Hi all. Does anyone have any experience getting music videos onto broadcast TV?

I directed a music video last week and the artist is keen to get it onto the UK music channels. Most of my work has gone to the web and stayed there, so this is new one for me! Anyone got any ideas how you go about this? Is it just a case of submitting it to the channels or do we need to find a distributor?

I've been out of that side of the business for many years now, but it always used to be the responsibility of the record label to promote the artiste by pushing the radio and tv stations for air time. Most stations would have a priority list based on popularity and chart position, depending on which charts they use, so higher chart position equals more air time.

There are other factors that can influence whether an artiste gets air play, such as local interest, special charity fund raising, perhaps doing a tour and tying in an interview with a music channel. It does though seem a bit unusual having the video producer pushing the video.

Roger

The artist is unsigned and like a lot of unsigned musicians self-promotes and self-distributes. Originally the video was just going to wind up on YouTube and promoted over social media, but the song itself has been selling well so he asked me about broadcast music channels.

I suspect the larger channels take videos the same way big radio stations take songs- based on popularity and which distributors have paid for the airtime. Just wondered if there were any other avenues I could explore!

You could try community tv channels, there tend to be quite a few around the bigger cities. You also need to find an angle, everyone and their dog writes songs and makes videos, why should a channel show yours? There needs to be some special interest to their viewers otherwise it will just come across as seeking free publicity at their expense.

Look at ways of using Youtube to get people to watch, build a Youtube fan base, link the video from the artiste's website etc. Once you start to build Youtube viewings, it will start to grow expotentially, then you have got a reason to interest the tv companies.

Roger