Ignore The Hype

I like Guy Kawasaki, so when he recommended Airspun for indie musicians as a way of getting airplay, I just had to check it out. Not surprisingly, some indie marketing consultants are also recommending the site. The idea is interesting: Through agreements with commercial radio stations across the U.S. (they currently work with 17), Airspun allows you to purchase a one minute "artist profile" that includes roughly 45 seconds of music. The cost goes from $30 to $400 for each broadcast.

As an indie artist, what's not to like? For a relatively modest investment, you get all the benefits of radio station airplay. Well, let's break it down for you.

Problem #1: These are commercials

This is not traditional radio airplay. These are commercials, and each of your broadcasts won't be surrounded by other music--they'll be surrounded by commercials. Additionally, the songs are packaged like commercials, complete with "showcases paid for by..." tags at the end. This is hardly the best environment to showcase your music.

Problem #2: You only get to present 45 seconds of your song

With roughly 15 seconds reserved for all the promotional voiceovers, each of your promotional broadcasts include only 45 seconds of your song. Note that the biggest problem isn't that the listener will only hear part of your song (although for a lot of songs, it is an issue), the problem is the length of exposure. For a song to truly make an impression on the listener, it needs to sink in. A 45 second snippet just doesn't have the impact of a full song, complete with several repetitions of a song's hook.

Problem #3: To use this strategy right, you need to spend a lot of money

One of the draws of this approach for indie musicians is that it looks extremely cost-effective. At $30/spot (the lowest rate quoted), you can get 3 spins on a commercial rock station in San Diego for less than $100. What a deal, right?

This is where cost-effectiveness comes in. Former Arbitron executive Pierre Bouvard wrote a book called Optimum Effective Scheduling (OES), the essence of which was that, for a message (or song) to get effectively exposed, it had to reach the audience at least three times. The trouble is that people don't listen to a station 24 hours a day, so to guarantee reaching them three times, you need to schedule many more than three spots. How many spots required is based on reach frequency analysis, but from my experience, I would estimate that it would take a minimum of 40+ spins on an average rock station.

What does this mean? This means that if you spent $300 for ten spots via Airspots, you may as well not have received any airplay at all. Reach frequency analysis would say that your spot was heard by the average listener one time, if that much. And one listen just isn't enough to make an impact.

How often do we criticize radio for focusing so much on one listen records and not the stronger music that artists like you create? This is the type of trap you will build for yourself if you ignore OES. Your song will get played 10 times, but even with great positioning during the day, it will hardly make a ripple. So, for your Airspots to be effective, even at the cheapest rate of $30, you're looking at an investment of at least $1200. And even that is the bare minimum.

Problem #4: You will get screwed on when your profile spot is scheduled

Radio stations make a lot of money from their commercials at peak listening. You can be certain that if the station needs to make a scheduling decision between playing your spot during the afternoon commute and the spot from the local Chevy dealer that spends $60 thousand a year at the station, they Chevy dealer will get the afternoon drive spot. You? You're spot will run in overnights.

The Airspun site supposedly lets you choose your part of the day that your spot will run, but the choices are so vague as to give you no protection. Say you open your wallet and drop the $115/per spot fee for the "JAN Prime Special" on KBZT in San Diego. "Prime" certainly sounds like your artist showcase will run during the morning or afternoon commute, doesn't it? Well, here's the definition of "JAN Prime Special" from the Airspun website: "Special Prime-Time Rate - Jan Only." Note there is absolutely no definition of what "Prime-Time" is.

Don't believe me? Browse the spot times by each station that the Airspun site conveniently provides. I looked at KNDD/Seattle. Six artists used Airspun to promote their music on KNDD, including 2 spins by a band called Latent Anxiety. When did they play? Well, four the six spins occurred between 2 AM and 4 AM. Yes, these indie artists spent their hard-earned money to get exposure in the middle of the night. Does that sound like a good investment?

Look at another example: From the Airspun site we can see that Movin Melvin Brown bought ten spots on KMTT in Seattle. Ten spins on a major market adult rock station! Sweet, right? Well, 8 of the 10 spins occurred between midnight and 5 AM. The cheapest rate for KMTT is $35, so that was $280 in wasted money. Not so sweet.s

Problem #5: The spins don't count on charts

I just looked up on Mediabase, an airplay monitoring service, to see if I could find the Movin Melvin Brown airplay on KMTT. If I did, that would mean that you could conceivably buy your way on to the radio charts via the Airspun system. That would be kind of unsavory, but in a business sense it would actually be worth the monetary investment. Well, guess what? It's not there. This is not surprising. Both Mediabase and BDS go to great efforts to protect the integrity of their charts. They specifically do not include spins from songs that are featured in commercials, even with 45 seconds of music.

So this means that not only are you not getting any significant exposure from your Airspun investment, but you don't even have the benefit of having your purchased airplay showing up on radio station playlists or airplay charts. As far as the radio industry is concerned, it's as if your airplay didn't occur at all.

Problem #6: You can't do any co-operative advertising with your showcase

We already mentioned that one downside is that these are actually commercials, but commercials do have some benefits, and one of the primary benefits of a spot schedule is ignored by Airspun--the ability to leverage the commercials with music stores or clubs. Imagine going into a record store and telling them if they place your CD for sale on the counter you'd mention their store in all your advertising. In that scenario you get airplay and potential sales from that airplay. But you can't do that with Airspun.

In conclusion

Radio is still the single most powerful force at exposing music to a mass audience. Unfortunately, getting commercial radio airplay is incredibly difficult. A service like Airspun is enticing because it makes what is so difficult suddenly appear to be so easy, and not just easy--but not that expensive. Unfortunately, you can file this in that overflowing file: If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.