Glossary · The business around it
Add
An add is a station formally putting a record into its rotation for a reporting period, usually a week. It is different from a single spin by one host: an add means the record is scheduled to be played repeatedly, and it is the outcome that matters when you submit music to radio.
The distinction is worth holding onto because it changes how you read a result. One play by a specialty show host who liked the record is real and worth thanking somebody for, but it is not an add. An add means the station has decided the record belongs in what it plays, and it usually produces a run of plays over several weeks.
Adds are also the unit that reporting stations submit upward to charts, which is how independent records end up with a measurable radio story rather than an anecdote. That is why tracking what you sent, to whom, and what came back is worth the small amount of admin it costs.
74 of the 1363 verified stations publish a dedicated submission form, and in practice that is the best available signal of a station organised enough to make and report adds.
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 →Radio is the free half, and it stays that way. Every station here is free to reach and no station ever pays to be listed. The Doors is the other half: 100 verified places that are not radio, sync libraries, music supervisors, festivals, contests, live sessions and the music press, 43 of which can actually pay an artist. It also lists the 162 we opened and refused, with the reason each one failed, because most lists of this kind are stale and the rejections are the part nobody else will show you. $9.99, the 2026 Q3 edition →
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