The truth is that radio promotion is anything but easy - whilst it might seem straightforward, getting onto the radio is extremely competitive and commercial radio stations receive an unbelievable amount of prospective music each week. It is difficult to put a figure on just how many submissions the commercial stations receive, but niche techno producer and DJ Dave Clarke was recently quoted to have received 2GB of music in a week in MP3 format - consider the reduction of quality to MP3 as a result of compression to understand the extent of the volume of music he received. Also bear in mind that techno is a relatively underground genre - the commercial stations would be receiving exponentially greater volumes of music when the pertinent factors are considered.

It is important to consider both submitting to non-commercial radio stations, such as student radio, as well as the main commercial radio stations to maximise your chances of getting plays and airtime. Understanding that your journey as an artist is a process rather than an overnight success story is crucial - whilst your end goal might be to end up securing plays on the biggest radio stations, obtaining plays on a smaller non-commercial station is an incremental step to your overall success as an artist. From that position, you can expect commercial stations to pay you more attention than an artist without those non-commercial plays, even if they weren’t your ultimate objective.