Just like a real folk festival, but without all the sweaty people and the overpriced vegetarian food.

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Submissions

Festival Radio on Myspace.com

Submissions

Festival Radio happily accepts CD submissions from artists wishing airplay. I ask the following:

Please listen to the station first and ask yourself--does my music fit into this format?
If you have a website that lists radio stations providing airplay to your music, I would appreciate a link to this website. Why? Because your fans ought to know that they can hear your music on this station.

I preview music at work and in the car. This is important, because:

If you send me an unsolicited mp3 via email, I will not preview it and I will not play it. Plus, I can't preview it at work or in the car. This also applies to your songs posted on myspace.com. I also prefer to have the physical CD so that I have quality control over the mp3 creation process.
Unless I have already played your work or already heard of you somewhere from industry buzz, the chances that I will go to your website and check out your bio and download a few of your tunes are extremely slim. So, don't send me an e-mail inviting me to your site: I prefer that you send me the CD with a one-sheet.

What to Send

Professionally duplicated production run airplay/promo copy of your CD
One-sheet (bio, info about the album, etc.)

What Not to Send

Extensive press kit with glossy photos.
Promotional tchotchkes (pens, postcards, calendars, T-shirts, etc.)
MP3 files via e-mail (see above).
CD-R demos of your songs - If you're not serious about getting a recording professionally presented, then I'm not going to take it very seriously. Given how relatively inexpensive home recording equipment and CD pressing services have become, I don't think this is unreasonable.

Where to Send What You're Sending

Submissions by US Mail may be sent to:

Festival Radio
c/o Greg Grant
6333 Well Fleet Dr
Columbus OH 43231

If you plan to submit using FedEx or UPS, please email me for an alternate address.

Other things you ought to know:

I will be happy to confirm whether I received a CD you sent, but I would prefer not to receive e-mails asking me how I liked it.

If I add your music to Festival Radio, I will post that fact to my blog. I also report all adds to the Folk DJ List (FOLKDJ-L), I may or may not review your CD on the blog. You are free to use any unsolicited comment that I might make on your CD for your own publicity purposes. If I do not volunteer comment, that does not mean I did not like it - adding it to the OFF at all means that I found something I liked well enough to put in front of my listeners as worthy of being heard by them. I just might not have anything to say about it other than that it is worthy of airplay.

It may take me a few weeks to preview your CD. I have a full-time job and I do this for fun in my spare time. I try to review CDs in something akin to the order they are received, but if I get the new advance CD in the mail from Nanci Griffith or Pierce Pettis, it's going into the preview queue before your CD, and that's just the way it is.

You can see whether your music is in rotation on any station on live365 by going to the Listen page and entering your name or the album name in the search box. Any station that has your music in rotation or has played it recently will be returned by the search function.

If you're on Myspace.com, I'd like to be your friend.

Festival Radio reserves the right NOT to add a submitted track for reasons including, but not limited to the following:

Stylistically, it does not fit my format. I know it seems like my format contains a wide variety of material, but there are places stylistically I will not go.
Poor production quality
Off-pitch singing. I sing classical music in a symphony chorus, so I know a little about singing. I might excuse a missed note or two in an otherwise strong live performance, but I will not air musicians with continuous pitch problems in a studio setting.
Cliché-filled, trite high-school poetry quality lyrics.
Track contains profanity or other language that I find offensive.
I just don't like it