Radio Airplay

Is Radio Airplay Still Worth It?

Jango is a free internet radio platform similar to Pandora. Feed it an artist name and it generates a playlist of related songs. Radio Airplay injects songs from emerging artists into those playlists.

I started using Radio Airplay a.k.a. Jango Airplay when it launched in March of 2009. Over the past seven years, my songs have racked up 340,246 plays at a cost of about two cents per play. Some of that money came out of my own pocket, but most of it was generated by affiliate links in my four articles on Jango. The last one dates back to November of 2011, so we’re long overdue for an update!

Rather than directing you back to years-old articles (since removed), I’ve written this post as a standalone review.

How much does Radio Airplay cost?

Subscribing to any monthly package makes you eligible for up to 1000 additional free plays per week, for each of your songs that get at least 100 plays.

Radio Airplay Packages

The $30 per month for 1000 plays package is a no-brainer for me. The $10 package doesn’t provide enough credits to consistently earn free plays, and $100 is too big a leap for my budget.

The number of free plays you receive is based on your song’s weekly PopScore, which is determined by how listeners interact with it (likes/dislikes, etc). Most weeks I earned 100 free plays, bringing me up to 1400 or 1500 plays per month.

Radio Airplay NeuCoin Tip

You can also earn plays through an artist tipping feature integrated with NeuCoin, a virtual currency. Jango Radio listeners start with 25 NeuCoin for tipping emerging artists, and earn more by listening daily. Each tip puts 5 NeuCoin in your account. You can exchage 1000 NeuCoin for 500 plays. I’ve accumulated 180 NeuCoin since the feature went live early this year, so I won’t be cashing out any time soon.

How does Radio Airplay work?

When your song comes up in the playlist, your “promo unit” appears on the listener’s screen. They can ignore it, close it, vote on the song, or perform other actions depending on the configuration you select.

Lars Promo Unit


If they give your song a thumbs up, they “become a fan” and can opt to share their email address and/or leave a comment.

Radio Airplay Share

You can see recent listens, plays, and fans on your dashboard. Listeners can limit the ads they hear to one per day by connecting their Facebook account. When they do, a link to their Facebook profile appears on our dashboard. You can even click through and send them a friend request. It’s true – Jango listeners are real people!

Radio Airplay Fans

You can also message fans through Radio Airplay’s internal messaging system, individually or all at once. Don’t waste your time though. A typical message to my 14K fans nets only 3-4 thoughtful replies. Open rates aren’t provided, but clearly the vast majority of listeners don’t see their messages.

Targeting and Reporting

How your songs perform, which determines your PopScore, is largely based on who you target. You can create unique sets of targets for each song. Maybe one does well with fans of Death Cab for Cutie while another resonates with fans of Radiohead. This is referred to as Song-Level Artist Targeting, and it’s well worth taking the time to get right.

Fortunately Radio Airplay provides a wonderful tool for optimizing your artist targeting: the Fan Overlap Report, which shows you what artists your fans like, on a per-song basis.

Fan Overlap Report

Just click on a suggested target to add them to your targeting.

I’d love to see a toggle switch to optimize targets dynamically based on recent song performance. Maybe you’d start by picking three artists you sound like, and let the algorithm work from there. Seems like it would be doable!

There are two categories of targeting: Standard and Premium.

Standard targeting includes Artist Targeting and basic Geographic Targeting (plays are focused on the areas you select). It costs one credit per play.

Premium targeting adds Demographic Targeting (by age and gender), and strict Geographic Targeting (plays are limited to only the areas you select). It costs two credits per play.

Geographic and Demographic reports can help to refine your premium targeting. Personally, I don’t think it’s worth paying double for. Most of my plays are in the US, which is good enough for me.

My Radio Airplay results

I recycled affiliate income into plays for a couple years after my previous article, then took a two and a half year break, dividing my results neatly into then and now.

Radio Airplay results

As you can see, the percentage of new fans, comments, and shared email addresses dropped by roughly half. My guess is that active listeners moved on to subscription services like Spotify, leaving a higher percentage of passive “lean-back” listeners.

Ultimately though, do those metrics even matter? The way I see it, the value of the service is in the plays.

Is your music getting played? Yes. To real people? Yes. Are they actually listening? Who knows!

The value of a Jango email subscriber

My emphasis on plays is a break from the past, where I previously measured the success of my campaigns by the number of email addresses collected. Why the change of heart?

Of the 1291 email addresses shared with me over the past 7 years, only 396 remain on my list. To be fair, I recently purged my list of inactive emails, after sending out two warnings to confirm or be removed.

To gauge the level of engagement of the remaining 396, I sent out an email, and followed up with a reminder email, asking them to complete a three-question survey. Only 9 responded, and their answers aren’t promising:

Jango Email Survey

You might conclude that Jango plays don’t lead to sales, but you’d be wrong! Plenty of Jango listeners have purchased my music over the years, as I’ve found out about through social media, website surveys, and fan email.

Clearly that reality isn’t reflected in my current Jango email subscriber base, which is why I no longer measure my success by email shares. Now it’s all about the plays.

