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MAKING IT IN MUSICFiled under: Featured Articles, MusicBiz101Why is it so hard to get radio airplay?

by Hugh Hession on Jan 8th, 2010

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Note: This post is part of makingitinmusic’s MusicBiz101, a cat­e­gory that was cre­ated to answer the typ­i­cal ques­tions musician’s have when they are start­ing out in the biz.

As an enter­tain­ment expert on the web­siteJustanswer.com, there are cer­tain themes that tend to often re-occur. One of them is about get­ting radio air­play. “How can I get my songs on the radio?” peo­ple ask me.

In address­ing this issue; I’ve decided to start a cat­e­gory called “MusicBiz101.” This cat­e­gory will include the major ques­tions most musi­cians start­ing out have about the indus­try. This doesn’t shut out you vets. If there is some stuff in here that can give you knowl­edge, by all means….partake!

Before we ven­ture more into this topic, it’s essen­tial to pro­vide an overview of radio and pro­mo­tion to get a bet­ter under­stand­ing of its origins.

A brief his­tory of radio and promotion

When radio was young, it was not uncom­mon to walk into a radio sta­tion, hand the DJa 45 and have them lis­ten to it. In those days, DJ’s were instru­men­tal (no pun intended….well maybe!) in launch­ing the careers of wanna be record­ing artists. You would think with that kind of access, every aspir­ing singer would be hand­ing DJ’s records. You have to remem­ber how­ever, that you couldn’t just plug in to your audio/midi inter­face and bring up Pro-Tools to record a song, and then send it to Dis­c­mas­ters for dupli­ca­tion, all for under $1200.

Not many had access in those days to record­ing equip­ment or the means to trans­fer a record­ing to vinyl – let alone the the money to do it! Record com­pa­nies typ­i­cally owned the best studios.

It didn’t take DJ’s long to fig­ure out how lucra­tive of a posi­tion they really were in. When pro­mot­ers showed up with records and favors (money, drugs, you name it), they sud­denly became big fans of the music that was being pushed on them.

Of course, not all DJ’s were like this. There were many who prided them­selves on cherry pick­ing hit songs. Regard­less, any­one that knows about pay­ola and Alan Freed, under­stands how manip­u­la­tive of a process it was.

As radio grew up, the indie sta­tions were becom­ing a thing of the past, as con­sol­i­da­tion was becom­ing the norm. The enter­tain­ment busi­ness is about rela­tion­ships, and indie record pro­mot­ers knew this, oh so well…so well, that they had the major labels pay­ing them crazy amounts of money (often up to $250,000 to $300,000 per song) to guar­an­tee radio air­play. This was pay­ola on crack.

There is some great infor­ma­tion about the his­tory behind this – the obvi­ous being Hit­men by Fredric Dannen.

The majors looked at it like this: the more expen­sive the indie pro­moter ser­vice was, the more com­pe­ti­tion they kept out. Thus, inde­pen­dent labels were essen­tially shut out from any type of com­mer­cial air­play. There were excep­tions, but very few.

The indie pro­moter scene has died out quite a bit in regard to the extreme nature of its activ­ity. After indict­ments were handed down to many of the record com­pa­nies and indie pro­mot­ers in the late 80’s, the indus­try cooled its engines. Well, for the most part.

So let’s get back to today. You are prob­a­bly think­ing, yes…let’s do that. That was then, this is now. Well, hate to burst your bub­ble, but indie pro­mot­ers are still a big part of the indus­try, and yes, they are still, should I say, “influ­enc­ing” radio…just not as bla­tantly. This is evi­dent with the 2005-06 pros­e­cu­tions by then New York pros­e­cu­tor (and ulti­mately, embar­rassed gov­er­nor) Eliot Spitzer involv­ing the major record com­pa­nies and the com­mu­ni­ca­tion (broad­cast­ing) com­pa­nies involved.

What radio is really for

Yep…I know. You hear it all the time from your fans, your fam­ily and your friends. “Your stuff is just as good as what is on the radio.”  Unfor­tu­nately it ain’t that easy.

Like tele­vi­sion, radio is in the adver­tis­ing busi­ness. It is how they make their money. The songs that are played on com­mer­cial radio (that ever– shrink­ing, repet­i­tive list we all know so well) are care­fully cho­sen with lov­ing care by the pro­gram direc­tors. Almost got you excited, didn’t I?

The real deal is that com­mer­cial radio relies heav­ily on the major record com­pa­nies to “inform them” of what will draw lis­ten­ers to their sta­tion. The big­ger an artist’s “cam­paign” the more expo­sure the artist gets. Can you read in between the lines?  Read the fol­low­ing email threads from Sony Records. You’ll get a kick out of it.

The idea here, is that record com­pa­nies choose the hit sin­gle and pitch it to a radio sta­tion through  var­i­ous “influ­en­tial” ways. Con­cert tick­ets, mp3 play­ers, sneak­ers, cloth­ing, week­end get­aways, cruises you name it. Then, hope­fully the song will be played so much that lis­ten­ers will start to catch on.

This is good for the artist, in that they get paid by their per­for­mance rights orga­ni­za­tion for air­play. This is good for the record com­pany, because they are mak­ing the major­ity of the money from the sale of the hit sin­gle. This is good for the radio sta­tion, because more peo­ple are tun­ing in and lis­ten­ing to their com­mer­cials from all those local car deal­er­ships, restau­rants and hair salons.

