Calvin Harris’ worldwide takeover: Turning brand promotion into radio plays

Calvin Harris is one of the most played artists on radio stations around the world. With smash hit songs such as “Feels” & “One Kiss”, the Scottish-born producer has gone on to achieve billions of Spotify streams. Having collaborated with the likes of Khalid, Ellie Goulding, Frank Ocean, and many more names, his artist brand has gone onto being one of the most recognizable within the electronic music industry. With the ability to get consistent placements in the Billboard Top 10 charts, and achieve over 20 million total social media followers, his ability to have his music embraced on a worldwide scale is extremely impressive. But as an artist, how can you get on the radio? That’s a question that we’re going to explore within this article. After all, radio exposure on big stations is a great way to promote a new release, and brand promotion is a great way to get radio exposure.

The answer may seem fairly straightforward upon first inspection. An artist, or their team, approaches the directors/producers at a radio station, and pitches the track towards them for potential consideration. If they love your track, they’ll play it. As nice as it would be, the true answer is not that easy. The real reason for songs getting loads of radio exposure is very often advertising & budget of what a music team is prepared to pay a radio station. After all, the more money that is offered, the more ears will listen to the track across multiple stations.

Unlike Spotify, who often promote unknown artists, the majority of radio stations are quite the opposite. As their business is based on the idea of people listening & paying attention to what’s played, they want to be making as much advertising revenue as possible. This often means that they are prepared to play songs from popular artists on repeat – as they know the consumer market will be paying a lot of attention. The consumer psychology is pretty simple: If you turn on the radio and don’t instantly hear a song you love, you’ll change the station. This means that the companies with a lot of money (such as major labels) are able to sustain a financial commitment towards record labels as they know their music will be gaining a lot of attention. Likewise, the record labels will probably accept the vast majority of tracks submitted by major labels in order to accommodate their consumer fanbase. As the major labels have a lot of revenue to give advertising revenue to, their music is constantly on repeat – hence it’s one of the factors as to why their tracks become hit singles.

As you can tell from the previous paragraphs, the truth is that radio promotion can be extremely difficult for independent artists. With such a large amount of competition, the chances of being featured without a hefty budget are pretty slim. However, some radio stations such as BBC Radio 1 (UK) are giving independent artists the opportunity to have their music featured without paying large fees. Essentially, their “introducing” program is a platform for emerging artists to showcase their talent. With over 190,000 registered artists, and over 470,000 tracks uploaded to the site, it’s certainly a service which has shaped the landscape of the entire music industry – especially within Europe.  In 2010 BBC Music Introducing was awarded the best new platform to discover music at the BT Digital Music Awards. The process is fairly simple: an artist submits a track via an online submission portal, and then an A&R listens and potentially features the track on a local radio station run by the BBC. Many famous names such as George Ezra & Ed Sheeran’s careers were actually launched off the back of BBC Introducing. Pretty impressive!

Another way to gain radio airplay is via non-commercial radio. This is basically stations that are run independently (such as community or college radio stations). As they are getting pitches much less than the mainstream radio stations, it would certainly be much easier to get your music on these platforms. The contrast of non-commercial radio is quite obviously commercial radio. In order to get your music onto commercial radio, the most efficient strategy would be getting a lot of non-commercial stations to play your music, and then using that as a “proof of concept” in a pitch towards commercial radio stations that people love hearing your music. However, just getting radio airplay is not enough for the big stations to consider you. As you start getting more traction within the radio, stations would expect that your actual career is also progressing. This would include high amounts of streams, tours, and merchandise sales in order to compliment radio airplay.

But as with anything within the music industry the best way to get radio airplay is via relationships that you generate. This means spending countless hours speaking to people at any station you wish to be on, and creating a genuine friendship with them that isn’t solely predicated on them featuring you. If you’re a small artist with no record label, the best course of action may be to target smaller radio stations in your country – as they would be the ones most likely to feature you. But in contrast, a bigger artist with loads of connections could quite easily start from the top and work their way down – ensuring that they have coverage in every area they aspire to.

If you don’t have the connections yourself, one option that you have is hiring a radio plugger to do the pitching for you. Essentially, these are people that have extremely close relationships with a lot of radio stations within a certain genre. eg. Pete Tong on BBC Radio 1, and many other DJs within the radio scene. Their job is simply to get acts that hire them into the radio. This could include simple radio airplay, or even a live performance session at the station.

In order to find a radio plugger to promote your music, it’s often a case of a google search and finding people who work in your specific genre that have great results. When pitching to a plugger, it’s an extremely good idea to include a press kit so that they can use resources within a pitch.

Press releases are basically a pitch of your new song to a journalist, playlist, or radio station. Therefore, you should be able to include as many relevant details as possible. For example, if a new song is released just before an upcoming national tour, it would be worth mentioning the dates of each event so that your publicity is maximized throughout the entire document. Likewise, you could talk about any collaborations with influencers, or well-known vocalists etc. Essentially, you want to hype up your brand within the press release so that media companies view you as somebody prominent within your niche of electronic music. Here are some other things you’ll want to ensure in your press release:

• Don’t make it too long. The biography should typically be less than one page of A4 long. It should feature your background, accomplishments, and plans for the future.
• There should be several professional photo shots of the artist for any website/social media features from the radio station.
• Keep the format simple. Don’t color the document or make it too complicated.
• Outline the details of your release plan for the track so they are aware of other promotional activities.
• Mention any previous radio/press sites that you’ve recently been featured on. This could include blogs, newspapers etc.
• Create a list of artists that your music is similar to. This helps a lot with the pitching if your music is similar to successful producers.

Being played on the radio is not an easy task. It requires a lot of time establishing connections within the industry, and often a lot of money in order to help push a track to commercial success. With the majors having a large budget for almost every single track, they certainly have a large market share of the radio airplay within Europe, and the rest of the world. 99% of the songs you hear on a commercial radio station will typically be on a major. As a (probably) independent artist, you should be focusing on results to enhance your entire artist brand in order to make yourself attractive to venue promoters, management, labels, press, music supervisors, etc. With the right work ethic & quality of music, you too can certainly have your music played as often as Calvin Harris. Good luck!