Is Radio Airplay worth it?

I guess it’s time to answer the question: Yes, it’s worth it.

At the very least, a few thousand plays will get you an accurate Fan Overlap Report. Knowing what artists your fans listen to is useful in any promotional context.

Beyond that, it depends what your goals are, and what else you’re doing to promote your music. You’re certainly not going to make your money back in sales, so Radio Airplay can’t function as the sole piece of the puzzle.

For me, it’s hard to justify the expense when I’m getting thousands of free plays every month, plus demographic reporting and a growing array of artist tools, on Pandora (submit your music here).

If you’re focused on SoundCloud, you might be better off with Feature.fm. The reporting isn’t as robust, but the plays perform double-duty by boosting your SoundCloud play count.

I doubt there’s much if any overlap between audiences, so why not try both? One listener pool may prove to be more receptive than the other.

You can get 100 free spins on Radio Airplay and support the site using my affiliate link!

Radio Airplay Free Plays

Have you tried Radio Airplay? Share your thoughts and results in the comments below!

96 Comments

  1. Thank you for another fantastic blog/review! I too have been on Radio Airplay since 2009. Would love to hear your thoughts on the organic plays. Also, am curious if you have any insight about situations like mine where I upload songs in various genres. Thanks!

    1. With song-level targeting, it shouldn’t matter if every song is in a different genre! Even PopScore is on a per-song basis, so it’s just a matter of optimizing for each individually.

      As for organic (unpaid) plays, that’s largely been replaced with the free plays for high PopScore songs. There are still ways to get organic plays though. For example, a top PopScore band could appear in Jango Radio Independent Stations and Hot genre-specific stations, or even become part of a regular genre or artist seeded station playlist. Those plays will also earn royalties collectable through SoundExchange.

    2. I used Radio Airplay for my 80’s genre rock songs and spent a lot of money racking up 36,096 plays, 71,703 credits used with only 369 fans. As a writer I think my lyrics are solid and the music rocks but then again every musician thinks their music is good. Sadly Radio Airplay did not give me the exposure I hoped for nor did it help me with any sales of my songs. While it’s nice to build up a fan base and get airplay I would not recommend this site to anyone looking to sell their music. Here is a link to my music and while I know the 80’s rock genre isn’t as popular as it once was I have to think there are plenty of people who still love rock and roll. I also have my music on Distrokid and it’s uploaded to all the major music sites but making music and selling it is not an easy task. If you decide to use Radio Airplay don’t expect a lot from it.

      https://soundcloud.com/david-weltman-982567192/sets/falling-ash

      1. Sorry for the late reply David! Your comment got flagged as spam.

        The reality is sales are hard to come by these days. Instead I recommend using Radio Airplay to help build a mailing list, so you can direct fans to the various places they can hear your music, and eventually put offers in front of them.

        I don’t remember which calls to action you can select, but perhaps offer a free download in exchange for an email address. The audience for 80s rock is likely old enough that many still download music.

        Some of those 369 fans may have already shared their email address with you, so be sure to grab them!

  2. Hey Brian! Erin R. from Radioairplay.com here. We really appreciate your membership since 2009 and honest evaluations of our artist promotional platform throughout the years. It’s personally always a pleasure corresponding with you. Any further questions that your readers may have please send them our way. They can reach out to us directly anytime. Our support team is available through live chat, phone, and 24/7 email. Visit: http://www.radioairplay.com/chat for all methods of contact.

  3. Nice write up, Brian. I discovered Jango through your previous articles and have been using it sparingly for a few months. Overall, I like it.

    If you’re using Jango in hopes of converting listeners into paying customers, you’ll be disappointed. But that’s a reflection of overall purchasing trends in music, not in Jango’s platform.

    If you’re just using it to get your music in someone’s ears, (who could legitimately become a fan), it’s not a bad way to go. I’ve definitely turned a few people on to my music through Jango that have even popped up in my SoundCloud listeners (which is pretty awesome), Facebook shares and Twitter followers. Granted, its only a few, but each one is a great feeling.

    My only real complaint is that for the type of music I’m writing, the listening audience on Jango is very small. Even after maxing out the target artists at 30, I’ve gotten to a point where I recognize most people’s profile pictures when I look to see who’s heard my music. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because a one-off play may not get someone’s attention, but if that same person is hearing multiple songs of mine several times a week, it may eventually resonate with them.

    I never accumulated enough weekly plays on a song to qualify for a Pop Score, because I promote lots of songs at once, so no individual songs were ever hitting 100 plays per week. But last week I changed my strategy and promoted one single song. I just logged into Jango after reading this article and was pumped to see that I got a Pop Score of 98 (and 250 free plays). That kind of got me hooked on Jango again.

    I’m sitting at 135 NeuCoin tips. The 1,000 coin threshold should be way lower. Something closer to 250 NeuCoins before you can redeem them seems more appropriate. I assume I’ll have moved on from Jango before I ever get 1,000 coins.

    Oh yeah, as you stated, the messaging system for communicating with fans is basically worthless. I agree that most people you communicate with never realize they have a message and that’s a huge flaw in the system.

