What to Post When BBC 1Xtra Plays Your Record | TAP

Radio and everything you do online are two halves of the same week, and the join between them is where most independent artists lose value. A play goes out, nothing is posted for four days, and by the time it is the moment has gone. None of what follows is about gaming a station or mobilising your following at anybody. It is the ordinary work of being findable when somebody hears your record for the first time, and of making one play last longer than the three minutes it took.

1. 1

   Be findable on the day, not the week after

   The most common wasted play is one where a listener hears the name, searches it, and lands on something out of date. Before the record goes out, check every profile has the current photograph, the current record, and one link that leads somewhere useful. This takes an hour once and it is the highest-value hour in the whole campaign.

   BeginnerHigh potential

   TAP keeps the release details in one place so the links you send are the ones you meant

2. 2

   Have a fifteen to thirty second clip cut before release day

   Pick the strongest part of the record, cut it cleanly, and have it sitting in a folder. When something happens, and it usually happens at short notice, you want to be posting rather than editing. Cut two versions if the record has an obvious hook and an obvious moment, because they are not always the same thing.

   BeginnerHigh potential
3. 3

   Ask what you can share before the session, not after

   If a session or an interview is booked, ask the producer in advance what you are allowed to post, when, and in what form. Clip rights vary by programme. Asking beforehand takes one sentence and it means you can post the same night rather than spending three days finding out.

   BeginnerHigh potential
4. 4

   Post a play the day it happens

   A radio play is current for about a week and most of its value is in the first forty-eight hours. Post it with something concrete: the show, the presenter, the date. If you have permission for audio, use the audio. If not, a still with the details on it does the job, and it takes ten minutes.

   BeginnerHigh potential

   TAP remembers which shows played you so a claim in a post is one you can back up

5. 5

   Keep one pinned post or highlight of radio support

   Somewhere on your main profile there should be a place a stranger can see, in about six seconds, that real stations play you. Not a wall of screenshots. Four or five, current, with names and dates. This is the thing a producer looks at when they are deciding whether to open your email.

   BeginnerMedium potential
6. 6

   Follow the shows you are aiming at, and behave like a listener

   Follow the presenters and the programmes for the sound you make and actually listen. Not as a tactic. It means you find out when a show changes, when somebody opens a submission window, and when a slot moves, and you learn what the show does and does not play. Most of the wrong-show emails come from artists who have never listened.

   BeginnerMedium potential
7. 7

   Do not send your following at a station

   Organised requests, mass replies and comment campaigns are visible from the inside and they do not work. Stations can tell the difference between a record people are talking about and a record whose artist asked twenty friends to say so, and being caught doing the second makes the first impossible later.

   BeginnerHigh potential
8. 8

   Make your own footage of you performing it live

   Ninety seconds of you doing the record properly, filmed in a room with decent sound, answers a question that nothing else answers. It is the single most useful asset for radio, for booking agents, and for anybody deciding whether to put you in front of a microphone. Almost nobody has one.

   IntermediateHigh potential
9. 9

   Watch your own numbers on the days around a play, quietly

   Spotify for Artists and the equivalents will show you whether anything moved on the day of a play. Sometimes something does. Often nothing visible happens, and that is normal for a single national play. Look, note it in your own record, and do not build a plan on one day of data.

   BeginnerStandard potential
10. 10

    Update your BBC Introducing profile before you upload

    BBC Introducing is the route into the BBC that is open to everybody, at bbc.co.uk/introducing/uploader, and it feeds the national stations including 1Xtra. The profile attached to your uploads is what a producer reads first. Make sure it says what you sound like now, not what you sounded like two records ago.

    BeginnerHigh potential
11. 11

    Tell the people who backed you first, personally

    Your local BBC Introducing show, the community station that played you before anyone, the DJ who ran it in a set. A message to each of them the week a national play happens costs you five minutes and they will usually share it. They also remember being told, which matters for the next record more than it does for this one.

    BeginnerHigh potential

    TAP keeps the people who supported previous releases where you can find them

12. 12

    Build one link that has everything a producer needs

    One page with the record, a clean edit, a short bio, a square photograph, and one contact address. Send that instead of five attachments. It removes every reason for somebody to put your email aside until later, and later is where emails go to die.

    IntermediateHigh potential
13. 13

    Write about other people's records in your scene, honestly

    Not as networking. Scenes are visible to the people who programme them, and being someone who is obviously part of one is worth more than any amount of self-promotion. It is also how you find out who is doing what, which is how you find the next show worth sending to.

    BeginnerMedium potential
14. 14

    Save every piece of evidence as it happens

    A photograph of the playlist page with your record on it. The date and time of the play. The message from the producer. Keep them in one folder. Six months from now this is what you put in a cold email, and reconstructing it later is nearly impossible.

    BeginnerMedium potential

    TAP holds the campaign record so evidence is in one place rather than four apps

15. 15

    Do not buy followers, plays or engagement

    Beyond the obvious, it actively works against you here. Anyone assessing whether a record is moving will look at whether the numbers make sense together, and numbers that do not match are worse than small numbers that do. Eight hundred people who care is a stronger position than eighty thousand who do not.

    BeginnerHigh potential
16. 16

    Plan the fortnight after release, not just release day

    Most artists build a plan that ends on the Friday the record comes out, which is the point at which radio has barely started. Decide now what you will post in weeks two and three if a play happens, and what you will post if nothing does. Both need an answer before you are tired.

    IntermediateHigh potential
17. 17

    Keep the campaign in one place you will still have next year

    Who you contacted, what they said, what got played, what you posted and when. Whatever you use, use one thing. The artists who find their second and third releases easier are the ones who kept a record of the first, and the ones who start from nothing every time are usually the ones who did not.

    BeginnerHigh potential

    This is the part TAP exists for: one place that survives the release

None of this substitutes for the record or for sending it to the right show. What it does is make sure that when a play happens, it is worth something a month later instead of disappearing into a Tuesday evening. Get the clip cut, get the profiles current, ask what you can share before you need to know, and tell the people who backed you first. The rest is keeping a record so the next release starts further along than this one did.