Independent Promoter Checklist
By, Bryan Farrish

If you are hiring a promoter to push your artist to radio, here are a few things you can consider which will help you have the greatest chance of success. (And when I say promoter, I mean an airplay promoter, not a club or booking promoter.) The big concern with this process is, if you choose the wrong person(s) to promote your artist... and end up with bad results... you can't just go back and do it over again. That's it for that CD (at those stations). That CD is now "an old project" at those stations, and you can't go back to them until you have a new release.

USING A FRIEND: Non-experienced friends sometimes offer to work artists to radio for free or "for a few dollars". This is fine as long as you use them for the right tasks... like helping with the mailing, etc. If you are working college radio... say, no more than 20-30 stations... then they could make some calls too. But if they try to call any more stations than this, or if they try to call commercial radio, they will probably stumble after just a couple of weeks. And forget any capacity of doing reports or trade charts.

SOMEONE FROM THE MAJORS: Staff promoters at major labels sometimes offer to "help you out on the side" for a fee. On their days off, or on the weekend, they say they will "make some calls for you". What happens is that their company finds out and disallows it, or, the person gets tied up on their days off and can't do it. You are then stuck. Either way, it is a conflict of interest for them.

PR PEOPLE: Public Relations (or "publicity") people sometimes offer to work an artist to radio for airplay. But don't, however, confuse PR with airplay. A real radio campaign has nothing to do with publicity. They are two separate techniques, with different contacts, lead times, terminology, call frequency, and so on. A person who is good at one is usually terrible at the other. This is why they are always separate departments at labels.

STATION PEOPLE: Station employees are sometimes recruited to work an artist, and will tell you that "they know what stations want." This sounds convincing, but in reality, taking the calls (which they do/did at the station), and making the calls, are very different animals. Until station people are trained (at a label or indie), they make poor promoters.

OWN CHART: When you do hire a real promoter, make sure he/she is not affiliated with the chart that they say they are going to promote you to. Some promoters actually publish their own chart, and they can put you on it wherever they want to. And they can take you off just as quick. Worse, any advertising money you place with the publication actually just goes straight to them. They won't make any of this clear to you... you'll have to ask around.

BIG CLIENTS: The most-often used sales technique of promoters is to tell you they have worked "some big artist", and that this would benefit you. Ask them what they mean by "worked". Were they solely responsible for charting that artist? Probably not (you will have to ask the artist to verify this... the promoter is just not going to tell you the truth.) More than likely, the promoter was probably just partnered with a label or another promoter, or worse, was just an assistant or sidekick. Again, they WILL NOT tell you they were not the only promoter. You will HAVE to ask the artist or the artist's management directly.

Promoters who really do work major label projects just do not like to work with entry-level projects. With major label projects, the indie promoter ALWAYS has staff promoters at the label doing a ton of the work, in addition to heavy retail (the CD is on the shelf at most bookstores), touring (20-200 cities in major venues), and press (10-100 articles in major publications like Spin or Billboard, along with 50-500 articles in small publications.) And all this is on top of TV appearances. So if you think that the indie promoter is the one person who made the artist chart, think again. He will not be able to do the same for you.

CONTACTABILITY: This is probably going to be the one thing that you end up really liking or disliking about the way your indie operates. Some indies are always there when you call, others are never there. The ones who never answer will invariably tell you, "I spend all my time on the phone talking with the stations... Isn't that what you want me to do with your project?"

Good try. What these non-contactable indies are actually doing is spending "some" time on the phone with "some" stations, and spending a lot more time dining at restaurants and seeing friends. And if you thought it was difficult reaching them before you hire them, just wait until AFTER they get your money. I see this again and again and again. If you think about it, an indie's sole job is to talk on the phone. Why then, if they are there by the phone, would they not pick up when you call? What if a station calls?

And that is exactly it: They are NOT there when a station calls... because they REALLY DON'T spend that much time talking to stations on the phone. They only want you to think that they do. And worse, if they say they give clients (and potential clients) a different phone number to call than the one they give the stations, then you can guarantee that you (the paying client) will never get that person on the phone when you need them (or much less, to be able to spend any time learning from them.)

A true indie promoter is a non-stop call center, who gives TOP priority to incoming calls. They should have several people available to answer calls; if everyone is still on the phone when the phone rings, someone should HANG UP and answer that incoming call. Remember, incoming calls are top priority... it could be a station, and stations normally only call when they have good news.

REPORTS: Reports are a requirement that well-organized promoters provide to you. There is no other way you are going to be able to understand (within an hour) what is going on with your airplay each week... much less let someone else (stores, papers, clubs) know what is going on, without a report.

OFFICE: If the promoter does not have an office (even a small one), then you will be competing with things like the promoter's sleep, TV, neighbors, dinner, etc.

ASSISTANTS: If a promoter handles more than one genre of music at the same time, or if the promoter does college radio at all, then assistants are mandatory. The phone calls have to be made, and no one person can call more than 150 stations a week AND do reports AND do faxes AND do emails AND talk to you when you call. Impossible.

COMPUTER LITERATE: I don't have to go into how important computers are becoming. But I should mention that as web radio becomes used like regular radio, those promoters that are not up on computers are going to have a problem. Already, web radio is used in the college CMJ charts, and some commercial charts.

COLLEGE RADIO: College should be considered for every campaign, even if you are doing high-level commercial radio. College radio is relatively inexpensive, and will make some good looking charts and reports to show retail, press and clubs.

FAXES: Serious promoters uses faxes; faxing is simply the fastest way to get a one-page synopsis of info to the stations... with pictures if needed. They are not cheap, but a good promoter should still include these faxes.

EMAILS: While you may get excited about email, remember that since email is free, stations get them from every artist on the planet. And all the emails look the same. So in order to build a project, you must use faxes and calls, because most artists can't afford them (and that is why you will stand out.)

REFERENCES: Any promoter worth consideration will have a list of clients or past clients. What you are looking for is a promoter with projects that are on your (independent) level. A list of "big" clients, however, means the promoter is used to having massive help from major label staff promoters, national tours, retail promotions, advertising, not to mention hundreds of newspaper, magazine, and TV appearances. Since that promoter will not have these with your project, you will be very difficult for them to work. You need a promoter who is set up to work with indie projects like yours. Besides, real "major label" promoters DO NOT take indie projects.

More likely, however, the "major label" promoter was actually not the promoter that worked the major projects in the first place. They were probably just assistants in the office, or were mail people, or more often than not, they were just outright lying. Happens all the time. You will have to ask the artist directly to find out.