The short answer
Use whatever route the station publishes, and nothing else. Across the confirmed accepting stations the split is close to even between email and web forms, with a meaningful minority that still want physical media. Choosing your own route is the most common reason a good submission is never read.
| Web form | Post | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Reaches a named person | Usually | Not directly | Usually |
| Gets logged by the station | Only if they file it | Yes, that is the point of the form | Physically, yes |
| Room to say something human | Yes | Rarely, the fields decide | Yes, include a note |
| Chance of being ignored | High if sent to a general inbox | Low if every field is filled | Low, an envelope gets opened |
| Cost | None | None | Postage and media |
| Best practice | Subject line that says genre, artist, track and clean | Fill every field, including optional ones | Label the disc itself, not only the sleeve |
| Common mistake | Sending to the station when the music director is named | Skipping fields, or emailing instead | Sending a CD-R when the station asked for pressed media |
Counted across the 273 confirmed accepting stations: 153 take music by email, 67 through a submission form, 11 through another published page, and 41 want physical media. 8 of them accept nothing but physical media: KALX, KEOS, KFJC, KTRU, WHCR, WSOU, WXNA, WXYC. There is no majority route, which is exactly why a single template sent everywhere performs so badly.
No. Use the form. Stations build forms so submissions arrive in one place with the information they need, and email that bypasses the form tends to sit unread in a general inbox. If the form breaks, then say so in an email and mention that you tried it.
Some do, and they mean it. Across the confirmed accepting stations a meaningful minority take physical media, and around ten accept nothing else. For a digital-only artist that is a hard stop rather than a preference, and it is the requirement most submission advice leaves out.
Pick your sound and region on Rotation and each of these stations shows its real submission contact and the exact rules it posts: clean edit, WAV, form or mail. Checked by hand and kept current. No station here paid to be listed.
Open my sheet →If you decide to pay somebody, ask which stations first. Services advertising tens of thousands of stations do not publish how many of them are in the United States, or a single station's posted rules, so you find out what you bought after you have paid. Rotation's own campaign is one release sent by hand to doors out of this registry, 273 of which are confirmed accepting right now, every message written to that station's own posted rules, and a report naming every station that received it. 599 dollars a release. Doing it yourself is free here and always will be, which is the only reason that sentence is worth anything. What the campaign actually does →
More
Every comparison → · The Playbook → · The data behind these numbers →