{"id":686,"date":"2013-01-17T18:00:29","date_gmt":"2013-01-17T18:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/?p=686"},"modified":"2013-01-17T18:00:29","modified_gmt":"2013-01-17T18:00:29","slug":"how-to-get-your-song-on-commercial-radio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/how-to-get-your-song-on-commercial-radio\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Get Your Song On Commercial Radio"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why is it that even with all of the changes that have occurred of late in the music business \u2014 changes that have altered the face of nearly everything \u2014 commercial radio today is still not that different than it was ten, twenty, or even fifty years ago?<\/p>\n

As Jeff Price rightly points out in his article\u00a0\u201cThe Hidden Money In Radio,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0commercial radio\u00a0is<\/em>the last stronghold of the majors.\u00a0 They lost control of perpetual copyrights when artists could fund their own recordings via the advent of ProTools.\u00a0 They lost control of distribution once Apple and TuneCore got in the game.\u00a0 And, arguably, they lost control of publicity once artists began using social media to connect directly with their constituent group.<\/p>\n

So\u2026why not radio?\u00a0 Why has radio remained in tact when all the other elements in the industry have changed?<\/p>\n

To answer that question, it\u2019s first important to understand how a song gets played on \u201cBig Time\u201d radio.\u00a0 By \u201cBig Time\u201d radio, I\u2019m referring to formats like Adult Contemporary (AC), Hot Adult Contemporary (Hot AC), Contemporary Hits Radio (CHR), Active Rock, Pop, and Urban.\u00a0 There are other formats \u2014 college, Adult Album Alternative (AAA) \u2014 but, because their impact is smaller (read: less money can be made from them), they operate more in line with the way one would think radio operates: program directors try to pick music that the listeners of their stations will like, and if the listeners respond (calling in to request the song; calling in to ask what the song was, etc.), the song gets played more and more.\u00a0 If there\u2019s little or no response, the song doesn\u2019t get played for very long.<\/p>\n

\u201cBig Time\u201d radio doesn\u2019t typically operate that way.\u00a0 For an artist to even be considered by a Program Director at one of these stations, a tremendous amount of other activity must be going on.\u00a0 For instance, the artist may have had tremendous (and I do mean\u00a0tremendous<\/em>) success at one of those lower formats (AAA or College); or the artist might have had their music used in a TV commercial or film; or (and this is rare) the artist could be blowing up (selling out live shows, etc.) in a local market, and one of these Big Time stations \u201ctests\u201d their music during one of their \u201cspecialty\u201d shows (i.e. shows that feature local music, which are typically aired on weekends or late at night \u2014 when few people are listening), and it goes so well, that other stations pick up on it.<\/p>\n

All of the above seems (and is) fair and reasonable.\u00a0 Unfortunately, this type of organic, merit-based radio play usually does not end with an artist\u2019s song actually being programmed and played.\u00a0 Instead, there is another, less reasonable way artists find their music being played on Big Time radio.<\/p>\n

This other way involves most everything you\u2019ve ever thought it involves \u2013 primarily money (lots of it) and the old boys club of relationships.\u00a0 A major label (and that\u2019s an important distinction) signs an artist, spends a bunch of money to make a record, and then\u00a0must<\/em>\u00a0get that artist\u2019s music on the radio in order to have any chance of success.<\/p>\n

When you\u2019re faced with a \u201cmust do\u201d scenario, you do what you must.\u00a0 In this case, the labels first try to find some early supporters: program directors willing to \u201ctest\u201d the song \u2014 give it limited play, and see if there\u2019s a response from the stations\u2019 listeners.\u00a0 If there is, great. If there isn\u2019t\u2026well, great.\u00a0 In either case, if the label decides they have to get the song on the radio, whether the \u201ctest\u201d went well or not, they\u2019re going to do what they have to do.\u00a0 And for what it\u2019s worth, getting a \u201ctest\u201d spin is no easy task in and of itself.\u00a0 Favors are given to those who have greased palms for years to provide the three and a half minutes of airtime at 2:30AM on a Thursday night to test a song.<\/p>\n

Getting a song \u201cadded\u201d to a station\u2019s playlist to get a certain number of plays per week involves a rather byzantine process that brings in various parties, called independent promoters (\u201cindies\u201d).\u00a0 These \u201cindies\u201d are first paid by the label.\u00a0 It\u2019s important to note that the money the indies receive isn\u2019t necessarily compensation paid directly to them for getting Program Directors to get a song played.\u00a0 Rather, they work more like an intermediary to pass the label\u2019s 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,\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Top indie promoters make a lot of money.<\/p>\n

