METALHEADS! I need your help with Metal Monday on Radio Bahrain 96.5 please! Bear with me, its a bit of a long post. As Radio Bahrain transitions from a public radio station to a private radio station, one of the greatest challenges I face as a radio presenter of the Arab World's only dedicated metal show is the limited library of music available to me to play on the air. Currently, I only have metal on the database that i) goes back to 2015, with a scattering of older tracks here and there, and ii) all those tracks must have hit the charts at one point, which means extreme rock and metal are not currently available. This is mainly because the station focuses on and prioritizes mainstream music. There will be an update to the metal database eventually, but it will be a while until that happens. In the meantime, Metal Monday with Ham has seen remarkable success locally, and more outstandingly, abroad as well! It's the only show on Radio Bahrain that has an international audience every week (god, I love you guys!). The weekly band feature has attracted interest from listeners everywhere, and to have an opportunity to represent regional indie metal bands on a public broadcasting platform gives me great pride! I started the band features to give exposure to regional talent, but there was an incidental benefit as well: Every band featured gets its music added to Radio Bahrain database, which means I can keep playing their songs on shows after the week they are featured. How we did this was by asking the bands to sign a letter where they i) declare they own the rights to the music, ii) authorize and license Radio Bahrain to play the music at its discretion, and iii) waive rights to royalties. I know the waiving rights to royalties might be a stickler for some people, but the station asks for the royalty waiver not because it doesn't want to pay the bands, but because there is no royalty-collection agency in the Arab world at the moment. Being based in Bahrain, understandably, the station cannot put itself in a situation where it is liable for a financial obligation it simply cannot fulfill operationally. Having said that, this scenario will, of course, change when a royalty-collection agency and a mechanism to remunerate artists is set up in the future. I share this with you in the spirit of transparency. Having said that, I am now in a position where, whether I feature a band or not, I can play their music on the show if they i) sign the letter, ii) pass me their tracks (at a level of production suitable for air-play), and iii) include an accurate lyric sheet for all the tracks for screening (nothing will get the show cancelled faster than airing profanity or anti-religious or overtly political themes... sorry, but those are the facts, and I'm jealously protective of the show, for all our sakes). So, if you're in a band or a solo artist, and have descent quality recordings, be they singles, EPs, or full length records, and want them to be played on Metal Monday with Ham, please reach out to me on email:
hamad.alnajjar@gmail.com, or drop me a DM right here on Facebook. I would love to play your music for our listeners, and will guide you on what needs to be done to make it so. And the best thing is, you don't have to be based in the Middle East! This is open to all bands, anywhere in the world! So please drop me a line, and if you know bands that would like to have airplay, share this with them and ask them to contact me. I WILL PLAY THEIR MUSIC AND POTENTIALLY DO A ONE HOUR FEATURE ON THEM, I CAN PROMISE YOU THIS! So spread the word! Spread it like butter on toast! Spread it like ghee on Biryani! Spread it like STIs in a brothel! For god! For country! For metal! Let's go! Thank you!