"Radio Radio Radio"

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Chapter 4

"Radio Radio Radio"

After the seriousness of my last blog, I am pleased to say this next chapter is definitely more positive !. I can happily report that not everyone in the music industry is bad. In amongst the good people are some of the radio dj's. Now I say some, because believe me you do get some nasty people and huge huge ego's in radio. Since I began presenting on radio myself, my eyes have been opened to the politics and behind the scene goings on of radio, but I shall leave that for another day.

After all the drama of my record deal saga, I was straight back into the business of promoting myself, I admit I was a little knocked back and my confidence a little dented, but I figured I would put it down to experience, and it most certainly would not happen again !.

I started to reach out to radio stations and dj's on the Internet and contacted so many I genuinely couldn't give you a figure, most did not respond. I did actually expect this, especially from the bigger stations, I realised the emails and correspondence they must receive is overwhelming and they simply didn't have the time or resources to reply, and of course being a realist, I realised that not everyone would dig my music.

Over the following months a few of my records were picked up and included in various podcasts, which in my opinion is a great way to start gaining exposure. I have found that some artists are a bit caught up in the whole money side of things, and want to sell singles. Truthfully I would have to say that unless you are signed to a huge successful label responsible for promoting and selling your music, and you have a massive fan base, when you first start out promoting music, allowing a few songs to be downloaded for free really does help raise your profile, you never know who is listening and where it may end up. One of my early original songs appeared on an American chart in L.A, it got to number 13, I didn't even know how it reached there !

At the end of summer 2007 I was contacted by one of radio dj's I had written to earlier in the year, he had been one of the few dj's that had replied to me when I asked for addresses to send my demo. I was asked if I could do a short recorded interview, just introducing myself and my music etc to be included with some of my songs on his radio show. I remember being very chuffed, excited, and nervous..my first play on Internet radio, on a proper station !. I borrowed an hour in my friends studio to record the interview, and to date it was probably one of the funniest hours of recording I have ever done. I was so nervous, at first a talked so fast I kept running out of breath, which would lead to lots if swearing, with my friend laughing his head off in my headphones which just frustrated me even more ! After about the SIXTH take, I had gone into silly mode to loosen myself up, speaking in a very Welsh accent which made us all crack up, it was around the 10th attempt I eventually got a decent enough recording to send to the station. My friend often jokes about putting all my obscenities on a cd one day for release, he still has it all on his hardrive and often threatens to leek it out.

The evening of the radio broadcast arrived, I had put it out on all my websites, so I knew I had a few friends listening in. Something I regretted after, well just a little bit, I suppose it wasn't that bad. I sat at my computer cringing as I listened to myself talking, and some of the things I said, well if you didn't catch the show I'm not telling you ! I can tell you, even though I was sat alone listening, I went bright red, thankfully I was talking to my friends on line so they couldn't see me dying of embarrassment, but they were all kind enough to say they thought it went well. It's mad to think I was ever that nervous now that I do 2 radio shows a week !

After my radio debut I was lucky enough to start to get more play on radio, and things started to move in the right direction.

In my next chapter I will tell you about some more music projects I got involved in, and my accidental fall into radio presenting.

I hope you have enjoyed my blog, see you next time !

Love

Claire