Getting Your Group "On The Air"

Why get your music on A Cappella Always and A Cappella Holiday? Easy. First, this is a hobby for me-- so I tend to play almost everything I get; it's guaranteed promotion. Second, I'll link to your web site! (And that can help sell CDs: I recently received an email from a listener who said "I started listening a couple of weeks ago... in the first couple of hours, I already bought both Eclipse CD's and Frost-Free from Cadence, so the only complaints I have are (1) that your site is draining my wallet and (2) my CD changer is rapidly filling up with great a cappella music!")

Additionally, whenever your tracks are playing, there will be a link in the player window that goes directly to a place where people can buy your CD. It's that's easy.

The only requirement for a track to be added to AA or AH is that it be pure a cappella: any sounds in the song not made with the human body will disqualify it from being in the playlist! (Thus, vocal percussion is okay, but any more than minimal "real" percussion, or any piano accompaniment, or whatever, is definitely not ok.)

To Upload Your Music (preferred)

Please have your music meet these specs (and here's a helpful guide on how to import CDs with iTunes, if you're not familiar with the process):

• The bit rate (which determines the quality of the sound) needs to be 160 or 192 kbps. (Lower bit rates tend to have glitches in the sound quality, and higher settings don't make any noticable different.) Files that are encoded with VBR (variable bit rate) are ok, as long as the *minimum* rate is still set to 160 kbps.
• I prefer AAC files and can also take M4A and MP3 files. Any of those formats are fine (they're pretty much identical, except AAC tends to be a little smaller so it saves some disk space). Please, no WAV, WMF, RAM, OGG or anything else.
• Most importantly, please be sure all your info is filled in for each track: the title of the song, the artist name, the album name, etc. (If you're using iTunes, you can edit all of this by clicking the track after it's imported, then "Get Info".) I have so many music files floating around here that sending me a music file without that info is the equivalent of sending me a totally unlabeled CD-- I may be able to listen to the music (and love it!), but I'll have no idea where it came from! :-)

Now, once you're all set, you can upload the music here: A Cappella Always/A Cappella Holiday Music Uploader. (If it doesn't seem to work correctly, be sure you have the latest version of the Flash player, which you can get here, and you also should be using the most recent version of your web browser.)

You can also email the tracks by using DropSend, a (free) service that, after you register, will let you send all the files at once.

Please don't send the tracks as individual files in regular email— simply put, it tends to not work. (Files get lost, corrupted, etc.) The two options above are the best way to get me your music.

To Send Me CDs

Just mail them to:

Eric / A Cappella Always
8581 Santa Monica Blvd. #477
Los Angeles, CA 90069-4120

And by the way...

Thanks for the chance to play your music, and for your help in making A Cappella Always and A Cappella Holiday the best Internet radio stations for the best kind of vocal music, a cappella!