It’s hard to believe that it’s already that time of year once again. The Christmas shopping will begin and the air will be filled with Holiday music. For recording artists and bands that want to stretch out, getting a holiday song produced and released to radio might be just the ticket. Holiday music has become so important over this past decade that even a big company like Clear Channel have many of their Adult Contemporary stations going “all Christmas”. The range from a good mix of old classics to new releases. Many stations have followed suit providing greater opportunities for your original holiday song to have a good shot provided you get it out there in time.

In this competitive music industry, it’s always hard to find the edge or a way to break into the music world. One avenue that can help get an artist through the back door just might be a smart and original Christmas song. For this type of music, program directors really could care less about the label involved as they look much more into the production and content of the song and if it works for them you may have a shot regardless of being signed to a major label. Once an artist can gain the attention of radio even if it’s as simple as a Christmas song, it could have a profound effect on an artist’s future.

We have been to a number of symposiums in the past where holiday music has been the discussion. Many experts agree that it may take five to six years for a new holiday song to take hold. Among the great things about holiday music is that many music and programmers have their own Holiday song library. Once an artist gets into that library, the programmer pulls the song back out and puts it into their Christmas rotation every holiday season. Make no mistake about it, Christmas music is “big business” generating millions of dollars each season. Some smart songwriters, artists and publishers even make a good living just off this special time of year.

For artists and bands looking for that opportunity, you can‘t do it alone. Find yourself a good radio promoter (we may be able to help you there) and get the job done properly. As an outsider you don’t have the contacts or the music call times in your schedule and without going about it the correct way you will be just spinning your wheels. They will also help you with music servicing that is one of the most important things to have in play. From both physical and digital distribution of the single, all of those elements will play a critical part of a successful Holiday music campaign. Once you get that into position you can then think about adding a publicist to the mix to get additional media exposure.

In this issue you will not only find some artists with good new Holiday offerings, there are a number of bands and artists that are achieving some great chart success at New Music Weekly that deserve your attention. We are just around the corner from announcing the nominees for our annual New Music Awards so all of this chart activity will have a profound impact on this up-coming event. Our next issue “Best of 2013” will focus on the artists and bands that had a banner year at New Music Weekly and if you are among that list you will want to be a part of this very important issue.

New Music Weekly continues to offer the best “tools of the trade” from our STS tracking services to our quarterly Future Hits compilation. We can also help you with music servicing through Airplay Access and other venues. We’d like to take the time to wish all of our readers, artists, labels and industry friends a very Happy Holiday. We still have a little more work to do in 2013 so stay with us to help finish out a great music year.