievements:

Dr. Petes bio adds a touch of humor that makes it hard to miss:

Your LinkedIn bio should primarily highlight your professional experience. In my view, the more detailed here, the better.

is a perfect example of LinkedIn personal branding done right. Its detailed, clearly structured and summarizes her expertise brilliantly:

Google Plus has two places where you can talk about your expertise and experience:

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Be Visceral And Descriptive

The skunky smell of the tour van. The burn of the bright stage lights. The way the rain looked on the runway as you landed in London for your first tour of the UK. Bring the listener or reader into your world with rich description. The more vividly you paint your world, the closer theyll feel to you and your music.

Get The Needed Permission To Obtain The File

You might want to make sure that you get the interview file .

If you do that, you’ll be able to plug it on your website, email newsletter, and other social media platforms.

If there are audio/video files that aren’t readily accessible on platforms like SoundCloud and YouTube, ask the interviewer to give you a copy of the file or post it directly to your social media accounts.

Of course, if that interview was meant to be exclusive content for their platform, then you cannot do anything. But try to convince them that attempting to broaden their reach won’t hurt.

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Get Your Message Across

One of the most important radio interview tips is to decide beforehand on the message you predominantly want to convey, and focus on that message in the interview, for example a call to action such as come and see us play at Bestival or our EP launch party this coming Friday or our single is released Monday, etc. All act members need to be singing from the same hymn sheet with the call to action and you need to finish the radio interview with a clear, precise call to action, whilst making sure not to over-sell or over-complicate the message.

The presenter will no doubt ask you generic questions about you as an act and the type of music you sing. One radio interview tip is to not go overboard in your answers to these questions, as you will be eating into your time to talk about what YOU want to talk about. Think of some interesting stories or facts about your act that will stick in the audiences head.

Be firm and make sure you get in a web address or somewhere people can check out your music while you are on-air. Once the interview has finished youve missed that vital opportunity!

Make Your Expert Pitch And Close The Deal

The previous section should have given you lots of ideas on how to find bloggers who would be willing to interview you.

Now, lets talk about how to approach and land any opportunities you may discover.

How to Craft Your Irresistible Pitch

Landing an interview starts with letting the right people know that youre willing to be interviewed.

Id recommend kicking things off with an email. Whenever you feel like you could be a great fit for the expert interview, go ahead and email the blogger.

Opinion is divided on how to best reach out to a blogger or a publisher. Some PR pros will suggest being as detailed as you can, explaining your background and expertise upfront to convince the blogger why you are the perfect interviewee. Others recommend being brief and to the point, which is my preference.

The following are some best-practice tips based on my own experience of being on both sides of the equation :

• Use the bloggers first name. You may need to check a few linked social media profiles to make sure you have it correct.
• Keep your email brief. After the opening salutation, the perfect pitch email is just two lines long . The first line explains why youre getting in contact, and the second explains why you think you are a good fit for that.
• Limit the number of links. One link in the first email is more than enough otherwise you risk your email getting trapped by a spam filter.

Heres an example pitch:

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