How to effectively submit music to a DJ

We’ll skip the process of connecting with a DJ and jump right to the point that you finally get a DJ’s email address so you can submit your music for possible spins. Ask the DJ how they prefer submissions. I prefer an attached mp3 of the full street version with the acapella and instrumental versions available either as attached mp3s or links to the acapella and instrumental. You can use your choice of a number of free file servers including zshare, hulkshare, divshare, box.net, mediafire, etc to save your DJ Service Pack (street, radio, acapella, instrumental versions). I’m not going to harp on the validity (or lack thereof) of massive e-blasts, but I will say it goes farther for an artist to email me direct rather than add my email to a list on the CC (please use BCC if you’re going to blast to a list) or add me as another line in a long line of forwarded emails.

So you finally connected with a DJ and got his email address. DO NOT SEND MP3s TITLED “01 track 01”!!!! You went through all of the steps to finally get an opportunity to submit your music and now you send an anonymous mp3 that will get deleted immediately or completely lost in the DJ’s thousands of other MP3s…that’s a complete waste of everyone’s time. MAKE SURE YOUR MP3’s ARE TAGGED WITH “ARTIST NAME – SONG TITLE”. Why is this such a big deal?

DJ’s literally have thousands of MP3’s in their catalogs. I have a folder with more than 350 drops alone. I have folders of old school R&B, Hip-Hop, Jazz, etc. I have folders of complete albums and folders specifically for clubs, radio, mixtapes, etc. The point is – I have thousands of MP3s. Once I download your attached MP3 I need to be able to find it when I get an opportunity to run it in the mix. If you want to get spins and actually get credit for your spins and get your name and song title accurately reflected on mixtape covers and radio playlists, you better make sure you have your mp3 tagged with your name and song title. Otherwise its just track “01 track 01”. How in the hell does that help you in any way? Quit acting like an amateur and get your MP3s tagged properly. Go from this nonsense that simply gets deleted:

To a properly tagged MP3 with your name and song title like this:

Just right-click on your MP3 and enter the correct and complete information then click on “Apply”. You only have to do this one time and you’re all set for every opportunity to submit your music. You can download Mp3tag (below) for free and even add your cover art or photo to your mp3s. Don’t go through all the trouble of getting a DJs contact info to just fall straight into the recycle bin or be lost forever or get spins with zero credit because your MP3 wasn’t tagged properly.

Mp3tag – the Universal Tag Editor: http://www.mp3tag.de/en/

Mp3tag is a powerful and yet easy-to-use tool to edit metadata of common audio formats where it supports ID3v1, ID3v2.3, ID3v2.4, iTunes MP4, WMA, Vorbis Comments and APE Tags. It can rename files based on the tag information, replace characters or words in tags and filenames, import/export tag information, create playlists and more.

Mp3tag supports the following audio formats:

Advanced Audio Coding (aac) Free Lossless Audio Codec (flac) Monkey's Audio (ape) Mpeg Layer 3 (mp3) MPEG-4 (mp4 / m4a / m4b / iTunes compatible) Musepack (mpc) Ogg Vorbis (ogg) OptimFROG (ofr) OptimFROG DualStream (ofs) Speex (spx) Tom's Audio Kompressor (tak) True Audio (tta) Windows Media Audio (wma) WavPack (wav)