German radio promotion

Radio airplay is an important step when planning music promotion. In Germany though, it might be quite a puzzle. As opposed to the Nordic countries, where a huge part of the radio landscape is dominated by the public service broadcasting companies, the German market is very fragmented and split up between several local commercial, public and college radio stations. In order to provide an example of how a German radio station can work, we took a closer look at one of them.

Berlin’s FluxFM radio station is one of the main stations in the Berlin area, targeting young adults with new music. FluxFM is a commercial station and has around 30 000 listeners per hour. The station presents a lot of new music every week and also sees how the airplay can affect an artist’s career.

“We get a lot of new music all the time, mostly through labels and blogs, but also directly from the artists”, says Melanie Gollin, FluxFM’s music editor. “We present many new artists. They don’t have to be big or famous anywhere, but it has to work on the radio, obviously. There has to be some kind of catchyness to the songs”, she says.

“We’re also quite open to helping artists in different ways – by putting in a good word for a label, for example. In Germany it’s also common that bands do media partnerships when going on tour. This means that, if FluxFM is a media partner, we can present the artist’s show in Berlin. We can also give the music airplay and promote the show on the radio.”

Everyday the station hosts live shows in the studio. The performances are recorded and sometimes also circulate on the radio playlists afterwards.

Melanie is also a part of the booking group for the Ja Ja Ja showcase (which is held in the FluxBau-venue in the same building, in collaboration with FluxFM). “We look at the Ja Ja Ja-artists from a radio point-of-view. We’re pushing the event and playing the artists’ music, so for us it’s important that the songs work on radio.”