Ty Cohen... pretty smart man
I decided to write my blog about Ty Cohen’s article “5 Sure Fire Ways To Get Radio Play For Your ‘Independent’ Music.” First off Ty Cohen seems like he is a decently big name in the music industry based on his little profile at the end of the article, well at least he’s a CEO of a publishing company.
His first point seems pretty reasonable, “Get your CD into the right hands.” He’s basically telling people that they should try and give their CD to someone who is actually in charge of what music is put on the radio. In other words, don’t give a CD to someone who is an intern where their main task is “Hmmm what coffee does my boss want today?”
Ty’s second point is to name drop. In other words use the competitive nature of the stations to your advantage. So if you have one station that loves to play your music, then go tell another rival station how much the first station likes your music and hope that competitiveness reigns.
Ty’s third point is to make genuine friends in the business. I think this is an excellent point because I can just imagine how many fake friends are out in the music industry. Everyone knows that everyone can tell if a friend is being fake and no one likes fakeness. But if you make genuine friends and you are genuinely interested in the history and passions of the person who has contacts, then it’s alright to see if that person will use their contacts to try and help your career. Most friends want friends to succeed.
Ty’s fourth point goes along with his third point in that he tells artists to network. I guess networking is more about using your friend’s contacts to make more contacts; aka not really being friends with these people, only business.
The last point is the best of all, “Go local, state, national.” It seems to make sense that you should first start out small then go bigger and bigger so that your fan base grows naturally, unless you are extremely talented and can skip local and state.
Overall Ty Cohen gives some good general points to artists who have created an Independent CD, but he ends with on last point: use the Industry Yellow Pages to help make contacts. Smart man, though a lot of it seems to be common sense.
http://www.cddesign.com/covertalk/archives/5_sure_fire_ways_to_get_radio...
I think what Ty has to say is valid. Some of his points seem a little like common sense to me, but to others they may not. For example, networking is really a huge aspect to selling yourself (or your stuff) in any situation. What I found interesting about this article is if you rearrange his points a little, they almost turn into steps. Here's what I mean:
Points #3 and #4 seems like a good first step. Make friends in the business and network. Whether the friend you have is the intern it doesn't matter, its a great first step.
Point #1 sounds like a good next step. You know some people now, use that intern to talk to some of the people higher up in the business. But don't forget about the intern, something tells me that that relationship could serve your purposes later in your career.
Point #2 is next. Now that you know someone high up and they are saying things about you, go to other stations and spark some competitiveness.
And finally Point #5 is really one that doesn't really fit into my step-by-step scheme. It seems to serve more as a guideline for implementing the previous ones. Start making friends/networking at the local level, then state, and so on.
Submitted by glmaster on Mon, 02/11/2008 - 10:31.