Show #2570 - Saturday 2nd December 2023
Show #2570 - Saturday 2nd December 2023
Adam Walton, BBC Radio Wales, Sat 2nd December 2023: New Music Catch Up / (Mostly) 2023 First Timers / Notes on Submitting Music To Radio…
PLEASE NOTE: This isn’t an official BBC / BBC Wales post. All words / opinions expressed here are my own.
Listen here via BBC Sounds: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001szpx
This week’s programme (Saturday 2nd December) is my annual celebration of some of the artists and recordings that didn’t make it onto my playlists, for one reason or another, in the latter half of the year.
They’re all great. Some are outstanding.
The TLDR (and then some) post below is a litany of excuses masquerading as reasons why this badly-oiled, one man* machine sometimes fails you.
The programme resonates with a thrilling range of sonic feats… there’s loud-vicious- loud (catharsis in excelsis); quiet-quiet-quiet (gossamer butterfly wings beating in delicate hues); and there are recordings that warp genres into slightly new shapes, cast by fevered imaginations.
Hopefully you’ll hear something new to love.
I’ll be out celebrating my partner’s birthday tomorrow night. She’s great and I’m nowhere near deserving of her. So I won’t be posting the playlists live to ‘X’ and ‘Threads’. The playlist information will be being updated live at the BBC Sounds link above, though, and on DAB radios / the livestream, etc.
I’ll be back live in studio, pressing the wrong buttons next Saturday night.
* one man - those automated BBC Introducing emails that suggest there’s a ‘team’ being this heroic, magnanimous and modest really boil my water. I think it’s important for all the hundreds of people who send us music to realise that the programmes are - often - the domain of one individual, and to temper their expectations of being listened to immediately, accordingly.
Thanks for reading and listening / diolch yn fawr iawn am ddarllen a wrando.
If you’ve heard anything new that you love - and that’s Welsh - that hasn’t figured in the show, please let me know in the comments below.
TLDR POST
It has been a long while since I wrote a piece outlining - as helpfully as I can - what radio is listening out for when it comes to new music: what it is that excites us, and how best to submit that music.
This piece - a chapter from my (still available to purchase on Amazon) book ‘On Making Music’ - is still mostly accurate.
Since that piece was written, almost a decade ago, the most significant change in the musical landscape that has implications for anyone self-releasing music, is that so many more people are doing just that, releasing / digitally distributing music via the usual platforms. Therefore so much more music arrives for my attention than it did back then.
For a while I tried to audit the number of recordings I listened to and considered each week. It’s always north of 250, usually in the region of 400-500 tracks per week. This includes promos from radio pluggers; music I’ve bought; album tracks (albums are still a big thing, thankfully); remixes; EP tracks; singles… and a whole slew of newness that comes in via the BBC Introducing Uploader.
There are still aspects of that tool that make me bristle with frustration (the lack of a Welsh language version, first and foremost… despite one having been requested numerous times over numerous years), but it does serve a purpose, and serves it well, frustrations aside.
So, yes, a lot of music arrives wrapped up with all the attendant love, hope and ambitions of the artist. If I conservatively estimate that I listen through 350 x 3 minute recordings each week, that’s 1050 minutes of music. Or 17.5 hours, in old money.
I play in the region of 40 tracks in any given show. When something is truly excellent, and moves the audience to comment on their love for that track, or there’s a story and momentum behind that artist and recording, some pieces receive multiple plays over the weeks.
These superlative releases are the spine of the programme. It’s really important to maintain a very high standard, for reasons I’ll double down on below.
This leaves very limited opportunities for your new recording to receive airplay. It’s very bloody hard to get airplay unless you’re very bloody good indeed, and - important point - you’re not the only person who rates yourself as such. Family and best friends don’t count, although they’re a great support and tonic. Everyone who sends music has best friends and family. On the equation of why something gets played, respective family and friends cancel each other out and makes not one iota of difference.
All that matters - all that really matters - is an interesting piece of music… something that shows more creative vision than redundancy (i.e. plagiarism); something that has spirit, that sounds like it had to be recorded; something that is the essence of a moment and a feeling crystallised in sound.
Everyone thinks their music is interesting and deserving of attention. It’s a fact of music life. Something happens to the majority of people’s critical faculties when they’ve finished recording something… sort of a Pavlovian Eureka moment that brings neither a doggy treat nor insight into displacement and / or water volume.
Most people are wrong when it comes to their own music. The best musical souls I know are often the most self critical; the least able are too frequently the most cocksure and entitled.
