4.52am Issue: 029 13th April 2017 The PJ Harvey Issue

I'd imagine that a lot of what you do
for bands and artists must involve
expectation management - not
every artist is going to be right for
every radio station - how realistic
are your clients and do they
generally 'get it’?
“I tailor my campaigns to match the artist
and I also give them the most realistic
view of what will happen during the
campaign before we even talk about
booking them into the schedule.
Sometimes I’m far too much of a realist
and that’s where the conversation ends.
That artist will probably go onto another
radio plugger that blows smoke up their
arse and tells them they’ll be played on
every radio station in the land. Of course,
that doesn’t happen. I know radio more
than I know radio plugging and I know
what will or will not be played on the
radio. I can pretty much tell by listening
to a minute of a song who will play it and
who won’t be interested.
To answer the second part of your
question, I’d say it’s 30/70. 30% of the
people that get in touch with me about
radio plugging get how hard it is for an
independent artist to get played on the
radio and the other 70% think they’ll
breeze it onto the Radio 1 playlist on their
first single release. What usually
happens is, I work with the 30% that “get
it" and the 70% go elsewhere, and then
get let down by “sharks". They then
come back to me a few grand down :-(
When I take an artist or a band on, I
guarantee results - or their money back
- so they can’t really lose. I just want
them to know what to expect before we
start, so they don’t have massively high
expectations for national playlists
straight away. It’s something you have
to work on with each release. You start
to build a buzz and then you start
getting played on bigger and better
radio stations and shows as time goes
on. As long as you’re good enough!”
What timescales do you work on?
By that I'm thinking, (f'rinstance)
if I had a single being released in
September, when should I be
looking to start working with you?
“I plug 3 - 4 weeks before a release
date. I also get quite booked up, so
the earlier an artist gets in touch with
me (or another plugger), the better! I
need a week to prepare everything for
plugging, so around a month to five
weeks before a release date is ideal for
me. If artists are looking at press, the
lead in times are a lot longer as
magazines have a cut off time I believe
(for monthly publications) - so you
need to be getting ready about 3
months in advance. Usually major
artists release 3 singles and an album
in a 12 month period as part of an
“album cycle”. It’s not a bad plan to do
a similar thing even as an independent
artist.