Posted 11/30/11

There are Airplay charts on Billboard and elsewhere and I couldn't find any mention of Susan at all. Record companies release singles from albums and from there, via one method or another, they are selected for rotation. There's no single released from STWOM. It's probably not necessary in the case of an album having big enough initial sales.

An important part of the article I linked earlier on the role of "Indies":

What the public doesn't realize is that, according to some, much of the music we hear on prominent rock and Top 40 radio stations is played because independent promoters pay the stations to add it to their playlists. Because it is illegal for record companies to directly pay radio stations to play their music -- or for radio stations to play music someone paying them to play, at least without disclosing on the air that the time is paid for -- they bring in a middleman, the independent promoter, or "indie." This is reportedly how it works:

An indie approaches a radio station manager or group owner about becoming their exclusive representative. In exchange, the indie will pay the station an annual payment of $75,000 to $100,000 per year (for medium-sized markets) for "promotional support." This means the indie gives the station money, vacations, or gifts in other forms (often gift cards or American Express money cards) that they can use for their promotions, or for whatever use they choose. Because the "gifts" are to be used for promotions, the pay-for-play is side-stepped. The station's part of the deal is to add songs the indie recommends to their playlists. These are called "adds" in the business. Most stations have an average of three adds each week.

The indie then contacts record companies to tell them he has this agreement with the station. He charges the record company a fee (usually around $1,000) every time the station adds one of the label's songs to its playlist. For most singles, the record companies are paying in the neighborhood of $100,000 to $250,000 to indies. According to some, if they don't, the songs won't get played. In addition, there are "spin maintenance" charges to keep the song on the list. To avoid legal problems, indies have their lawyers examine their records to make sure the transactions are still on the legal side of the line. The real problems come in when, rather than using the money or "gifts" for promotions such as vacation giveaways for listeners, the program directors or other station staff pocket the money themselves.

...

By the way, those charges for independent promotion come out of the artists royalties -- not the record company's profits.

ust another insight into how things work in the area of record promotion, in general. 

Sony would have decided on whatever they thought it appropriate to do to promote this album. We've seen a lot of it to date and in Oz it was fantastic for sales. Don't know about airplay here. I hope all the fan emails, calls and tweets have some impact on US airplay.

Funnily enough (after all of yesterday's hypotheticals) I did look at the Christian airplay charts and and didn't see any mention of SB there either. In the effort to include something for everyone on STWOM, for commercial reasons, something faith based in addition to the existential questioning of YHTBT might have been a good additional hook - though I hasten to add that for me, the album is fine as it is