It is not good for you, as an inde­pen­dent artist unless you have that kind of mon­e­tary influ­ence. Sim­ply put, you don’t have that kind of cash to com­pete! Notice how I didn’t say “song.”  I said cash.

So you see where I’m going with this. You’re song might very well be incred­i­ble. And, I will say, great songs have a way of find­ing great homes. Estab­lish­ing your­self as an inde­pen­dent artist takes some work!

Do the songs that are pushed to radio suck? Well, that is obvi­ously the most sub­jec­tive state­ment out there. Sound off below. I’d love to hear your comments!

I will say this. A ton of air­play does not always equal record sales (note that any fixed record­ing medium is still referred to as “records” in the music biz).

I love the exam­ple that Moses Avalon men­tions in his book Con­fes­sions of a Record Pro­ducer.  In 1986, retail­ers had an ini­tial order of over 2 mil­lion units of Bruce Springsteen’s live album. The album was num­ber one on Bill­board and instantly went dou­ble plat­inum. What they don’t tell you is that many of the records were shipped back, as it is com­mon­place for retail­ers to ship back prod­uct that has not sold.  Prior to 1991 Bill­board was not remotely an indi­ca­tor of true record sales or radio air­play. They merely tracked ship­ping invoices!

Radio is not the same as it used to be

I was speak­ing with Denny Keitz­man a cou­ple months ago back­stage, about the demise of radio. Denny is the tour man­ager for the mega-Christian record­ing actCast­ing Crowns and an expe­ri­enced pro­moter with his com­pany, Strait Gate Pro­duc­tions. His take was radio is a fad­ing star.

At one time, it used to be the way to break new artists and for lis­ten­ers to hear new songs. Although to a degree that is still true,  kids just don’t lis­ten to much radio any­more and they are the ones who buy music. The Inter­net and dig­i­tal down­load­ing is killing both radio and the CD. Why tune into radio, when you have your choice of what song you want on demand, then down­load it to your iPod?

So as an aspir­ing artist, should you give up on radio air­play all together? Well, the major sta­tions won’t touch you if you aren’t signed. This is just a given. Yes, I know there are exceptions…there always are, but as a rule of thumb, com­mer­cial radio is reserved for signed, major league record­ing artists. There are local shows that are a plus for your pro­mo­tional cam­paigns and you can’t for­get col­lege radio (although this can be heav­ily influ­enced by the majors as well).

Radio is not what it used to be. Back in the day, it was the only medium to break an act, but there wasn’t as many pro­mo­tional oppor­tu­ni­ties as there are now for the indie artist. The good news, is nowa­days there are more and more out­lets to pro­mote your music — espe­cially online — bring­ing a syn­er­gis­tic rela­tion­ship to your music that older musi­cians never had.

The links below contains letters to and from Sony to radio stations. They show what transpired between the company and station as far as promotional products to play the stars songs on radio. Letters are from 2000 to 2005.

http://www.makingitinmusic.net/wp-admin/images/Payola%20Documents.pdf

http://blog.tunecore.com/2011/09/how-to-get-your-song-on-commercial-radio.html

http://www.makingitinmusic.net/musicbiz101/how-do-i-get-my-songs-on-the-radio.html

By George Howard

The link above was in the master link below

http://www.makingitinmusic.net/musicbiz101/how-do-i-get-my-songs-on-the-radio.html

The author’s web page

http://www.makingitinmusic.net/

Articles about Getting Music played on radio

September 15, 2011

How To Get Your Song On Commercial Radio

By George Howard

http://blog.tunecore.com/2011/09/how-to-get-your-song-on-commercial-radio.html

http://blog.tunecore.com/2011/09/the-hidden-money-in-radio-except-radio-is-dying.html

Complete report on radio in UK

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.culture.gov.uk/images/publications/An_Independent_Review_of_the_Rules_Governing_Local_Content_on_Commercial_

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:        

John Myers has spent more than 25 years working in Local Radio, successfully

managing radio stations of every size in most areas of the UK. Most recently,

he was Chief Executive of GMG Radio, having led the company from its

creation in 1999 to become the third largest radio group in the UK. An award

winning presenter, he was formerly Group Managing Director of Border Radio

Holdings; and Chief Executive of Radio Investments Ltd, owners of 25 local

radio stations across the country.

 A member of the Sony Radio Academy Awards Committee, he was formerly

Chairman of the Radio Academy, director of GMG plc and a member of the

board of RadioCentre. In 2005, he was awarded a Fellowship for his

contribution to radio.

Reply »

MartinTJanuary 8, 2010

What about other forms of radio?

I have a list of over 100 IRC that’s Inter­net Relay Chat radio’s with lis­ten­ers in their 10’s to there 1000’s.

You can con­tact the DJ there and then in the chan­nel and more than likely suc­ceed in get­ting air play…

You can take this one step fur­ther in regards to pro­mo­tion and ask as your a band mem­ber if you can relay your web­site or what have you in there chan­nel peri­od­i­cally if they like your music… I’ve seen hun­dreds of peo­ple in radio’s on IRC idling and chat­ting away.

Nice site btw!