It’s that time once again for the “meeting of the minds” at CRS (Country Radio Seminar) in musical Nashville, Tennessee. Also set during the perfect time of year, this “grand event” provides an opportunity to meet with radio stations, artists, labels and industry professionals to set plans for the future. For many of us, it’s a time and place to re-connect with old friends and make some new ones as well. Many artists and bands are set for performances and to hit the interview trail and radio programmers are here to check out the latest technology and ideas and to help get their bearings on what’s ahead for them in 2013. It’s all here in one place during the annual Country Radio Seminar.

For us at New Music Weekly, it’s our time to “get busy”. Our schedule is jam packed with meetings and interviews and if we don’t get to all of you at this moment please be assured that we’ll leave no stone un-turned to get to each and every one of you at some point during the week. We too have also made countless friends in the music industry and it’s our time to connect those telephone calls from the past to real faces. From what we’ve seen and heard so far, this is all “set and ready” as the only place to be.

For those of you that are reading this publication for the first time, welcome to our “new music revolution”. It’s been 14+ years that we have been providing weekly charts in multi-formats from Country, Top40, AC to College radio. Our STS tracing is second to none and provides valuable information on how records are faring all across the USA. In our world all radio stations are “treated as equals” regardless of market size. We also provide a solid mix of major and independent artists and bands on our charts as you can see by looking through this magazine. Many of our music and program directors actually “listen” to new music and if it fits what they are doing, you will most likely see it added into rotation. You could say that many of our programmers do it the “old fashion” way.

Our annual New Music Awards provides the opportunity to acknowledge artists and bands the achieved the highest chart success during each year. We also get to signal out radio stations, programmers, record labels and radio professionals for all of their hard work. Our subscribers, industry and even the fans were allowed to involve themselves by their votes on our website for both the nomination and final outcome process. NMW recently made our announcement regarding our “winners”, most of which will appear in this issue. With any luck you may even see some of our new NMA winners flashing their hardware around CRS.

Each quarter we provide a Future Hits compilation that goes out to “all of radio”. We have been doing this since the start of our company and it’s helped hundreds of new artists and even established ones get their music out to those that can make a difference. All of the artists on Future Hits get special coverage and attention from us, and all of the songs also get distributed digitally through Airplay Access. Once we get back from this event, we will be getting set for our next compilation, so make sure you get in touch with us and be a part of this special opportunity.

As you can gather, New Music Weekly provides many “tools of the trade” to help new and established recording artists. Our charts reflect what is really going on in radio today by including “all” artists in the process. Being one of the few “printed magazines” of a music publication also provides a visual opportunity to all artists on our charts. We have now launched a digital version that allows us to get this publication to an entire new audience. All of us at New Music Weekly applaud the CRS for this annual opportunity as not only a launching pad for new Country artists but many from all formats in today’s music.