Guaranteed Radio Airplay (and a Great Way to Test Songs)

Yes, I said guaranteed.  You'll reach up to 7,000,000 listeners.

I'm talking about this offer from Jango.  $10 gets you 250 spins.  $30 gets you 1000.  If you've got $100, you can get 4000 spins.

According to the site, 1000 plays will typically get you between 40 and 80 new fans, whom you'll then be able to contact.

Let's do the math... You get 1000 plays for $30, which is $.03/play.  Let's average the "between 40 and 80 new fans," which the site says is "typical" for this amount of play, and make it 60.

60 new fans for every $30 you spend means you're "buying" a new fan for only $.50.  Not bad.  At that rate, "1000 True Fans" would only run you $500 and you could scale things to get as big as you want...at least until you hit the total number of users who use Jango's service.

Obviously, this is wishful thinking... It's unlikely that you'd have a "true fan" from a single exposure to your music.

Still, this may be a great investment for you.  If nothing else, it's a great way to test your songs and get valuable feedback on how to improve them.  Most musicians never do this and very few have more than 1000 people listen to a song before they spend money, time, effort, and resources releasing it.  If you've got a song that sucks, better to find out now than later...

So, what happens if people hate your music?

One of the things I like about Jango is that you're connected with a "top act" which they're already playing.  For example, if you think you sound similar to U2 and that U2 fans would love what you're doing, you have them play your music for fans of U2. 

But what if fans of the act you associate yourself with think you suck?  In this example, maybe they think you sound a little too much like U2?

All is not lost...yet.  It could be that you've got the wrong people listening to it.  Not everybody likes everything, right?

So I suggest you try again, just to be sure the results you're getting are worthwhile.  And this time, associate your music with another act that sounds "similar but different."  The U2-style sound works, right?  But maybe not for fans of U2...  Those guys don't want the U2-style, they want U2.

That's good feedback to have!

Will Jango get you singed?  Doubt it...but it's possible.

Will Jango make you famous?  Doubt that too.

It will certainly get you some good feedback though and that is worth a lot more than you'll spend here.  If you listen to what people tell you, you'll be helped with both of the things mentioned above and more.

If you've used this service, please post comments below with more information about your experience and the results you had...

Comments

[Louis]

yes, used it, have bought ~6000 plays to date. your description of it is exactly how it worked, although we got 40 fans and the communication methods with them quite limited. feedback on songs was great and we could actually work out which songs people liked the best. it's not bad, and way cheaper than last.fm for song plays.

louis
www.highabovethestorm.com

[Robin]

I've only briefly looked over the Jango site, but isn't this more or less internet payola? I think it's an interesting concept in theory, but basically it's still pay for play, isn't it, which is technically illegal for offline radio. So how is this different?

[David Hooper]

I am not sure if Jango identifies songs in this program as an "advertisement" or not, but I know you can definitely "pay for play" on broadcast radio as long as it's announced that that's what you're doing. For example, "This song brought to you by Atlantic Records..." before playing.

[Corey]

Interesting. I had no idea that this even existed. Something I am definitely going to have to do some experimenting with. Thanks!

[Karol Thor]

Funny, don't you get something close to the same thing with Garageband.com?? Although I may just be talking out my ass on that.

[art damage]

i am so blown away by jango! out of ALL social media, it has been the one site that has delivered the "goods" i've won popscore free plays every week since they started doing that, i've got over 150 new fans and even if i'm poor, i can throw $10US and keep things going. as if that weren't enough, the stats are providing crucial info as to who my market really is, (gender, location and what other bands they like). good customer service, too.

it's soooo worth it!

have fun,

art

http://www.jango.com/music/Art+Damage

[Kris]

Yeah, isn't pay-4-play illegal even if it is on the internet? That's called PAYOLA isn't it?

How can they be allowed to advertise this online? Shouldn't the music be based on it's merit of the song playing?

I don't know if this is a good things when the royalty rate collected by a song writer/publisher collects $0.09 per spin but yet they want you to pay around $0.03 per spin?

[Annotti Music]

I have spend some cash on Jango .. it's cool and helpful but I didn't do it for a long enough period of time or have enough to invest to see a big increase in fans for my money spent, but I feels it's possible.

Peace,

M.A.

[Tom Siegel]

Glad to hear about it. Thanks for the post. More control to the independent artist through direct to fan marketing.

Tom Siegel

[Chris]

Found this article which talks exactly about his topic with actual results of what it actually does to paly for jango play, doesn't sound that good tho. Check it out.

http://passivepromotion.com/is-jango-payola

[Radio Play]

Bottom line is this. I have never seen any amazing results from these private internet radio networks..Am and FM are the way to go. College and European is great as well. But otherwise its kinda fake.