    1. Thank you Mark! This is really, really helpful.

      It’s particularly great to know that Jango listeners are making the leap to your other profiles, SoundCloud in particular.

      Kudos on your 98 PopScore! I’m lucky to break 90.

      Too bad we can’t pool our NeuCoin. I’d tip all of mine to you if I could.

  4. Hi Brian! I’m in the process of getting started with Radio Airplay and your post is the reason why. Thanks for sharing your valuable experiences! In fact, I love your whole idea of “passive promotion” and I’ve been reading some of your other posts here looking for new efficient ways to promote my own (indie electronic) music.

    Specifically regarding Radio Airplay, I signed up a few weeks ago for 6 months on their 1000 credit-per-month package. However, I’ve had trouble actually receiving enough plays from the credits I’ve allocated. I’m getting fewer than 5 plays per day on average across all my songs, even with 1000+ credits allocated (currently split between 4 songs). I’m using Standard targeting, and I’ve selected 30 popular electronic artists who seem relevant to these songs.

    In my correspondence with the Radio Airplay support folks, they told me the only way to increase plays is to use “Warp Speed”. My campaign is already on the 2nd fastest speed setting, “Fastest”. However, I’m concerned that it may use up all my credits at once (which they confirmed might happen).

    Needless to say, if I only get a few dozen plays per week I’m not going to be getting anywhere near the PopScore bonus credits. Therefore, I’m still considering possibly using Warp Speed”.

    Do you have any experience with the “Warp Speed” setting? Do you think you’d recommend it?

    Thanks!

    1. Hey Walt!

      I just checked my campaign settings, and I’ve always had it on Warp Speed. I’ve got about 30 artist targets and 11 geographic targets.

      I recommend taking the plunge. Full speed ahead sir! I doubt you’ll use up all your credits in one fell swoop, but let us know!

  5. I’ve been doing Warp Speed for 10 days now, and it’s a bit faster, but not to the point of using up all my credits. It seems that the specific artists chosen really have a huge impact on the number of plays you get. Through some trial and error I’ve been able to find a few artists that get me more plays. Now it’s a matter of getting the best ratio of plays to LIKES, so I’m not just spending credits on bands that aren’t similar enough to make me new fans.
    It’s really hard getting started in music promotion! I talked about this recently on my own music blog (and gave you a shout out there, Brian!)
    https://waltcollins.com/music/music-promotion-in-the-age-of-obscurity/

    1. I guess it takes a lot of trial and error to optimize your campaigns before you can truly “set it and forget it” – but it sounds like you’re there! Thanks for the shoutout!

      1. I released one song, about 6 weeks ago, to “test the waters” and learn the ropes. I have 13 targeted artists on Radio Airplay and my Play Speed is set to “Normal” wit the Gold account level. For the past 2 weeks I have been averaging just over 30 plays per day. Whether that’s great or not is a matter of opinion. My point is Warp Speed doesn’t seem to be the requirement for airplay.

        As an aside, I find there is, not surprisingly, a considerable amount to learn about this part of the business.

        Also, thanks for your blogs. Very informative.k

  6. I think I’ve decided that radioairplay.com will be part of my longer term music promotion strategy. It’ll still take quite a bit of tweaking, but it seems like it may be worthwhile.

    Brian – what’s your favorite promotion service that’s not these guys? I’m guessing maybe submithub? Or is there something else I may have missed?

      1. So after about a year of using RadioAirplay as pretty much my entire marketing budget (at $30/month), I have been getting some pretty decent Pop Scores on RadioAirplay.com, several times having my songs hit with scores above 90. This past week, one of my songs actually got “Top 10”, with a score of 100. https://www.radioairplay.com/music+promotion/top_10_songs?week=35&year=2017

        But, here’s the perplexing (and embarassing) part… guess how many sales/downloads I’ve gotten on my bandcamp page over the last year? One. Price is $0.00. It’s a free download. But only one person downloaded it in the last year (that was in April 2017). Nothing at all since then.

        My music is pretty good, I think. I’m proud of my work. But even though I’m getting “Top 10” on RadioAirplay with a 100 Pop Score, I haven’t had any gain in listeners. What gives?

        Brian – are you sure we’re getting real listeners? Have you actually connected with any of your listeners who have told you they “found you” on Jango?

        1. Congrats on the top 10!

          No idea on the static listener numbers. I haven’t been using Radio Airplay lately myself, as I’ve been focused on a Deezer campaign I ran with Feature.fm (article coming soon!).

          Yes, we’re getting real listeners. I’ve connected with dozens of them over the years. Currently there are 299 of them on my mailing list, and I’ve purged my list of inactive addresses (people who don’t actually click on my links) several times.

          Does that translate to sales? Definitely not! I’ve been setting my stuff to free on Bandcamp also, and other than an initial burst from current fans, it doesn’t seem to increase downloads over time. I’d argue that most Radio Airplay listeners don’t bother to curate their own collection of downloads, and instead just listen to… Radio Airplay!

