Very interesting and informative letter received from Hugh Hession in reply to my letter asking about radio play for Susan.  It is upsetting to me that the radio stations do not play Susan's beautiful songs.  I can not understand this treatment of a professional and successful artist like Susan.  It is amazing that the powers that be are not making this happen.  The letter explains a lot to me.  Thank you Hugh for your help.


Hi Hugh,

Nice article "Making It In Radio" sent to me today, as I am in the process of contacting radio stations all over the country to try to get them to play Susan Boyle's music.  It is mind-blogging to me when I look on the Playlists and see every other Sony artist, except Susan.  

I belong to the Susan Boyle Fansite Forum, where I have a thread titled  "Radio Campaign".  I started November 27th and I have emailed radio stations in 23 states, so far.  None of these stations play Susan's music.   I am so peeved.  

I received your write up from one of the fans and I thought you might have an answer for me.  According to what I read, you imply that a recording company may have to fill the hand of a radio DJ.  Who is  actually responsible to get her music on radio?  

Susan is listed under Media person  Ann-Marie Thomson, global head of media/PR for Syco, etc  (-Global Head of Media Syco Entertainment. (The X Factor, Simon Cowell, Got Talent, Leona Lewis, Alexandra Burke, Matt Cardle, Il Divo, Joe McElderry, Susan Boyle, Labrinth, Cher Lloyd, One Direction)).   Would you have any idea why Susan's music is not played on radio and why Ann Marie, Media Rep, is not pushing this issue?

I would appreciate your response and would it be OK to share your answer on the forum?

Thank you,

 Good morning, Grace.

I admire your loyalty to Susan. An artist's fans are like gold. Without the support of you and her hundreds of thousands of other fans, she would not have achieved what she has. On one hand, that seems like an obvious statement, but on the other, 95% of the given population of music artists will never see that kind of success. I think it's awesome when an artist like Susan suddenly comes out and "shakes things up," if you will, defying the typical "profile" of what a major recording artist is expected to look and sound like. 

Thank you for reading my article on the difficulty of getting radio airplay. Since you've taken the time to share with others, I wanted to reciprocate and answer your question to the best of my ability.

It is no secret that the industry has had a history of granting monetary favors to commercial radio through the years. The obvious starting with Alan Freed in the 1950's. If you notice in my article, I referenced the indie promotion scandal in the 1980's which is well documented in addition to former New York prosecutor and governor Elliot Spitzer's suit against various record companies, most notably, Sony, in 2005. I included links to actual documents that were made public by the media at that time period. So what I say here is well substantiated and documented from a historical perspective.

The fact is, it's tough to get on commercial radio for even signed, major recording artists. It's highly competitive and very formatted. You'd be surprised how many major acts get no radio airplay. It's my guess that one of the main reasons why Susan is not on commercial radio, is because she doesn't fit into any genre specific format for commercial radio play. Commercial radio has changed immensely, even since the 1980's, as it became a much more controlled entity whenever the majority of independent stations where acquired and consolidated in the middle 90's. Now, Clear Channel (#1) and Cumulus Media (#2) own the majority of commercial radio in America.

Which brings up the topic of other forms or creative ways of influencing radio airplay. You've read my article, but in reference, I want to offer some quotes that George Howard, former President of Rykodisc Records and an Associate Professor of Music Business at Berklee mentions in an article he wrote called "How to Get Your Song On Commercial Radio." Howard mentions: 

"Getting a song “added” to a station’s playlist to get a certain number of plays per week involves a rather byzantine process that brings in various parties, called independent promoters (“indies”).  These “indies” are first paid by the label.  It’s important to note that the money the indies receive isn’t necessarily compensation paid directly to them for getting Program Directors to get a song played.  Rather, they work more like an intermediary to pass the label’s money to the radio station. These indies, with the money paid to them from the labels, pay the radio station money for various listener give-aways, bumper stickers and so on. To top it off,  these very same indies are often also paid a second time by the stations themselves as a consultant to advise the stations on what songs they should play."

As you may or may not know, the practice of Payola (the illegal practice of payment by record companies for the broadcast of recordings) is illegal. Thus, to say that companies are currently still in the practice of doing this, although speculative, there is no evidence to warrant such claims, particularly in Susan's case.

Understand that commercial radio doesn't have near the power it used to in breaking artists. In fact, it no longer is the sole determinant of an artists popularity. Susan is a testament to this truth, as "I Dreamed a Dream" was the fastest selling debut album in the UK with little to no radio airplay and was almost the best selling album in the U.S. for that year (just under Taylor Swift). Her latest album released in 2011 wasn't as successful, but she still did exceptionally well in a multitude of countries, garnering the #1 spot in the UK and Australia and the #2 spot in the U.S.and New Zealand. Ironically, many of the top grossing concert acts in the world receive little airplay.  In fact, much of Susan's success other than the obvious (Britain's Got Talent) was generated through online social media marketing. I mentioned all this again, because the lack of radio airplay has had little impact on Susan's success as a global entertainer!

Whether an artist is going to get any type of airplay depends on how hard the record companies promotion department pushes it with our without indie promoters. It's these people that have the relationships with radio and typically are in the position to make a difference (surprisingly, sometimes they can't). So, it's a tough game, even for promoters that are close to it!

Thanks for your question!

Hugh Hession, Owner Making it in Music (www.makingitinmusic.net)

Partner, TalentWatch (www.talentwatch.net)

Artist Manager, Hession Entertainment Group

hhession@gmail.com