written by - Stephen Wrench
Mainstream Radio's Not Playing Your Indie, Deal With It
Hey, indie artists with dreams of getting your music played on a mainstream radio station, what else do you need to hear? The man himself just broke it down for you. With the exception of some special programming, almost always played during off-peak hours, the idea that mainstream radio DJs have any say in the music they play is hopelessly outdated. If you want to hear that en fuego new banger you just made played during rush hour on Hot 97, or Power 106, or V103, or any other big station in a major market, you need to sign to a major label, and then your song needs to test well with audiences. Otherwise, it's not happening for you. It's a strict formula, and there aren't deviations.
You don't need to believe in a conspiracy theory to believe that, just take a look at Hot 97's most recently posted playlist for the week (from 5/12 to 5/18). Chance the Rapper just dropped the most talked about album in the country last week, do you see his name anywhere? You're telling me a record like "No Problem" with Lil Wayne and 2 Chainz wouldn't work on radio? What more could he possibly do to get his "buzz up" or "get hot" than he is now?
And on the flip-side, Ebro could play an hour straight of nothing but Chance the Rapper on his Beats 1 show, which isn't beholden to any advertising money, if he wanted. True, the rare indie artist occasionally does slip through the cracks of radio's major label-dominated formula, but even those rare exceptions often turn out to be false flags. Hot 97's playing the shit out of Young Greatness' "Moolah" record right now, and he's so new you might assume he's indie, but he's actually got a deal through QC/Capitol Records. Radio couldn't stop playing Macklemore about a year ago and while he wasn't full on "signed" to a major, he had a side deal with Warner that allowed him to access their radio promotions arm. In fact, the surest way to guess who's secretly signed to a major label is to look at the radio play they are, or aren't, getting.
Honestly, I don't particularly care about what hip-hop that mainstream radio plays. I don't even own a radio anymore outside my car, and I'm far from alone. What I care about are all the indie artists who come to me complaining that radio won't play their shit, the artist I see pay money to have promoters service their songs to radio, who have their eyes solely fixed on mainstream radio as the thing that's going to blow them up, when there's a snowball's chance in hell of it ever happening. All that energy and money would be better spent on almost anything else. Like, for example, buying your beats so you can get a publishing deal, or actually mixing and mastering your music.
I don’t have to play the radio game. I tried to play it. I spent $1.6 million pushing four singles off of the Absolute Power album. If I had to do it all over again, I would take every dime of that money back, tell all those dudes who took my money to fuck off, and do something totally different with the money. I would’ve been in the streets giving away samplers, I would have done a variety of different promotional ideas, and I would’ve spent the money touring. - Travis O'Guin, Strange Music CEO in a HipHopDX Interview
So indie artists, mainstream radio's not playing your shit. Point blank.
Period. Stop thinking about it, stop complaining about it and
especially stop making "radio ready" singles that have a zero percent
chance of actually getting played on the radio. But as much as I'd like
to hope this issue's now settled, something tells me I'll be back here
again.