Your New Song Needs A “Radio Edit.” Here’s Why:

radio edit

Believe it or not, radio remains a major force for music discovery. Is your latest track ready for the airwaves?

There are written and unwritten rules of radio. For example, there are words you cannot say on the radio. Certain artists get an exception, but you’re most likely not one of them.

Radio is far from dead. Over 80% of Americans listen to the radio at some point each day of their lives, and the songs they hear become the soundtrack to their lives. Your music could join those ranks, but you have to prepare your material for mass distribution properly. We can help.

You do not have to sacrifice your artistic vision to appease radio listeners, but you must position yourself for success. Record the material you want exactly how you hear it in your head. Then, once it’s complete, make a “Radio Edit” of your single, giving it the best chance at airplay. When listeners seek you out online or at a record store, they will experience your craft fully.

Censor yourself

Don’t be a friggin’ idiot. You cannot swear on the radio, so you’ll need to cut any profanity from your material before pushing it to stations. To do this properly, you’ll need to work with the original mix, which contains each of your vocal tracks isolated from each other and from the music.

Once inside the track, isolate the moments in question and briefly mute the audio. This will add a small gap in the vocals where the swear once was, thus appeasing the radio Gods.

Keep it short

“Bohemian Rhapsody” may get airplay, but your eight-minute opus will not. The average song in rotation at radio stations in 2022 runs less than three minutes in length, and most experts recommend artists hoping to join the rotation try to keep their submissions under 3:30. If your song is noticeably longer than most playing on the stations of interest to you, it would be to your benefit to create an alternate shortened version of the song that’s better suited to that station.

Here’s some additional advice from our friends at Bandzoogle:

Adjusting a song length can potentially be as simple as removing a repeated chorus at the end of the song, or removing an entire verse and chorus. But, if your song is more complex than this, finding a way to remove sections of it that make sense and still allow for the song to flow smoothly and coherently can be a challenge.

It’s quite possible you can make these length changes in the fully mixed and mastered version of your song, simply by carefully trimming and removing sections. If you know the tempo of the song (i.e., BPM), opening the stereo audio track in your DAW and setting the tempo to match can allow you to use trimming tools set to cut the track only on whole beats or measures.

Intros and Outros

People are too easily distracted for your song to include a long-winded introduction. The biggest songs of today get right to the meat of the song. Before promoting your music to the radio, trim your tracks to ensure listeners get to the best parts as fast as possible.

Check out Haulix, the music industry’s leading promotional distribution platform, when you’re ready to promote your next single to radio. Hundreds of labels and promoters are successfully pitching radio every week using Haulix, and you can too! Start your free trial today by visiting http://haulix.com/signup.

James Shotwell