Glossary · The people and the places
Music director
The music director, often shortened to MD, is the person at a station who receives new music, decides what enters the station library, and usually decides what enters rotation. At a college station the music director is normally a student holding the post for a year or two.
Reaching the right person is most of the work. A record sent to a general station inbox competes with listener mail and event requests. The same record sent to a named music director, with the station's own stated requirements met, is being read by somebody whose actual job that week is to find records like yours.
Large stations split the role. A station may have a music director for the library and separate genre directors or department heads for hip-hop, jazz, loud rock and so on, each with their own address. Sending to the general music director when a genre director exists is a slower route to the same decision.
74 of the 1363 verified stations publish a dedicated submission form or artist page. The remaining 1289 require you to find the right person from a staff page, a general inbox, a postal address or a show schedule.
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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