could an overhaul at fm radio save the music business?
I’m asking the question and my answer would be yes it possibly could - here’s why. I no longer listen to terrestrial radio. I can honestly say that it has failed me. I recall with great pleasure pretending to be asleep at night as a teenager listening to John Peel deep under my bed covers and spending Sunday evenings listening to (and taping to a small reel to reel Grundig tape recorder) the top twenty chart countdown. The reason for this teenage attention? The music selection was broad and the music discovery process was important to me as an ‘influencer;’ I wanted to run to school the next day to share the latest musical find. Now I find new music via the internet and not necessarily from internet radio.
I argue that because of the homogenization of the radio industry and it’s monotonous programming since the heady days of early FM radio in the USA people have been steadily tuning out of broadcast radio and new generations of listeners are being lost. In fact the success of satellite radio where money actually has to change hands to access it may be the ultimate confirmation that broadcast radio is becoming redundant - except for advertisers, but that leaves me wondering who are they reaching? Satellite radio’s success is that it offers hundreds of channels of different musical genres and listeners appear to want choice, and given that most people listen to radio in their cars during the morning and evening rush hours where does that leave terrestrial radio? Whatever the reason, there’s no denying a stark reality: Listeners, increasingly bored by the homogeneous programming and ever-more-intrusive advertising on commercial airwaves, are simply tuning out and finding alternatives. Says Rishad Tobaccowala, chief innovation officer at Publicis Groupe Media: “Radio pissed on their own product and then cluttered it up.”
I think the current recording industry doldrums could most likely be traced back to their relationship with radio (not to mention their subservient role in their dealings with MTV.) When radio worked for the labels it worked well but all good things must come to an end - the cost-cutting plans at radio in the 90’s that resulted in the dismissal of DJs was not the smartest of moves. Independent choice of programming to local audiences was replaced by a central programming directive coming from HQ which led to the homogenization of the airwaves. You could not tell one city’s station from the next. And of course they all had to have one “personality” who, if he was not English, could at least mimic an English accent.
I believe that more, not less, music is being consumed today mainly via the aforementioned satellite radio services and the internet. The music lover has more access to more music than ever before and this breadth of choice is what’s driving sales of independent music and causing the decline in major label music. The Long Tail is in full effect in other words. KEXP in Seattle and KCRW in Santa Monica are two excellent examples of radio stations that have a thoughtful mix of radio programming - they appear to be succeeding by giving their audience a choice. If the FM stations around the country listened to what their listeners actually wanted they may be able to come up with a strategy that increases listenership and actually helps the record labels achieve more sales. Without the major label system feeding them music they will be reduced to playing back catalogue and more listeners will defect. That strategy in my mind would be to de-centralize programming giving real DJs the control over what they believe their local populations want to hear - a variety of music not just the ‘hits’……..
January 29th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Great subject Dave & something I’ve been thinking about for some time myself. Plain & simple, terrestial radio sucks & has for a REALLY long time. There are some great internet stations & I’m sure satellite as well. What I keep thinking is that we need good terrestial radio out there in the public airwaves, being heard by people, experienced out loud. Not on some headphones, being heard by one person, who then has to email someone else a link. That is such a singular experience. This isn’t as articulate as I’d like but I’m trying…which is more than I can say for the radio business.
There is so much that could be discussed on this topic it makes my head hurt. Thanks for bringing the topic up.
January 29th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
up until now the only way to get non-corporate music was college/local radio. the problem with that filter was that everything got through. the signal to noise ratio was way too low. now we’re at a time where the user can set the filter to reduce noise and increase signal. pandora is a good example.
January 30th, 2008 at 5:32 am
Ahh, radio. I spent many years in the biz in one form or another and I can tell you from personal experience that radio went wrong for two major reasons–at least when I was active in the trade:
Payola laws forced the stations and labels to get creative with their pay-for-play schemes. If a label wanted to plug the latest overproduced piece of nonsense, it would offer a group of stations a major incentive in the form of serious prize packages (we’re talking large dollars in many cases) and merch to give away to listeners. Because the mids and small market program directors paid close attention to what the big stations were playing and tried to stack the deck in favor of what was likely to work–based on the track record of the current big market playlist–the “legal” payola had the net effect of influencing airplay all over the country. Homogenization via skillfully targeted influence.