  7. Am experiencing some misleading concerns about Radioplay.com

    I signed up for their free trial and was impressed with their targeting features. I paid $30 to purchase more credits after my free credits ran out. If you are not familiar, their platform allows paying customers/musicians like myself to target radio stations identified by well known artists on Jango.com.

    For example, there is a Meghan Trainor station, Rihanna Station and etc. Each artist station plays a playlist of the artist’s respective songs including other artist similar to the genre.

    Radioplay.com claims that they will inject paying customer’s song into the playlists of the artists you are targeting (e.g. Meghan Trainor, Rihanna and etc.). Their platform allows paying customers like myself to list any artist I’d like to target. They also provide stats on real users & facebook profiles who have listened to your song based on your targeted list of well known artists. This indeed sounded genius.

    The problem became clear when I visited Jango.com. I visited the stations that I was targeting including some that I was not. I played the entire playlist of several well known artists just to see if Radioplay was indeed promising what they were intending.

    To my surprise and disbelief, I did not hear any unknown independent artist on any of the well known artists’ playlist (Meghan Trainor, Rihanna and etc). I performed a Google search on each artist on the playlist and they were all signed to Major Record Labels. None were independent and unknown like myself. I tested the same with other well known artist playlist with similar results.

    This raised my suspicion that Radioplay.com maybe misleading musicians and artists like myself. I wrote to their customer service requesting a clarification about this matter several a week ago and have still not received a response.

    So I’m taking my queries here to hopefully connect with other Radioplay users who may have experience the same. Look forward to hearing your thoughts on this.

    1. Two months ago I uploaded a single song to “test the waters”, as this is all new to me.

      I have monitored Radio Airplay and dabbled with settings in an effort to see what works best. During the 2 months Radio Airplay shows 1500 users having listened to my song. A small percentage of those have even identified as “Fans”.

      An area that is still somewhat grey to me is, if I understand it correctly, that the listeners reported by Radio Airplay are “paid listeners”. I know that when I have listened to my song through Jango, both logged in and not logged in, I never appear as a listener.

      I hope this helps.

  8. Hi Alan, thanks for your comment. The users are real and am assuming they did listen to the artist stations that you targeted. However, there is no guarantee that they actually heard your song on any of their playlists.

    Try going to Jango.com and play some of the artist stations that you targeted. Do you hear your song there or songs belonging to other unknown indie artists? Don’t think so.

    That’s where the concern is. It’s been close to a week since I wrote to Radioplay.com for a clarification and request to show me an example of a playlist containing indie-artists like ourselves.

    I’ve yet to receive a response.

    1. Yes, I have heard my song on, at least one, targeted artist station.

      I just did a test. To be very specific, on the John Prine radio station in Jango Mark Rosal’s song “Yes I Did” just played.

      When I review Listeners in Radio Airplay, it identifies the station that the listener heard my song on.

      Where did you publish your song so that Jango would be able to pick it up (e.g. CDBaby)?

  9. That’s strange. I just went to John Prine’s radio station and fast forward by clicking next on every song. Every song seems to be someone well known or at least signed to a major record label. I was hoping to come across your song but didn’t. Also no signs of any unknown indie-artists.

    Were you logged in or logged out when you heard your song?

    Answering your question, I published our song via Tunecore.

    1. I was logged in at the time. I had a screen shot but couldn’t include it in my response :(.

      I notice that in Jango your name does not come up as a selection under “Artist Radio” (assuming that it appears the same as in the blog) where as my name will appear as does Mark Rosal’s name (BTW … prior to today I had never heard of Mark).

  10. Will try logging into Jango to see if I experience the same results. It’s late here so will try doing it tomorrow and will update. Meanwhile, you should try logging out of Jango to see if anything different on the same playlist. By the way, what’s the name of your song and the artist name you go by?

    1. I just did another test. Logged in, listening to Bob Dylan radio, Robin Henry/Close Your Eyes And Say Goodbye is playing.

      My song is “Nobody Won” and you have the artist name :).

  11. Thanks Allan & Brian for the feedback. Actually finally tested out by creating a user account and logging into Jango. Once logged in you will see random indie artists plays after every 10 well known artist plays. So it is legit and it works as long as the user is logged in. If you are logged out, you will not hear any indie-artist plays. Still have not heard from Radioairplay.com and wished they would have sent me an email to clarify the confusion.

  12. Hi Brian , John Moore Connected (my group name) I wanted to sell my music privately at $15.00 USD includes S&H or $7.50 for email with all songs . I belong to CD Baby . What is the best way to sell my music? John Moore

      1. Hi Brian , I have never heard of Band Camp . CD Baby seems to give the Artist very little return . If I am selling my CD for $15.00 USD am I charging to much ? You can hear my music go to Google Search type in John Moore Connected click on Jango-Free Internet Radio . Thanks for any help. John Moore

        1. Honestly John, nobody buys CDs anymore. Dedicated fans will pay $15 to support you, but it’s no way to make a living. $7 is more reasonable for an unknown indie.

