We offer an extra resource to help you get more responses from your radio pitch, the Radio Pitch Template. If you need help figuring out what to say to radio stations and how to get them to respond, download our Free Radio Pitch Checklist and Template here.
Every musician’s ultimate desire is to have their music heard by the masses. For the longest time FM/AM radio play was the best way to achieve this. It required mass production and distribution, and unfortunately, not everyone has the funds or resources to press thousands of albums and ship them to every radio station in the country. Us independent artists of the 21st Century are lucky though, because we have the internet, and with that comes online radio!
Today there are thousands of online radio stations that stream music non-stop, and quite a few are even happy to play new music from independent artists. If you just started sending your music out to every online radio station you could find, you’d end up wasting your time and a lot of the stations’ time as well, because only a fraction actually do accept music submissions. The trick is figuring out which stations do accept music submissions and what their submission rules are. These rules and requirements can vary from station to station. Unfortunately this takes digging around on countless websites just to see if they have submission information. Doing it this way, you could end up filtering through 20 stations before finally finding one good station that fits your genre and happens to accept submissions.
Three Ways to Get Your Music to Online Radio Stations
There are essentially three options for getting your music out to online radio stations.
Do it yourself.
The first option is to do it all yourself. As we mentioned above, you would end up spending a lot of time up front going through all the stations to find the ones that accept music submissions, as well as which ones play your type of music. Once you find the right stations, it takes a little more time to actually submit your music to each one. So while this route wouldn’t affect your wallet, it would definitely be a time investment. But if you’re a hardcore DIYer, this could be a fun project for you.
Want to see a sample Radio Pitch? Check out our template here. Also, we recommend including a ONE SHEET flyer along with your email that provides all of your information at a glance, like this one in a PDF format.
Use a third-party service.
The next option is to hire someone to do it all for you. There are music distributors like Tinderbox and Team Clermont that specialize in getting indie music out to radio stations and we’re sure they’d be happy to help you. This route would obviously save you a ton of time, as you could just sit back and let them do all the work. Although, money is your biggest factor when going this route because these distribution services will charge you a significant fee for their efforts. You normally have to contact these places to get an idea of their rates.
Do a combo of #1 and #2.
The last option is to do a combination of the first two. That is, find a list of online radio stations where the research has already been done for you. Then, all you have to do is submit your music. The ideal set up is an online radio directory that shows you ONLY the radio stations that accept music submissions from independent artists. If not, and these directories also list stations that don’t accept music submissions, you’re still having to spend time to filter. With a good directory, this route can end up saving you a ton of time and money.
The Ultimate Online Radio Directory
While researching online radio stations ourselves, we were first really excited when we started coming across various directories, as they seemed like ‘radio station treasure troves!’ What we soon found out, to our disappointment, is that most of these directories are not specific to only stations that accept music submissions. Ultimately, you still have to do a lot of digging through each site to see if they accept submissions and still end up doing a lot of filtering in the process. So while it’s nice to have a consolidated list, it can still be very time consuming to use them.
What we really needed was a master list where all the filtering had already been done and submission requirements for each station were spelled out. We couldn’t find a directory like that, so we created it ourselves. Now, we’re offering it to you. This directory is essentially a library of over 300 online radio station listings that are all accepting new music submissions from independent artists. Each listing includes a description of the radio station, a list of all the genres they play, a link to their website, and submission instructions or a link to them.
The library can be searched by genre so that you can go right to the stations that best fit your music style. The directory is split up into 9 categories, including Rock/Metal, American Roots, Indie/Alternative, Country, Jazz, Hip-Hop/R&B, Soul/Funk, Pop/Electro, Gospel, and Reggae!
We think this Online Directory list of radio stations accepting music submissions will help you save time and money when it comes to getting airplay on internet radio for your own music. Not only are the stations categorized by genre, they are alphabetized, and each listing clearly states how to submit your music. It’s also set up and fully hosted right here on The Crafty Musician blog for convenient access from anywhere as long as you have WIFI.
At the end of the day, we created this directory because it was a big need that wasn’t being addressed in a way we really need it. For us independent artists, booking shows and getting our name and music out there takes a lot of work and time, so the easier something is, the better! With that said, we hope you find this tool just as useful as we do. Check out the DIY Musician’s Online Radio Directory here.
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