Radio stations often have local artists submit music in the hopes of getting airplay. With Tether's Featured Music module, you can take submissions from local artists and display them for listens and votes from Tether users.
This is a great way to showcase the content that's submitted to your station and bring new unique users to your website, without the risk of compromising the sound of your station. Stations have used this tool for virtual "battle of the band" features and as a way to gather content for local music shows.
Beyond the local music application, Featured Music could also be used to highlight other types of audio, such as morning show bits.
NOTE: We would encourage you not to stream entire (non-local) songs due to royalty concerns. Instead, try the Secondary Requestables feature instead.
Playing and Voting for Featured Music
Users can play your Featured Music tracks individually or together as a playlist using the player at the top of the module. They can also give each song a thumbs up or thumbs down and share with their friends on social media to drive more traffic to engage on your station site.
Submitting Featured Music
When uploads are enabled, Featured Music can be submitted with a form that looks like the following:
In this form, the following items are customizable (and can be changed for you by Futuri VIP Support):
- Form header (which says "Upload Your Music" by default)
- Band URL description (which says "Website, YouTube, or social media" by default) - You may want to customize this if you are looking for a specific type of URL submission (like a YouTube video of a live performance).
- The biography field name and description - You may want to customize this if you're looking for something different, like song lyrics or upcoming concerts.
- Accepted file types - By default, the form will only accept mp3 audio, but if you're going to play the submissions on the air, you may want to accept WAV files instead.
- Submission agreement - This can be adjusted to include any language that your station's or parent company's legal team requires.
Submissions that you have approved in the Futuri Control Room (details below) will be visible in the voting window for users to listen to and vote for.
Managing Featured Music Submissions
Once users submit Featured Music submissions, they will be sent to the Futuri Control Room under Uploaded Songs > Local and New Music.
By default, songs will have the status Undecided, and you can choose whether to mark them as Accepted (to display them for voting within #engage) or Rejected (which is solely for your organization purposes; users will not be notified that their submissions have been rejected).
You can listen, edit, download, or delete each submission, and you'll be able to see the votes as they roll in.
Any additional information from the submission form (such as band URL and biography) can be seen by clicking "View" next to any song.
If needed, you can also bypass the band submission form in the Control Room by clicking New Uploaded Song. The song type should always be "Local", even if you're not using the Featured Music tool for local music.
For further questions or to enable the Featured Music feature for your station, please contact Futuri VIP Support.