Submitting Music

Conventional wisdom will tell you that sending your music to a “commercial” radio station is a waste of time. However, at AM 1690, we’re more concerned with discovering and sharing great new music that we’d love to hear what you’ve got. In order to make this a little bit easier, here are a few steps that may make the process a little bit easier.

Know Your Audience
While we love all types of music here at AM 1690, there are certain types of music that just don’t work well on an AM station. Hip-hop, electronic and metal tend to be genres that don’t sound great over the AM radio waves. We’d love to be able to play this music, but we also don’t want to misrepresent your music and have it sound muddy over the airwaves. If you think your style of hip-hop, electronic or metal may work on the station, please feel free to send it.

What Do I Need to Send?
Well, the first thing you need to send is a CD. That part should be the most obvious. But there are a few other things we appreciate seeing in the package. The first is a one-sheet. What is a one sheet? Well, it’s essentially a resume for your music. Send a description of your sound, your music and any other interesting facts or stories about the band or the CD. Also, and this is very important, please make sure to note on your track listing your recommended tracks as well as any FCC warnings. We’d rather not have the FCC come after us because you slipped a naughty word past us.

Where do I send this?
Send all music to:
AM 1690, The Voice of the Arts
c/o Matt Steadman, Music Director
1100 Spring Street, Suite 610
Atlanta, GA 30309

Following Up
So now that you’ve mailed your CD, you’ll want to follow up on the reaction of the Music Director. Generally, all MDs have designated call times once a week. At AM 1690, the call times are between 10:30am and 12:30pm on Tuesday. While we’d love to take calls at all hours of the day every day, we’re just far too busy and these hours practically guarantee you’ll be speaking with the MD. Our telephone number is 404-741-1690.

Once you get through, try to act polite and we’ll reciprocate. If there is anything keeping your CD from being added to our rotation, we’ll gladly explain. Try not to get defensive if you don’t like the answer. A lot of CDs come through the mail and internet every week, and obviously not all of them can be added. If you’d rather have someone else take care of this part, there are a lot of great promotions companies out there who can do this part for you. Just Google (or Yahoo! or Bing or whatever you prefer…Webcrawler anyone?) Radio Promotions Company and do some research. If you’ve got any questions, shoot us an e-mail and we’ll try to answer that part. Keep in mind, this can be very pricey, but if you’re serious about radio promotions, this is the way to go.

If you’d prefer to send a digital copy, please feel free. Send a high-quality (192kbps or higher) MP3 to msteadman@1690wmlb.com. DO NOT ask us to check out your MySpace, BandCamp or other site. Just send the music.