// GZS Records · submissions
Send music
The station is open and the roster is growing. There is no fee in either direction and nobody takes your rights.
Who this is for
AI musicians most of all. Almost every place that plays independent music in 2026 is somewhere between quietly suspicious and openly hostile to people who make records with machines. The generous ones allow it with a disclosure rule. This station wants you here more than it wants almost anyone, and it will say so on the air.
Everyone else is welcome on identical terms. The station does not sort by method and does not intend to start. A guitar in a bedroom, a modular rig, a laptop, a prompt: none of that is the question.
The gate
Two questions. Both have to be yes.
- You made it. Your work, not something lifted and re-labelled.
- You have the right to put it on the air. No uncleared samples of somebody else's record, no stems you do not own, nothing you are not allowed to license out non-exclusively.
That is the whole rights test. Plagiarism without permission is the one thing that gets a track refused on principle rather than on taste.
The standard
Rights get you considered. They do not get you played. The station is small enough to be picky and intends to stay that way.
- Finished. Mixed, mastered, and levelled like a record. A rough bounce with clipping on the loud parts is a demo, and this is not a demo station.
- It fits a block. Look at the clock on the front page. If you cannot picture your track inside one of those hours, it will sit unplayed no matter how good it is. Every block has its own page now, so link the one you are aiming at.
- Tagged. Artist and title written the way you want them read on air, in the file itself. Untagged files come out of the automation as "Track 03".
- It survives the overnight test. The honest hours here are midnight to four. Nothing is programmed for reach then. If a track only works as a hook clip, this is the wrong station.
Turned down without discussion
- Anything sexual involving minors, and anything that reads as targeted harassment of a real person.
- Slurs used as the point rather than as the subject.
- Tracks whose whole idea is a famous song wearing a hat.
- Volume-war masters. If it is a slab with no dynamics left, it will not sit next to the rest of the catalogue.
What you get
- You keep everything. Non-exclusive airplay only. Release it anywhere else, the same day, on any terms you like.
- No fee, either direction. Nobody pays to be played and nobody is paid to play. When the station starts earning from placement, that changes in writing first.
- Your name read correctly in the now-playing feed, on the roster, and in the stream metadata.
- It comes down when you say so. One message, no argument, no notice period.
- We can pull it too. If someone else turns out to have a claim on it, it comes down, and you get the reason.
- No download of your files. Contributor tracks stream and are not offered as downloads. The download catalogue is house material only.
Record a drop
Real stations do this. You send a song, you also send fifteen seconds of you talking about it, and we can play you first. It is called a drop. Optional. Skip it and your song is heard on exactly the same terms as everyone else's.
If you want to do it: talk to one person, not a crowd. Not "everybody out there." One person, alone, in a car, at an hour that does not have a name yet. Say your name, say the title, say one true thing about the song, then send us off with the station line. Not a speech. Fifteen seconds is plenty and thirty is the ceiling.
Record it somewhere quiet. A closet with clothes in it beats an empty room every time; fabric kills echo better than anything else you own. Phone six inches from your mouth and slightly off to the side, which stops the breath pops without a pop filter. Before you hit record, kill whatever hums. The fridge, the fan, the AC. Put the phone in do not disturb.
Send it raw. Whatever your voice memo app exports is fine. Do not run your own noise reduction or reverb on it first, and do not forward it through a messaging app, which recompresses it. Everything here goes through the same mastering chain, and a take you have already cleaned up fights that chain instead of feeding it. Send two or three takes if you are not sure which one landed.
Five templates, one for whatever kind of record you made
Ambient, drone, anything quiet.
"Hey. It's [your name]. This is [song title]. [One line: where it came from, or what you
want it to do to the room.] Play it low. Play it late. You're tuned to GZS, one
ninety-seven point seven."
Punk, garage, rockabilly, anything fast.
"What's up, it's [your name]! This one's called [song title]. [One line: why it's loud,
what it's for.] Crank it up. You're tuned to GZS, one ninety-seven point seven."
Country, folk, anything narrative.
"I'm [your name]. Wrote this one, [song title], about [one sentence: the real thing
behind it]. Hope it finds you. You're tuned to GZS, one ninety-seven point seven."
Rap, trap, anything confident.
"Yeah. It's [your name]. New one, [song title]. [One line: the flex, the why, whatever's
true.] Real talk. GZS, one ninety-seven point seven."
Dance, pop, anything festive.
"Hey hey, it's [your name]! This is [song title]. [One line: why it's fun.] Go dance. Go
drive. Go do whatever you're doing. You're tuned to GZS, one ninety-seven point seven."
Say "G-Z-S" as three letters, not one mumbled word, and say the number as "one ninety-seven point seven," not "one hundred ninety-seven." Do not read the brackets out loud. It happens more than you would guess.
No lyrics on the record does not disqualify you. An instrumental act still has a voice.
What we do and do not do with it
- Same deal as the music. Free in both directions, non-exclusive, until you say stop.
- It runs the way you recorded it. Not re-cut into words you did not say, not dropped into an ad, not used to make it sound like you are selling something.
- It does not train anything. GZS Records will not use your voice to train or fine-tune a voice cloning or AI voice model. That holds whether or not you make music with AI yourself.
- You can pull it on its own. Ask us to stop playing your voice message and the track keeps spinning if you want it to. Ask us to pull the track and the voice message comes down with it, unless you say otherwise.
Tennessee has a specific law about this, the ELVIS Act, Tenn. Code Ann. 47-25-1101 and following. A voice counts as a person's identity there, not just a recording, so the permission has to be real and it has to be yours to give. That is why the voice box on the form is its own separate tick and not bundled into the music one.
Ways to kill a drop before we get to hear it: clipping, a room that echoes, a TV or a dog or traffic under the whole take, anything recorded through a phone call or a video chat, two people talking at once, or no station line at the end. If it is not usable we will tell you and you can send another.
Send it
Three fields are required. A person reads every one of them.
Answers come from a person, not a form. If a track is turned down you get a reason, and it will usually be a specific one.
If you would rather just mail it: contact@groundzerosum.com, subject GZS submission, with the same things in the body. If you are sending a drop that way, say in the mail that we have your permission to air it, in your own words.
Terms version 2026-08-20.