Confused?<\/p>\n

You\u2019re meant to be.<\/p>\n

Smell fishy?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because it is.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all obfuscation.\u00a0 It\u2019s all a way for the labels to avoid being seen as engaging in direct payment to a radio station in exchange for the radio station playing the label\u2019s song. In other words: Payola.<\/p>\n

Payola emerged pretty much alongside radio. \u00a0However, it wasn\u2019t until the 1950s that anybody paid it much mind. At this point, payola was criminalized, and it\u2019s been illegal to induce a station to play a song in exchange for money, without disclosing that money has changed hands, ever since.<\/p>\n

The methods change; the labels always trying to stay one-step ahead of the government, and obfuscate just enough to keep the system churning along as it always has.<\/p>\n

The reason the majors are willing to take these risks, and bear these costs \u2014 and the costs associated with breaking a record on Big Time radio can easily reach the seven figures \u2014 is because when a record breaks \u2014 even today \u2014 the returns are massive.\u00a0 One could argue, in fact, that due to the ineffectiveness of other means of promotion, Payola has become even more frenzied and high-stakes.<\/p>\n

You may ask, at this point, \u201cwell, fine, I get it\u2026the majors pay a bunch of money, and they get their records played, but why couldn\u2019t some non-major (indie label or investor) do the same \u2014 pay a bunch of money and get a hit record?\u201d\u00a0 The answer ties us back to Jeff\u2019s article, and explains why Big Time radio is still the purview of the majors.\u00a0 Assuming you had a million bucks or so, you very well could hire yourself some of these indies to \u201cwork\u201d your record to Big Time radio, and, believe me, they\u2019d take your money.\u00a0 Your record even might get a few spins (though likely only during times when prisoners, insomniacs, and long-haul truckers are listening), but those spins would peter out pretty fast.\u00a0 The indies would come back and say something along the lines of, \u201cWe\u2019ve got our toe in the door with station KCUF, and if you can just give it a bit more juice, they\u2019ll move it from overnights to drive-time.\u201d\u00a0 And you may give them that juice, and it may get a few spins during drive-time.\u00a0 And then you\u2019ll be told that you need to \u201cjuice\u201d some other stations.\u00a0 You can juice until your money runs out, but the chances of the record ever really breaking is almost zero.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s why: You\u2019ve come to these indies, and they\u2019ve gone to the labels, and they\u2019ve taken your money, and they know that you\u2019re probably not coming back any time soon. On the other hand, the majors are coming every week with money and new artists.\u00a0 Who would you prioritize if you were in the indie\/radio station\u2019s shoes?<\/p>\n

So, the majors have a lock on this.\u00a0 Every once in a blue moon a song will be so powerful that it can\u2019t not be played, and it doesn\u2019t matter if it\u2019s on a major or not.\u00a0 But this is so rare as to be almost non-existent.\u00a0 The reality is the songs you hear on Big Time radio all got their the same way, and if you look at the label who released these songs, 99% of the time, they\u2019ll be on a major.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not all doom and gloom however.\u00a0 Any time a system exists that is as corrupt as what I\u2019ve outlined, it eventually falls under its own weight.\u00a0 Customers who have been fed a steady diet of music that is not being played because it impacts the market, but rather because it was the highest bidder, eventually lose interest and look for alternatives.\u00a0 Up until recently, there weren\u2019t alternatives, but now with internet radio, satellite radio, subscription services, and your own playlists on your iPod\/iPhone, the alternatives abound.<\/p>\n

Our challenge and opportunity is to not allow these alternatives to follow the same path that traditional radio went down.<\/p>\n

Via Tunecore<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why is it that even with all of the changes that have occurred of late in the music business \u2014 changes that have altered the face of nearly everything \u2014 commercial radio today is still not that different than it was ten, twenty, or even fifty years ago? As Jeff Price rightly points out in his article\u00a0\u201cThe Hidden Money In Radio,\u201d\u00a0commercial radio\u00a0isthe last stronghold of the majors.\u00a0 They lost control […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":687,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[14,197,153],"class_list":["post-686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry-tips","tag-music-business","tag-radio-play","tag-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=686"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":689,"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686\/revisions\/689"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vakseen.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}