Good Things Come to Those Who Persevere
by Larry Weir
Part of the excitement and fun of breaking a new artist's single at radio is finding where the initial pockets of interest are coming from. You need to ship hundreds of pieces (singles or albums) across the entire country in order to get a small sampling. This is pretty much the standard practice in record promotion. As all this starts up, it is a good idea to have your track encoded by sending it to both Billboard and Mediabase for the monitored major markets. Those stations are not likely to be the first to start playing a new single, but it is always smart to get that going early, because in this business one can never tell just how and where a new record will break.
Good things can come to those who persevere and wait their turn. The recent hits "How To Save A Life" by the Fray and even the huge single "Chasing Cars" by Snow Patrol took a long time to hit the top of the charts. Sometimes labels have to just wait it out, as there needs to be a tremendous amount of patience in getting all the stars to align just right. If you are on a major that has a lot of acts, there could be danger in the promotion staff holding on to your record for any length of time before they move on and focus on other acts.
During a recent visit to Nashville for the Country Radio Seminar, we sat through a luncheon held by Capitol Records. Before they had a featured performance by Trace Adkins, the label ran a video of all the artists that were set for releases in 2007. There were so many of them on the list that you know the label will have time for just a few of them. There is no way that they can do justice to the entire roster, and some of those artists will be left in the dust. That is why, if you still haven't gotten a record deal, consider doing it on your own.
As we have mentioned before, it is essential to hook up with a good and reputable independent record-promotion company. You will need their current mailing list assistance and their relationships with radio in order to make things happen for your single or CD. Your promoter will know how to get a record into the system and about how long it will take to break. A recording artist can't be all things to all people when it comes time to break a record at radio. As an artist, you need to be working, writing and performing, and your record promoter needs to be up early to start making calls. That is a full-time, five days a week job that takes a vast amount of knowledge and planning—things you can't be expected to do and learn overnight. You have to delegate some responsibilities, and this is one field that you want to leave for the experts.
Certain group-owned stations are also going to be sitting in the wings and waiting until they see some things happen. In many cases for these stations, the music and program directors can get into a world of hurt by adding a song that is not approved by the main office. We have found that Clear Channel stations are actually more open to playing and testing new artists, because they allow their local programmers to actually have some input. Once the song starts breaking from coast to coast, all of the national consultants will have to be contacted, and it will be only a matter of time before they give the green light to all of their programmers that you now have a hit that must be considered.
Larry Weir and Masika Swain run National Record Promotion out of the Los Angeles area. They invite you to send your CD for consideration or evaluation. Mail to: NRP, 137 N. Larchmont Blvd., #500, Los Angeles, CA 90004. Call 323-658-7449, e-mail lweir@larryweir.com, and visit www.heartlandent.com, www.larryweir.com and www.masika.net.
