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from: Ed_Zeppelin
4/22/01
11:39:57 AM
152.163.194.198
Congrats for getting thrown against the radio wall, in hopes that it will stick. (Should I have used the shit-fan anology?)
According to Music Business Seminars founder Peter Knickles, if you've had ANY kind of airplay, request the station's log and build a promo pack around it. Feed it to local newspapers and TV stations. Build it up, lie about it, just get it out there.
The theory is that by using the radio pyramid (stations are graded copper, silver, gold, platinum) you can get college radio stations to play just about anything, then use that to bump up to the next level. That is exactly how Trent Reznor, REM, Soundgarden, Huey Lewis and a whole bunch of other people got airplay.
It's strictly PT Barnum stuff, too. If they want to throw your tunes against the radio wall to see what sticks, do the same. Throw that minor exposure against the media wall to see what sticks.
Case in point; Tommy Caldwell and the Rumblers, from New Jersey, fed a single to every fucking market they could think of. Eventually it paid off when a college station in North Carolina started getting requests for the song. TC&TR concentrated in that area, playing clubs, making mailing lists, and selling their CD's. When they had sold 10,000 units the buzz started with the record companies (this was before the Internet) and a bidding war ensued between Electra and Polygram. They signed with Electra with a $1,000,000 advance. I'll bet they partied.
Now, you ask, who the fuck is Tommy Caldwell and the Rumblers? Good question. They fell off the face of the earth because they forgot what got them there; blatant ballyhoo about small hits in the college (copper) radio market. When Electra threw their album against the silver market radio wall, it slid off the charts like a loogie off a hot stove.
Rather than use the up-front money to continue what they had been doing, they dropped it on studio rehearsal time (you know what I'm talking about) and expensive production. They got a million-seller out of it. (A million copies in their cellar. Electra wanted the next Springsteen and so went to someone else, and TC went back to pumping gas.
At the same time, in Seattle a band kept badgering the radio station at the University of Washington to play their song. After a while a late-night DJ took a chance and played it. Thereafter he played it every night. Pretty soon the daytime guys picked it up, the requests floated in and a buzz started about the band, Nirvana.
Now, even if you don't like them, they were really good about hacking the shit out of the least little thing that came their way. If somebody played their tune on late-night college radio, they blew it up in the media to where it seemed as though God himself had spoken.
Just a thought. Revenge is a motherfucker.
ANTI POPEYE X FAN CLUB
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