Radio Event Tips

Radio Event Tips

I get asked ALL OF THE TIME about how I've gotten so "lucky" at free radio shows & events! If you have known me or followed me on social media for the past 5 years, you have probably noticed that I've gotten front row, won radio contests, meet & greet passes, or even just been invited backstage to hangout with artists.

It didn't come to me overnight. For years, I use to be SOO JEALOUS of those people who would always get passes to meet artists or even got meet & greet passes that are worth $300 for free (I'm not on that level, I'm still jealous of those people). I really learned all of my greatest tips for having really great experiences at free radio events from people on Twitter.

My first free radio show I attended was in 2012 at my local mall which was for Austin Mahone (that day honestly changed my life because 7 years later, I'm still supporting that boy). They had a contest on the radio for meet & greet passes & a couple of months before the show I had discovered him online & my first thought was, "enter as many times as you can till you can't anymore". Spamming over & over for days for contests has never worked for me. You can enter contests multiple times but my main tip for y'all if you have the opportunity to enter a radio contest more than once is enter 1-2 times a day & enter in different ways (social media, radio websites, calling the station, etc.)!

Radio Contests

ALWAYS FOLLOW THE RULES & NEVER SPAM! You can try daily if you can but twice a day at the most. Stay consistent but also be tasteful while doing so. Don't sound too obnoxious (I have in the past & YIKES)!

Radio contests are honestly too just luck of the draw. Sometimes those contests no matter how much effort you put, sometimes it's just simply luck. I've maybe only truly won like 3 radio contests in the past 7 years. I'm still not 100% lucky when it comes to them! Some people make it look so easy & win every single contest (if you are one of those people teach me your ways)!!

Front Row at Free Shows

GET THERE EARLY! Also though, if you are going to arrive early be healthy & safe while doing so. Even at normal GA concerts I've been to the #1 reason why you see people who wait for hours pass out at shows is not being healthy enough. If I know I'm attending a free show & want to get front row, I always eat a really good meal before & drink nothing but water!

Another tip: NEVER PUSH OTHERS FOR FRONT ROW! You can squeeze through as much as you can but pushing a GA crowd is a big HELL NO! One time, I had gone to a free radio country Christmas concert & we literally got to the venue 30 minutes before the show started. There was already a decent sized crowd there so we kind of squeezed through the sides of GA (ANOTHER TIP: Always go through the sides of the crowd if you are trying to squeeze through good spots at a GA concert! You'll have a better chance of being potentially maybe front row!). At the beginning of the show we were about 5 rows back which wasn't too horrible but also what you notice if you are around people who aren't huge concert goers but they wait hours for shows is that the people who wait for hours tend to get super exhausted after a while or even another thing I've noticed too is some people wait for hours for an opening act & then leave when the act they wanna see is over. Anyways! Some people at that particular show who waited for hours were there for either one of the opening acts or they just simply got tired because we had talked to people who had waited for over 5 hours & whenever they left we had FRONT ROW BARICADE SPOTS! That was just luck honestly but the other people in the front row who had waited for hours were so shocked we got those spots! Sometimes luck is just everything at those things!

Another tip: If a small child wants to be in the front let them go in front of you! Whenever I saw R5 & Jacob Whitesides over 4 years ago, so many small children who had waited a lot longer than me were complaining about not being able to see so we let them go in front of us & it didn't really make a difference on how close we were. Children deserve to have good concert experiences as well! Don't be selfish!

Meeting Artists at Free Shows

At free radio shows depending on the one you go to more than 60% of the time I've always met the artists. That didn't come to me overtime either. I'm going to tell y'all some of the ways I got into meeting artists at free radio shows.

Emblem3 (2013)-This was my first true meet & greet experience at a free show. That one was pretty easy to get into considering the fact the first 500 people who arrived first got passes. We just simply got there early (12 hours early to be exact). Sometimes radio stations make it that easy but over the years they've gotten a little more strict with those.

Daya & Alessia Cara (2015)-This experience was truly super cool! I was with a couple of friends & we weren't crowded up by the stage quite yet camping out because we had ordered food (we were at Brewster Street by the way). It looked obvious we were there for the show but not super obvious & the radio station noticed us. This was just simple luck but since there was such few people there that had gotten there early (we got there about 2 hours early) they invited us backstage to meet both Alessia Cara & Daya. They invited about 20 people backstage which was super cool. Always make it lowkey whenever you want to get to a free show early because if you make it super well known everyone will start arriving & your chance at stuff like that happening will be at 0! I don't always arrive to a show early around the same time every time. It depends on when my group I'm going with is available which can be 12 hours early or 2 hours early.

Jordan Fisher (2016) & Ayo & Teo (2017)-These were smaller free shows so the crowds already weren't super crazy which made our chance so much higher! For Jordan Fisher, we waited by the gate after the show & we weren't super obnoxious. The station did notice we didn't plan on leaving anytime soon so the station was super nice to open the gate & let us meet Jordan! For Ayo & Teo, we waited by the stage again super calm & chill & that's when we got approached from the station about meeting them. A major tip if you are going to do that is never scream, yell, or simply just act obnoxious. Just stay real chill about it!

Jojo (2016) - The way I got into this was real interesting! This was a bigger free show so a lot of people were wanting to get in to meet her. The first 50 people I think got passes & they had a few extra but you had to show prof that you had the station's merch. At the Alessia Cara & Daya show, we had received station merch & I'm glad I kept it on me because I couldn't go to that show early to be the first 50 people so I literally arrived basically showing off my merch to the station I had received over the years & that's how I got passes!

The Most Important Tip!

SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL RADIO STATIONS! Listen daily & let the stations know you are a active listener! Attend as many radio events as you can & want. Show them love on social media! Radio stations work so hard to be able to play your favorite top 40 songs & they honestly deserve all of the love they can get! These shows would never happen if it weren't for local radio stations promoting & putting the artists music out there. Artists also appreciate it as well! Today, go shoutout your favorite radio station. They deserve it!