How King Radio has Transformed in the Digital Era

Radio has transformed, shouldn't your promotion strategy?

Historically, traditional radio has always been king when it comes to breaking a new artist or getting exposure. But in the digital age, radio has transformed and has revolutionized the way that we all listen to music. With streaming and on-demand services being played through the vast array of devices we all own, there is a new king on the throne.

Streaming radio is notably a more popular and effective way to gain exposure as more time is spent listening to these services than traditional radio.

Problems promoting on traditional radio:

1. There are a limited number of stations and airplay
2. There is no way for listeners to interact with the music.
3. Most people change stations when they hear commercials or ads
4. It's illegal to guarantee song plays
5. A ton of resources and money are exhausted trying to get airplay.
6. You don't know that everyone hearing your music is in your target market
7. You can't measure song performance in real time and it's extremely difficult to get deep analytics.
8. It's virtually impossible for an up and coming or independent artist to get on traditional radio

Why you should promote on streaming radio:

1. There are millions of customized stations with endless airplay
2. The fans are engaged and can interact with the music on their devices
3. Digital promotion allows for tracking and analyzation with real time, in depth analytics
4. Guarantee that your songs get played by replacing paid, irrelevant audio ads with music
5. Listeners typically don't change stations when audio promotions play
6. Get exactly what you pay for. For every penny spent, know that your song is actaully being listened to by your target market.

Streaming radio is a completely untapped promotional market. There has been no way to effectively promote songs directly inside streaming services as song plays are based on similar artists and popularity. This means it is currently underutilized by the industry even though it accounts for more listening time than traditional radio!

Any artist can get their music onto digital platforms, but their songs often get lost in the black hole of music catalogs! So it's great that your song is on Spotify, but it's 1 of 25 million songs. So now what? Your songs are on streaming services, on-demand services, digital distributors, all of your social media, and music hosting sites. Your goal is to get the fan to make the decision to visit these platforms and press the play button. So you spend your limited marketing budget trying to market and promote to people who are being hit with advertising chaos from EVERYWHERE. Then through all of this, you want them to make the decision to actually hit the play button! That is all too messy!

Wouldn't it make more sense to put your music directly into the streaming radio station to relevant fans who are already listening? Then allow them to interact with the song as native content by adding it to playlists, favorting, repeat listening, sharing on social media to all friends and family, and ultimately result in more purchases and royalties for you?

You can look at it as a funnel:

How digital song promotion used to be done

1. Google Double Click, 2014

How digital song promotion should be done