Know who you are dealing with Before You Submit Music
There are people who USED to be in or are NEW to the industry with “marketing promotion services” that will tell you that they went to high school with Jesus and ate lunch at the same table as President Lincoln. The industry is very progressive NOT regressive. But at the same time music promotion service companies are usually run by people over 40 to get radio airplay. It’s all about relationships. So if someone under 40 approaoches you about promoting your record to radio do your due diligence
On the other end of the spectrum, once someone falls off they are usually pretty much off the radar. So that’s the first warning sign. If someone approaches you and tells you who they USED to work for. BEWARE. Make sure that you do your research before you submit music to someone to work for you. Know that people think of themselves FIRST when it comes to business. How is this going to benefit me, the BEST business deals in my experience is where it is a win/win situation which is my philosophy.
Understand, the BEST price is not always the best DEAL. There is no such thing as free music promotion and there is no such thing as cheap music promotion… UNLESS you do it yourself on the socials or you do soundcloud promotion which can be very time consuming but effective.
You want the best PERSON…FIRST. Make absolutely sure you have several sources that you can bounce information and questions about the person you are looking to hire. You can find most radio program directors on Facebook and many of them will respond if you send them a DM about a name and ask if they know them and you are thinking about using the to work a record for you. You can also ask them for CURRENTLY WORKING marketing references.
Quite often many of our indie music clients from the states and abroad will ask us about a particular independent promoter, for example. I’ve been in the game well over 30 years and I have never HEARD of some of these people online claiming they can get radio play for indie music. I know most of the real players.