        2. Hi Brian , if CDs are no longer sought after how do you get your product to the consumer ? Would it be straight email at $7.00 ? I am more into the music with not a very good business sense . I really appreciate your input . John Moore

  13. Hey John,

    We reached the limit of threaded responses, so hopefully you’ll catch this. Again, I’d recommend trying Bandcamp. I believe in a straight $7.00 or even $10.00, but personally I don’t like doing the $6.99 or $9.99 thing because it feels too sales-y. But again, it’s not like people are buying CDs anyway!

    1. Hi Brian , I am going to join Band Camp . I guess they set up sales for myself . Last question if you can bear with me . What are people using if not CDs ?

      1. I’m not Brian, but everything he’s said to you is spot in. Instead of CD’s, people are using sites like Bandcamp and iTunes to do direct downloads of mp3’s in in lieu of CD’s. That’s actually been going on for years. In fact, the same way mp3 downloads killed CD sales, downloads of mp3’s through online stores like Bandcamp and iTunes have already been neutered by streaming music over your WiFi and Phone Data plans using sites like Spotify, Apple Music and the lot.

        Quite honestly, if you want your music to remain relevant, you should be pushing your music to sites like Bandcamp and Soundcloud (both allow you to stream your music, but Soundcloud does not allow you to sell). You should also be using an aggregator like like CDBaby or Distrokid that will publish your music to all the major streaming services (Spotify, Google Play, Youtube, etc.) which is really where the industry has been headed for that last several years.

        The reality though, is that there’s little to no money to be made in the new streaming model. I’ve made all of $40 in the past 12 months.

        If you’re out playing shows, by all means, bring CD’s with you to sell in person… but when it comes to the Internet, your CD is basically irrelevant. People want to listen on-demand and at the click of a button, not order a CD and wait a week for it to arrive. Sad, but true.

        Good luck with it.

        Mark

  14. I’m not Brian, but everything he’s said to you is spot in. Instead of CD’s, people are using sites like Bandcamp and iTunes to do direct downloads of mp3’s in in lieu of CD’s. That’s actually been going on for years. In fact, the same way mp3 downloads killed CD sales, downloads of mp3’s through online stores like Bandcamp and iTunes have already been neutered by streaming music over your WiFi and Phone Data plans using sites like Spotify, Apple Music and the lot.

    Quite honestly, if you want your music to remain relevant, you should be pushing your music to sites like Bandcamp and Soundcloud (both allow you to stream your music, but Soundcloud does not allow you to sell). You should also be using an aggregator like like CDBaby or Distrokid that will publish your music to all the major streaming services (Spotify, Google Play, Youtube, etc.) which is really where the industry has been headed for that last several years.

    The reality though, is that there’s little to no money to be made in the new streaming model. I’ve made all of $40 in the past 12 months.

    If you’re out playing shows, by all means, bring CD’s with you to sell in person… but when it comes to the Internet, your CD is basically irrelevant. People want to listen on-demand and at the click of a button, not order a CD and wait a week for it to arrive. Sad, but true.

    Good luck with it.

    Mark

  15. Hi,
    I pay to Radio Airplay to be listened (Sheep’s Power) and my new CD will be released next week.. But I would like to know If it is really worth it. I have the feeling that any of my 300 fans have never paid for any of my tunes but I can’t be sure as CD Baby don’t know who are the streamers or the buyers of any platforms like iTunes, Spotify, etc.
    In fact my question is “Do the well known bands like Genesis, Supertramp or any have to pay and if not do they collect some royalties from Radio Airplay?

    Thanks
    Bruno

    1. If your goal is sales, it’s hard to say if it’s worth it Bruno! I think Radio Airplay is best when your focus is simply awareness.

      Well-known artists do NOT have to pay, and they do collect royalties through SoundExchange. In fact, we collect royalties too! Of course, they’re not enough to offset the cost of the plays.

    1. Hey Finn, I’d like to personally address that posting on the RipOffReport website (which in itself is an extortion website). We as company cannot rebuttal on that site or it will just make the post more popular in web searches and if we go through their arbitrator to state our case with evidence they charge beyond an arm and a leg. I would absolutely like to shed some light on that one and only case from 2013 for any artist that comes across it.

      The artist dissatisfied spent a total of $2,790, $200 was refunded immediately upon their request. A grand total of $2,590 was spent. For $2590.00 USD their profile received 113,143 total plays.

      Out of 113,143 total plays they received 2610 fans. 433 chose to share their personal email address with this artist.
      Out of these 2610 they only directly contacted 5 fans directly through the Radio Airplay dashboard.
      The artist did receive 4 messages from listeners. 3 in response to a Mass Email Message and 1 from a direct message.

      All of us at RadioAirplay were very apologetic that we did not meet this artist’s promotional needs. We were only met with hostility, verbal abuse, and threats any time we tried to assist this artist. It was a most unfortunate experience.