I don’t deny anyone the enjoyment of expressing themselves and loving every millisecond of the process, of course I don’t. Making music is spiritual and magical, a religious experience. But if you submit your music to anyone who isn’t you, they will listen to your music eager for excellence but dispassionately, taking into account their needs when it comes to all the many hundreds of you to whom they have a responsibility.
My chief responsibility is to my audience. They’re the ones I make a programme for, the only people I’m mindful of when I’m assessing your creative endeavours.
The best service I can do for any recording artist is to respect my audience and give them what I think is the absolute very best of what I hear in any given week.
Some people appear to believe that I - or the BBC - have a duty to play them whatever they record. No. That is absolutely not the purpose of my show.
The other less frequently talked about aspect of what does and doesn’t make it onto the airwaves is timing, and I suspect that timing is something you’d benefit from paying attention to, whoever you’re targeting in the ‘industry’.
It’s a horribly arbitrary factor you have little control over, but some common sense can maximise your chances.
Only the insanely optimistic, for example, submit music in the last couple of weeks of December. The whole music industry - apart from the algorithms at your preferred streaming platforms - goes into hibernation over Christmas… lazy, good-for-nothing, work-shy fops, the lot of them. And me. You might as well save all of your best fireworks for midday on June 21st.
It’s also wise to avoid festival season, which - these days - extends from April to October, but I chiefly mean high festival season… mid-June to the end of August… when labels, music media people, other artists are gallivanting and glad-handing their way around festival sites.
I go to Green Man every year. I’m only there for 6 days in mid-August, but it takes me months when I get back to work work, to catch up with the listening I’ve fallen behind on as a result of working at the festival.
It’s probably the worst time to send me music.
How are you supposed to know that? You’re not, really. It’s why I’m telling you now.
Hopefully some of this will have been useful. The above factors played a part in why some of the music that I’m celebrating on this programme (Saturday 2nd December 2023), didn’t make it into the programme in the first instance.
I hope you enjoy the show.
Your thoughts - as always - are welcome below (on SubStack, if that’s OK, so any discussion is preserved, and not prey to the whims of Zuckerberg / Musk et al.)
THIS WEEK’S PLAYLIST
PRAERS
Braille Moon County
HOLLOWS
Throne
VANILLA UK
Bass Guitar
CARLIE
It's The Little Things
ELIO
Sorority
INJIJO
nightsong
ZXKO DREAM
SYCAMORE LOVE
OUTRUN THE RAIN
Tell Me What You Think I'm Not
MORNING ARCADE
Aerochrome
KATIELOU
Soul
KIMA OTUNG
4K
LILA ZING
dancing in the sun
DJ ALKEMY
Maestro ft. BISON.FC
GWCCI
I'r Gad ft. Dan Jardine
BITW
Pretender
YOURS, OURS
university
TANNER HAYDEN
Distant Memories
VIOLET REDFERN
In A Mess
NIGHTLIVES
Mirror Maze
MARC HEATLEY
Most Probs
THE NIGHT I KILLED TOMMY
Star Through My Hand
LICO
Blocker Beta
SHAKE SHAKE GO
Diamond Eyes
SLEEP OUTSIDE
Lakes in Which to Drown In
BEAUTY QUEENS
She's Always Online
POPETH
Acrobat ft. Leusa Rhys
TARA BANDITO
Wyt Ti?
MELOUKA
Somewhere in '94
CH
On The Mic
KENJI & MC ENDO
All Day
FINDING AURORA
Repeat After Me
CORVAX
Take Me With You
TESSA J
Magic Moment
LA LOBA
Sovereign Pieces
J-LOWER
The Line (Donnie Darko edit)
RYHS
emit
STICKMAN
Aggro
LOVELETTER
Slow Death
MARGO THIRLWELL
Serotonin
CHERRYSHOES
You Were My Love
Z MACHINE
Spacewalk
JEWELLERS
Radio Pictures
ACCELERATOR JENGOLD
Sadly
SHOW STATS
1480 diff songs/ 1898 Total. 740 Artists in 47 shows since 1st, Jan '23 (~Songs per:40, Unique artists per:16) Welsh:97% Cymraeg:13% (feat. lyrics in Welsh); Source: Uploader:30%, Direct:17%, Bought:14%, Plugger:29%, Commission:8%
Comprehensive Session / Interview List: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1w-rIPj0l0QhUcbEm08PUPLUWh-416mwlteG_8wpNWtQ/edit?usp=sharing
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Diolch o galon,
Adam Walton