The other part of this was the use of consultants who would blow into town in a mid-sized market for a week or two, listen to the radio station, and tell the program directors what to do based on some new programming plan designed to cast a wide net and snag new listeners. Problem is, these consultants don’t live in the communities they are making these programming decisions for, and when your highly paid consultant tells you to dial back the quirks in your format in favor of what “works” on a national level, you get even more homogenous crap.
And THAT, folks, is how Vanilla Ice scored a top 40 single with nothing more than a recycled Queen/Bowie riff back in the bad old days.
January 30th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Hi Dave its Gary from Alway Searching For Music, thanks very much for the link and mention in your sidebar.
Excellent posting I also remember listening to John Peel under the covers, because I had to go to school and I also used to tape not just the charts but originally had an ambition to record every song played on the radio (I was 12 and maybe a little naive, not realizing actually how much music is out there). I also manged to find a punk/new wave station on radio Luxembourg on Sundays of which the reception was awful but the records brilliant.
Like you I have totally left the radio, I cannot find any channels that play music for people with more obscure tastes. XFM in the UK was good at the beginning but now it is mainstream and full of adverts.
I am with you on your conclusion, in my opinion centralization never works (whether its music or any other service).
I personally would love to DJ a radio show and judging by how many people come on some of these blogs, I am sure the audiences are there.
January 31st, 2008 at 6:56 am
here’s a question - if radio is so dominated by top-40 homogeneity, and the format is being increasingly ignored, why does radio still get mentioned as an “essential” tool to promote artists? I’m referring to the myriad of books and articles targeted at new musicians that offer a “how to” view of the industry. I page through these now and again, and I am constantly surprised at how big a deal they make airplay out to be. In philadelphia, there is only one (maybe 2) FM rock stations that play things you haven’t heard before, and they aren’t all that popular. I don’t see how chasing airplay is a worth an artist’s time, unless they already have a huge record deal with a major. Nonetheless, there’s tons of published advice out there about how essential it is to artist promotion.
January 31st, 2008 at 7:37 am
For my money, it’s a leftover from the bad old days in terms of promotion, but radio is indeed an essential for artists for a variety of reasons. Repetition is the key to mass-market advertising. If you hear or see a band name once, it’s shrugged off. Twice more or so in the right context and the unfamiliar becomes “who’s that?” A dozen times and psychologically, that familiarity becomes credibility. We can’t help it–its the way our brains are wired and the marketing types have spent TONS figuring that out over many decades and using it to push product. Doesn’t matter what the product is, either.
Radio helps establish that repetition…who cared about Nine Inch Nails before they hit the cover is Spin Magazine back in, what was it, 1992? Suddenly Nine Inch Nails was EVERYWHERE.
For 99.9 percent of the artists in THIS space, these things will never apply because you don’t care about reaching a lowest common denominator mass appeal market. But if you examine the career arc of REM and Nine Inch Nails you see commercial radio airplay for both groups being insignificant at first until somebody got interested in repeating the keywords–the band names and singles–as many times as possible over a wide territory. Then they were EVERYWHERE. That somebody was the band’s nicely compensated PR machine.
January 31st, 2008 at 10:54 am
Justin,
I have read some of those “how to have a music career” books with disgust as I see them offering up false hopes to young artists. Rule 1 in my book has always been “If you need that book” or “you must go to a music conference to get the downlow on the biz” then perhaps you are on the wrong career track. And as Joe says the reliance on radio as a major promo tool was at one time correct. Unfortunately the type of bands that won that valuable airspace were all genre-selected by white men in the back office I think - if Nirvana pushed up the Arbitron ratings then we got a whole host of copycat bands such as Bush etc…
BTW - my book will be entitled “How to have a career in music by ignoring the music industry”……
February 1st, 2008 at 10:48 am
I agree with you, Dave, that a major overhaul of FM could save the music industry. But I doubt that it will happen any time soon, if ever. With the FCC’s allowance of media consolidation, the gap between people & programmers who love music, and the people holding the money is a chasm to large to bridge.