      I would like all artists to know that you can absolutely contact us anytime through our support channels and our support team are more than happy to answer any questions and concerns you may have about our service.
      https://www.radioairplay.com/music+promotion/contact

      Best,
      Erin Rizzo
      Director of Operations
      RadioAirplay.com

  16. Hi I was on Radioairplay today trying to join and sign up. My email and password kept failing several times till i got a person on chatline for help. She told me to do everything I already did change password and she asked if i gave a password i didn,t give. After 20 25 minutes of wasted time she dissapeared. It seems no one knows what going on. Id stay away.

    1. Hello there,
      I am so sorry you seem to be having trouble getting into your RadioAirplay account. Just checked out your chat transcript with our support member Kelly and looks like they sent you a reset password email, then a new temporary password, and then attempted to call you at the number that you provided where there was no answer. We’d still very much like to assist you and make up for any inconveniences that you are experiencing. Kelly will be emailing you in just a few to setup a personal call or chat to sort this our for you.

      Best ,
      Erin Rizzo
      Director of Operations
      RadioAirplay.com

  17. Brian,
    Thanks for this article. I know you wrote it about a year and a half ago but its new to me, and I’m new to this industry. It got me to dig deeper on analyzing the results on Jango plays, fans, song targeting etc. I really like your analytical style. I’m helping my daughter who is starting out as a singer songwriter. Its getting both of us to think about who she is relative to known musicians both inside and outside her genre of country music.

    She has about 1,500 plays divided among 6 songs so she doesn’t have enough data for the listener overlap metric. Her fan rate is around 1.3% similar to yours. I’ve tinkered with the play speed and the song targeting to optimize the pop score and hopefully add fans. We’re still learning about that. Getting pop scores that add to your play credits requires some planning ahead each week, and get it started on Mondays. We have to decide which songs to focus on for the week, how many credits to apply, the play speed and the song targets. We’ve improved on the pop scores over time. One thing I really want to know is: can we change the fan rate by better dialing in on the song targeting. TBD.

    Can you tell me: Did you made it a regular practice communicating with a not-yet-fan via their Facebook contact? It feels a bit creepy do do that and we really don’t know what to say.

    I have found that Radio Airplay staff has been very responsive to all emails and chats that we have had.

    I will add this… I’m learning that there is a lot required to get into the music industry. This is one area of many that need an artists attention. It seems like Radio Airplay fills a niche.

    1. You can absolutely change the fan rate by dialing in the targeting! Not that I was patient enough to go about it systematically, but it sounds like you are.

      Nope, I’ve never contacted listeners through Facebook. What I really got out of Jango/Radio Airplay was email subscribers. As of today 289 are still with me, after multiple rounds of weeding out subscribers who don’t ever click on my links.

      That said, if I were starting from scratch, I’d likely reconsider my metric of success. And I suppose it can’t hurt to contact your Facebook contact and offer them a free download and a link to your stuff on Spotify. I imagine one of these days, like after a major feature launch, I’ll revisit Radio Airplay and write another article!

  18. I spent some money in the past with them, got some fans and comments, plus free plays afterwards with some more fans, of all these no one replied when I contacted them by email or on Facebook, and no result whatsoever in sales, so I simply don’t trust them. It can’t be possible – not a single “fan” that clicked on that Fan button was willing to exchange a few words with me … It was a waste of money and I will surely not pay again in the future …

    1. I’ve still got plenty of email subscribers through Jango/Radio Airplay, who actually click on the links in my emails or I would have weeded them out. As for Facebook, unless you’re friends they likely won’t ever see your message.

      Whether or not it’s worth it depends on what you’re hoping to get out of it. You certainly won’t make more in sales than you spend on plays. I’m sure the vast majority of listeners just hear the song passively. It’s online radio, after all. For some people, just being heard is the goal, so mission accomplished.

      1. I think Brian’s second paragraph (above) is bang on. I have fans and have exchanged some emails. If I spent more time (and money) targeting the audience I’m sure that I could grow my fan base more rapidly. I’m looking for exposure and really nothing more.

        1. And I can totally understand that. As much as I’d like to think I make music for myself, or for art, or insert noble purpose here, it doesn’t mean much if nobody hears it.

  19. after 4 years of Radioairplay i finally am ready to quit the legacy status and leave all together.. i have 1700 fans.. i have finished in the top ten at least 12 times including 3 out of 4 weeks about 3 months ago and that is when it all changed.. since then i have been unable to get 100 plays on any of my popular material and my plays are not accumulating any free plays any more.. i asked them why and got no satisfactory answer. iv’e had enough.. when i emailed my so called 1700 fans that i was leaving and provided my email i got no response.. i an beginning to think this site is a bad as N1m which is a total farce.. i have released 9 cds since 1987 and have 100K plays a month on Pandora but not much on spotify or other services.. i had hoped jango would boost that but apparently not.. life goes on without radioairplay for me…

    1. Wow, 100K plays per month on Pandora! I get… (checking)… 5K. I’m really surprised those Pandora plays aren’t translating to Spotify and other services.

      We’ve known since the beginning that the built-in communication tools are worthless, so to clarify — did you email your 1700 fans OUTSIDE of Radio Airplay? I’m guessing the answer is no, so your result doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.

      If I were you, I’d pull your fans email addresses (the ones who shared them) into MailChimp or whatever and try emailing them with a clear call to action. Maybe “Listen on Spotify.” And see if you don’t get a better result.

