In the local radio industry, it is usually the music director’s job to decide the songs that get aired on the stations, so the DJ-cum-artists themselves do not end up playing their own tunes on their shows. In the early 1990s, Klass was a singer and bass player in local pop trio Kick!, which had hit songs such as Jane and Freedom (In Me) on local and Malaysian radio stations. The band picked up two awards, Best Group and Best Song, for Jane at the 1993 Radio Music Awards.
What got them to that level of success was Klass’ job at Rediffusion, Singapore’s first subscription- based radio station, as a DJ from 1991 to 1996. Radio promotion is anything but easy. Getting your song played on the radio is incredibly competitive. When it comes to large commercial radio stations in major radio markets, getting on the playlist may be downright impossible for musicians outside of the major label system. That doesn’t mean that some radio play is out of reach if you don’t have a big budget, with big movers and shakers behind your song.
