Digital Blues

SUBMITTING MUSIC TO DIGITAL BLUES

If you want to submit music to Digital Blues for airplay or airplay consideration then please contact me at music@digitalblues.co.uk for mailing address etc. Please do not send CDs to any of the radio stations on which Digital Blues is broadcast as I am rarely, if ever, at the studios and so CDs that arrive there, will take a lomg while to get to me, if they do at all!

I welcome the opportunity to give radio exposure to all blues or blues based artists, whether they are just starting out, well established, unsigned, signed or mega-stars and I thank all those individuals, bands, PR and promotions folk, record labels and everyone else who provide music for Digital Blues. Indeed you are our raison d’être!! Without you the Digital Blues radio shows would be very ordinary and might well not exist at all!

I do not want what follows to be seen as a rant or anything similar as I very much welcome music submissions. But I do ask that you consider and take account of a my comments:

Format

In common with many of my blues radio  colleagues, I do not have expensive play-out software nor do I prepare programmes on a computer. I record them, as if I were broadcasting live (as anyone who has listened will know!!), using my home studio with CD players, mixing desk etc. The recording is then transferred to my computer for uploading.

The Digital Blues’ Studio – where it all happens!!

I cannot, at present, accept submissions other than physical CDs which I know is a bugbear to many of you.

With a CD, I can use it immediately plus I get the track listing, timings (if you have included them on the sleeve), writing credits, info about the musicians etc. none of which is usually included with downloads. There is also no substitute for actually having your product in my hands! In addition, this means I can choose the tracks I play from the whole selection on the CD.

Many of you want to submit content electronically (MP3, WAV etc.) as this is your cheapest option and you can decide what tracks you want to submit. Whilst I can see the reasoning behind this from your side, please bear in mind that for every electronic submission you make, I have to:

• download it to my computer
• burn it to disk
• create a track listing, with timings etc.
• print off the track listing
• visit your website to try to obtain some info about you and your music
• put the whole package together in a jewel case

On average, this takes at least half an hour per disk, often longer.

I am generally offered at least 30 downloads per week. To get these to the stage where I can broadcast them, for each download I have to purchase the blank disks, the jewel cases etc. and spend time doing all the things I detail above!!

This is on top of preparing and recording three hours of radio programming each week together with all the promotion of the shows etc.

Do the math as our American cousins love to say!!!

As I type this, I have more than twenty CDs waiting to be burned plus a further 10 which have been burned and which are awaiting track listings/timings etc so that I can use them on air!!

Content:

Given the amount of material received, you will readily appreciate that there are not enough hours in the day to listen to the whole of every CD submitted (I do have a life outside Digital Blues even if my wife is sometimes not convinced of this!!).

Therefore, I tend to dip into CDs and pick a track or two that has ‘immediate’ appeal etc. I do not necessarily have the chance to listen to the whole of those tracks so it would be very much appreciated if you could flag up tracks that may have language that may be considered ‘offensive’ or ‘adult’.

Sadly even the most innocuous sounding tracks can and do unexpectedly contain explicit language (God knows why as it adds nothing to the song) and only recently I had to fade a track by a significant artist early because of excessive gratuitous use of the F-word!

UK radio stations, in particular, are monitored and can get into big trouble and even lose their license if material broadcast causes complaints and is considered offensive or obscene. Equally, if Digital Blues attracted complaints of this sort, it would quickly be taken off the air and I would no longer be able to share with the world the wonderful music you are making.

Genre:

Finally, a little reminder that Digital Blues does what it says on the box, plays blues! It may seem obvious but you would be surprised how much music I receive that could not, even stretching a point as I often do, remotely be considered to be blues, blues based, blues influenced etc. So, please don’t contact me about off genre content. Save your time and money (and mine!)

Thank you for reading this far and thank you in advance for bearing the above in mind. If some of it seems harsh or demanding, please remember that I, and the vast majority of my blues radio colleagues, do what we do for the love of the music and as a result of a passionate desire to spread the word about the great bands and artists there are out there.

I am not paid to do what I do, indeed, as can be seen from the above, I subsidise what I do out of my own pocket! I know times are very tough for most musicians but ask that you remember that times are tough for us all and I do not have CDs to sell or gig fees to defray our costs.

Thank you for staying with this!! And thank you for taking note!! And thank you for the music!!