      Fwiw I wouldn’t expect Jango plays to boost your popularity on other services. My guess is that Jango users only use Jango.

      If you were to continue using Radio Airplay, I suggest focusing on your banner and call to action. That’s where the action is!

      1. Hi Brian, you are right i used radioairplay email service which is basically worthless. i am still only a free account on radioairplay and not thing has changed with plays elsewhere. i don’t think i will go back to paying monthly as it appears my 1800 fans aren’t clamoring for me… part of the translation from pandora to spotify is probably the genre thing.i have released one “new age” cd which i played everything on and took many years to complete.. came out in 2005 and got accepted by the genome project which is where pandora picked it up.. spotify has that one as all other services do too but in addition they have 9 other cds which are sort of rock/jazz singer songwriter and though i have sold many in person i haven’t had a streaming response like Rivers From the Sun the new age one.. i also am not spending hours on my computer marketing, i did a few youtube videos but promo has’t been my thing. being 69yrs old i am appreciating the passive income and hope it continues.. which so far seems to be quite consistent.. i quit gigging last year as lugging my keys around to make 100+ or – a gig or traveling much further to make 3-400 just wasn’t worth the effort or time anymore. the last 3 years i gigged i gave away about 30- 50 cds a gig as i always got a 1000 of any production and sold probably half to 2/3 over the next 3 -5 years and then i was on to the next cd.. i am grateful for the real fans i accumulated and perhaps maybe someday a song will hit somewhere even bigger and maybe not but the library is out there for the listening and “who knows what will come” title of one of my songs lol thanks for responding and best wishes to you in your musical endeavors..

        1. I don’t perform live either! That’s great you’ve been able to give away so many CDs. I’ve still got 3K or so in my garage.

          Congratulations on your success so far, and here’s to more in the future!

  20. I just sent the following message to RadioAirplay.com:

    Your Monthly Package pricing feature is unfairly structured. 300 points cost $.30 each, 1200 cost $.40 each, 4800 cost $.48 each, 11,400 cost $.57 each. Typically, the more points purchased should be LESS per point, not more. Why is it set up this way? Either it’s poorly conceived and the site’s owners are not aware of the concept of buying in bulk, or they hope that the site’s members won’t take the time to calculate the cost per point at each level. Whatever the case, I’m serious considering finding another site to host my music…

    1. Hey JohnnyCNote
      Where are you seeing those price points?

      Play credit packages for RadioAirplay.com are as follows:

      $10 – 250 plays
      $30 – 1,000 plays
      $100 – 4,000 plays
      $200 – 9,500 plays
      $500 – 25,000 plays

      The price points decrease the more play credits you purchase. You also get more features as the play credit package increases. Please let me know if there is a discrepancy somewhere on the site or advertised outside of RadioAirplay.com dashboard.

      Best,
      Erin Rizzo
      Director of Operations
      RadioAirplay.com

      1. Thanks for the quick reply! Here’s where I found my information:

        https://www.radioairplay.com/bands/145306/airplay_payments/manage

        Play Credits Loyalty Rewards

        $10 250 +50
        $30 1,000 +200
        $100 4,000 +800
        $200 9,500 +1,900
        $500 25,000 +5,000

        What other features are you referring to? Also, I temporarily switched from premium to standard targeting, but now I’m getting no plays at all, even though I have sufficient paid plays. I looked through your support page but nothing applied. Unfortunately, I’ve rarely had much success with the support page and usually have to use email instead.

        Another issue is the Neucoin feature. I can’t verify that Neucoin is still in business, yet the feature still appears on your page. Also, there doesn’t appear to be any way to link lyrics to individual songs. I recently inquired and was referred to LyricsMode, but there’s no clear way to link them to Jango.

        Overall, your site is quite overdue for a major update…

    1. I never received your email, and I haven’t had any plays for nearly a week. Also, customer support hasn’t responded to any of my inquiries…

  21. Hey there Johnny we’ve def been emailing you back on all the support emails you’ve sent.

    I’ve fwd’d all of the support responses that I could find to your email on your RadioAirplay.com account from my personal email at [email protected].

    If you still have not received them please email me directly at the email address I’ve provided for further support.

    Thanks!

  22. I don’t know if I’m late to the party here, but I have one question; After I joined Radio Airplay and figured out what I was doing, I began to get regular airplay each week, and the numbers started going up. Suddenly, yesterday I noticed the plays had stopped, and had stopped completely for over 12 hours. All songs have credits applied. Why would they stop for 12 hours straight? They are now being played again, but I still don’t understand the 12-hour gap. This clearly negatively impacts the number of plays a song will receive in a given week, which certainly seems unfair.

    1. Two guesses:

      1. They had an outage of some sort
      2. You exhausted your share of credits, divided across a week or month, for the day

      You could always email support! Personally I don’t see why it matters as long as the credits vs spins are in alignment.

