How to track your internet radio spins

A lot of new artists don't really understand how radio works so I'm going to break down the difference between national radio and internet radio. National radio pays licensing fees to the major labels so they have permission to play their music. The labels pay the national radio stations for advertising. You see how they work together. The licensing fee depends on how many listeners the station has. So if you have a radio station and your not paying licensing fees then the artists don't get pay royalties from the station playing their music. Indie radio stations can get a license and it usually runs about $300 a year for small stations but most don't have it. Now, why do I bring this up? Any radio airplay is good, first of all but I wanted to help new artists understand how the system works.

So national radio and college radio stations usually have licenses to play ASCAP and BMI music. So that means the artist gets paid for spins.

Many internet radio stations are not licensed so you may not get paid from the spins.


So this just means you need two plans. One plan has to get you spins on licensed radio stations. The other plan has to get you spins on internet radio stations or unlicensed radio stations. Usually if you go to the website of an indie radio station and if they are licensed to play ASCAP and BMI music it will say so at the bottom of the website.

For artists that are not registered with ASCAP and BMI this obviously doesn't matter. But if you are trying to get radio play you should be registered of course because you can't get paid if your not.

Small checklist for radio spins
1- Start with college radio
2- Look for internet radio stations that have an audience
3- Check Blogtalkradio for radio play
4- Track how many radio stations you contact and send music to
5- Send music to stations daily and add up results at the end of each week


This should help secure some free radio spins, though some internet radio stations may require you buy ad space in order to get spins