Submitting Music

Want to submit a CD for consideration of airplay on Radio K?

A majority of the CDs we receive each day comes to us from the various national promotion companies (AAM, Terrorbird, The Syndicate, Team Clermont, and Pirate!, just to name a few) that deal with sending out CDs to CMJ-affiliated stations. We do also receive a handful of CDs each day from independent artists — here are a few tips we've accumulated after handling and hearing tons of them.

Think you would be a good fit?

Check our playlist and charts to see if you really think your music would fit on a station like ours. We do play a lot of genres, but there are certain genres we don't play for various reasons. We can't stress enough how important this is because in the long run it will save you time and, most of all, money!

Do not clutter your package with tons of paper (press releases, posters, stickers, etc.). Unfortunately, we don't have time to read all the press releases and frankly we don't treat you in a higher regard if you've been mentioned in Time Magazine or Rolling Stone. A simple one sheet that lists the important details will suffice — a short bio, contact information, other bands you really sound like, a list of songs that aren't FCC friendly, and 2-3 songs that you think would sound good on the radio. Oh yeah, please only send us one unwrapped CD! If you send us more than one, we can assure you we'll be recycling the cases. We play an eclectic mix of independent music, however we do not play classical, jazz, or top 40.

After submission

We listen to as much of the music we get in as possible. However, since Radio K is considered a top tier station at CMJ, the influx of music we get each week is extremely large and there is no way for us to get to everything. We spend as much time as we can listening to music which has been backlogged, and therefore can no longer accept emails requesting tracking information from bands. We apologize for this inconvenience, but we'd rather be listening to the music than devoting hours to replying back to emails.

You passed on my record?

Please do not take this personally as your music may just not be a fit for our station (going back to the point we made earlier). If we do in fact say no, please do not keep pursuing us aggressively via phone or email as we're not too keen on getting into a verbal/written fist fight.

Can someone else do this for me?

We'd highly recommend contacting one of the national promotion companies mentioned above as they'd be able to send out the packages to as many CMJ radio stations as you want and track their progress. This allows you to focus on other aspects of being an independent artist while others do the dirty work.

We look forward to hearing your CD!
The Music Department