  23. Thanks, Brian. My guess was an outage as well. But it happened again yesterday as well. The tunes were being played perhaps one or two an hour then it stopped completely for almost 12 hours. Resumed again, and now has stopped completely for 6 hours. I have credits assigned to all the songs (although I’m still not completely clear on this concept – do I have to have a minimum number of credits assigned to a song?). I’ve already contacted their support twice with no response. The down side to this is that my understanding is that a certain number of plays in a week affects your “pop score” which in turn can lead to credits being awarded. This is where the sudden stop of plays during the day would matter..

  24. Strange no one has mentioned the drastic reduction in the cost of credits which I only recently noticed.
    $30 package used to be 1000 plays per month – now dropped to 600 !!!

  25. If that’s the case, I am due a refund – I spent 30.00 yesterday and received 600 play credits. Same experience as Geoff.

  26. Our current pricing is 600 play credits for $30. Brian’s Color Theory account is a grandfathered account since he has been with RadioAirplay.com (it was actually Jango Airplay then) since March of 2009. Most companies when changing prices offer current paying accounts a chance to remain on older pricing models. Brian’s account has remained in good standing and an affiliate of ours for 11 years. 🙂

  27. No worries. I understand if there could be some confusion. Amazing to have Brian on board for the past 11 years and to be able to continue to promote indie music on streaming radio. Surreal times right now. The RadioAirplay.com team is working remote and here for any assistance though. Music truly has the ability to comfort us and we hope we can bring some positive vibes out from music being created from our artist community. Hope all of you are staying safe and healthy.

  28. Hi Brian. I just got a “tip” email? “Tom just Tipped you 5!
    They were listening to song name…”

    Hummm, what is it worth? Is it money? Free plays? I didn’t people could do that?

  29. Yikeessss are we in 2002? (radioairplaypros) lol! My Radioairplay stats so far: 1421 plays and 5fans… Got the 100$/month offer, which gives me 2500 plays. Still on my first month. Don’t know if i’ll renew this. CHEERS

    1. I’d try to figure out a way to add your fans to your mailing list. Maybe try the mass message feature? Last I used it I didn’t get many replies, but maybe they improved it.

  30. I assume Jango has a blanket license that makes them able to use nas music, Da baby music.. even cardi b.. music.. its not “free” someone is getting paid.. Im wondering if Jango pays.. i havent been able to find an answer your blog has the most information. Thank you for your response.

  31. I have been a long time user of Radio Airplay when I discovered them through Brian’s site. I love the Fan Overlap reports because they give you insight into how your song correlates to other artists… so you know you can fit on the same playlist. I use this for pitching my music. I don’t invest much in the pop score but do look at how songs perform based on the number of likes to paid plays. For me one out of a hundred seems pretty average and 2 o3 3 per hundred paid plays is much better.

    This insight comes only from registered users and recently RadioAirplay required you to use premium credits (2 per play) if you want to play for only registered users. This effectively doubled the cost. Like Brian, I have a legacy account so I get pretty good value but lately have not been getting good likes. My current campaign has about 200 plays (400 credits) but only one like. Not enough for a good fan overalap report. I’m not sure what is going on but am not getting the value I used to.

    If anyone has insight would love to hear.

    Thanks!

  32. I haven’t used Radio Airplay for a while as I didn’t like the way they reduced the number of plays but charged the same money without any notification. At least not to me.
    However, I did put one song up recently for 200 plays to see how it would go and I got 2 likes – so, nothing to write home about.
    One observation – unlike when I first contributed the listeners are now predominantly ‘guest users.’
    I’ve looked back over my fan list (total of 84) and none of them are guest users!! When I check on my plays now I don’t even expect a like from a guest user.
    Am I missing something here?

    1. I haven’t tested out Radio Airplay for awhile now. I guess the fact that people can listen without creating an account is a good thing for reach, but maybe not so good for acquiring actual fans.

    2. Totally agree, Geoff. I was a big fan of Radio Airplay for a few years and did pretty well over there. I was able to rack up a ton of free plays via consistently high Pop Scores. I currently have over 20,000 free plays sitting in my account. However, they’ve so drastically reduced the amount of plays you can achieve, that it’s just no longer practical for me to continue spending money on it. I downgraded to the free plan, hoping to just use all the free plays I’ve accumulated, but I’m lucky to even get 10 spins a day now. At this rate, it would take me 5 years to work through all my free plays.

  33. Yes that’s how I tend to see it. A shame really because initially I really enjoyed putting my stuff on Radio Airplay and I could see the actual listeners, but the double whammy of higher prices and faceless ‘guest users’ has knocked it badly for me so I won’t be doing much else on there.
    I don’t do this with any ideas about making money – I’m too old for that now but I do like to see a response.
    My best responses for some time now have come from Audiomack and Louder.me

    1. Interesting! I haven’t tried either of those. If you’re looking for pure exposure, YouTube is another great option. Cost per view can be really low, and if you don’t feel like figuring out the interface, Drooble has a service that couldn’t be simpler to use (my review).

  34. Thanks Brian, I already have stuff on YouTube via CD Baby but no one ever visits. My fault no doubt.
    I don’t have the expertise to promote myself.

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