I’ve been thinking about this blog for a while now. Actually, it’s been years, and I still have further research to do. The problem is, to research it properly, I’d have to shell out lots of money to music industry rip off merchants, and unless I win the lottery, it just ain’t gonna happen.
So, what am I wittering on about? Less is more? Come on, spill the beans, woman – I hear you cry!
Ok, so, I’m a radio plugger. That means I work with bands and artists to get them played on the radio by sending their music to as many awesome contacts as possible. And a lot I can call my friends, too. I’ve probably got about 1500+ contacts in my “little black book” and about 500 of those are personal ones.
Now you may have come across various ads in your feeds of “we’ll send your music to 40,000+ contacts all around the world” and some may seem to be quite reasonably priced.
During the research for my Music Entrepreneur Master’s Degree in 2021, I decided to test out the difference between sending music to 10,000+ contacts and sending to just 100 personal contacts. A bold move, but I’m OCD for stats, pie charts and reports, and I also want to make the music industry a nicer place, and to help musicians avoid these potential scams.
So, I offered a rock band that I knew were working with – let’s create a new name for this company – BLANKET EMAIL PR and I offered them a free Pluggin Baby Radio campaign in exchange for them to book Blanket Email PR for a plugging campaign – supposedly sending out their single to 10,000+ contacts around the world. The cost was $50.00.
I used an independent radio monitoring platform to catch all the radio plays that this band achieved over a 30 day period. After 30 days, I plugged the same song to 100 of my 1500+ radio contacts.
I was quite surprised with the results.
With Blanket Email PR sending their music to “10,000+ contacts”, the band were played 16 times on 11 radio stations in 30 days.
With my campaign they were played 144 times on 43 different radio stations over the same period of time.
Pretty good stats, right? But I couldn’t help feel sorry for the band I worked with in this experiment, as despite this *only costing them 50 dollars, I don’t think 16 plays on 11 internet radio stations was good value for money. (*all these 50 dollars add up though, and this guy had already sunk quite a few)
During the research time on Blanket Email PR, I noted that they sent out over 25 music release emails per week. That’s an incredible number of music submissions to send to one person each week. But remember, they’re pumping information into a system, and hitting the “send” button. They don’t care how many emails swamp an individual’s inbox. They’re all about the volume. With the greatest will in the world, no one can keep up with this number of emails from one PR company. Less is more.
In fairness, my radio plugging costs more than 50 dollars, but I send to over 1500 contacts – not the 100 that I sent to in this experiement – so the airplay would have been a lot higher. These days, a Pluggin Baby client can expect to be played on between 200 and 300 different radio shows and stations, and usually 2000 times over a couple of months on one of my Silver or Gold packages.
In addition, earlier this year, I spoke with an artist who wanted to hire me for radio plugging, but he wasn’t a good match for my contacts, so I declined. We continued our conversation, and he decided to use a well-known radio plugging company – I’ll rename them – EMAIL SCRAPE PLUGGERS – and booked them for a “2 week awareness campaign” which set him back £850.00. Gulp. Their promise was to send his music to 40,000+ contacts, and when he asked which radio stations were likely to play his music, they responded something like this “it’s down to the radio stations, they decide which music to play. We put your music in front of the right people. We guarantee you will get radio airplay and interviews though”.
Ok, then.
He reported back to me that he received 2 emails during the 2 week period from radio presenters that were going to play his song. He was also tagged in one post on social media by another radio station to say that they were going to play him. So, 3 plays, then. From “40,000 people” that were sent the track. Their airplay reports seemed to be pages and pages of email addresses that had “opened the email” but opening an email doesn’t always mean a play will be achieved. Obviously not, according to these appalling stats.
I was gutted for him, and if his music was suitable for Pluggin Baby, I’d have given him a freebie, too – just like I did with the other band I mentioned in this blog.
So, obviously, these are results of just two investigations, and I’d love to do more – but do I want to hand over my hard-earned cash to a PR company that has simply scraped the internet for generic or dead radio station email addresses? No, sir. I do not.
My conclusion is “Less Is More” when it comes to radio plugging or online PR campaigns. And I don’t mean spend less, necessarily. Obviously Blanket Email PR are cheaper than Email Scrape Pluggers – so if you’re gonna get burned on one of these, go for them – BUT with your eyes open.
However, my advice would be to try and work with someone with personal contacts in the business. Someone who has relationships with the people you want to get your music to. You want to get feedback for your music, plays, reviews, and to create a buzz for your release. In my opinion you won’t get any of that from these massive e-blast mail outs that are being offered to independent musicians by some unscrupulous companies.
Before handing over any money, make sure you ask any potential PR agent or radio plugger the sort of results that they think you’ll get. They should know their contacts and know what music those contacts like. They should also be able to give you names of shows and stations, and an idea of the number of stations or publications that will be interested in your music. I suspect you’ll be able to check a lot of their results by simply looking at their social media.
A decent PR company should also be able to tell you which radio stations or publications will not play or feature you – maybe you’re not at that level yet, maybe you’re not suitable for a certain show or magazine, despite your expectations.
A lot of potential clients ask me “Will Planet Rock and Kerrang! Radio play us?” and I will always give a reality check about how hard it is to get on these large radio stations. I’ve written another blog about that, too.
I’d rather be honest and lose the client than lead someone up the garden path. The companies I’ve talked about in this blog are all about the “look what you can achieve!” or “we’ll get your music in front of the right people” or even “if you want to get heard by 40,000 people, you know what to do”. Really? Yeh, ok. Whatever.
I hope this helps at least one person or band swerve the snakes – please let me know via the contact form if you have any other examples, and I can add to this blog later on. Maybe if you’ve been in a similar situation, you can get in touch and tell me about it, and we can have a chat. If we can stop others throwing money down the drain in future, that would be a great outcome.
Be careful out there. Emma Scott