I’m working as hard as I can to get into radio, and started down that path six years ago, because I still remember being able to turn on the radio and hear something new and worth hearing. I came of age listening to pre-grunge 970 The Beat in Portland, and made several tapes, while on family vacation, of Live 105 in San Francisco (whose jockeys included a younger and more idealistic Mark Hamilton). When proper radio disappeared entirely, it left a huge void in my life, until the advent of the mp3, Internet radio and music blogs. There were actually about six or seven years where I thought that people had stopped making good music, that the era of good music was over.
I wouldn’t write off entirely the importance for a band of getting some airplay. Maybe it’s just my nostalgia combined with my career aspirations, but there are listeners who really pay attention to what they’re hearing and ask “who was that band?”. And can “we got played on the radio” ever be as gratifying as a performer to say as “we got blogged”?
February 1st, 2008 at 5:47 pm
@Dave Cusick
I like the comment - “And can “we got played on the radio” ever be as gratifying as a performer to say as “we got blogged”?
You’re right, the blogosphere doesn’t reach as many people as FM radio can but then again in a Long Tail world you’d be surprised at some blogs reach. Burial is a good example, a great album that hit all the blogs and ended up on a lot of end of year top albums lists - that album probably got zero to little airplay on radio but hopefully sold pretty well because of blog exposure. radio is doomed if it continues along its current path…..
February 1st, 2008 at 10:35 pm
Yeah, I hear you. I consider myself part of the Long Tail. I really hope that radio does somehow get out of lowest-common-denominator mode. I feel SO SAD for kids who grow up only knowing Britneyback! I can’t imagine trying to discover and forge my identity in that kind of landscape.
February 3rd, 2008 at 9:36 pm
Radio, for the most part, completely and totally SUCKS. And yes - just WHO is listening and CARING?
While I’m an employee at INDIE 103.1FM here in Los Angeles, I seriously and truly would be listening even if I wasn’t (as I did before they actually gave me my own airtime). Hell, I actually STILL
listen to the station now, because I actually (there’s that word again) dig what they play.
Yes - they are a commercial, FM station. So yeah, you have to suffer through commercials, alas.
But they are the closest thing we have - in all of America, I think - to what radio was up until
about 1984, roughly. That is - a station programmed by music lovers, that actually takes chances
playing brand new, unheard, songs and bands. Along with that, giving 2-hour chunks of airtime to
folks like Henry Rollins to play whatever the hell he wants. That kind of stuff is unheard of at any
given FM rock station. There’s a reggae show, a roots-rock show, a metal show, a punk rock show,
a local music show, an import show, and on and on.
My little chunk of airtime is 3 hours late-night Saturday/Sunday morning, where they let me drop all
that crunchy electro/indie rock remix stuff the kids are eating up so heartily lately. But then I also get
to drop in the masters of where this all came from in the late 70’s and early 80’s. I’ve dropped plenty
of Gang Of Four, Japan, Heaven 17, Suicide, Medium Medium, Shriekback, Nina Hagen etc.
I call it all “NEON NOISE” - http://www.myspace.com/neonnoise
The highest compliment I ever got paid, was when I had Medium Medium on the show live, and their
guitar player Andy Ryder said what I’m doing reminded him of John Peel! While I would never boast that
kind of thing myself, I was really proud and honored to hear it!
Sadly, Indie 103.1’s signal is not even close to what KROCK (notice there’s no hypen there) booms out, and
their ratings are in the depths. But their online listenership is massive - as is the passion and loyalty
of their terrestrial listeners - again, such a rarity these days!
Anyway - just my two cents, because I love the station and SO want them to survive.
Not just for my own stake, but for the listeners - and the SPIRIT of what they do.
Paul
February 4th, 2008 at 7:55 am
@dj paul. now we need to hear your show. time to harness to the power of the webaverse….or maybe the power of greyskull? (please send all obscure references complaints to kiala)