Why good songs don't get airplay.
Mar. 7th, 2004 07:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
foxmonkeyI found this a few months ago, but never posted it. I kept meaning to, but didn't. :-) Anyhoo.
At the Board of Storm and Fury, in the ongoing debate over 'Some Girls' as a choice of single, someone opined that it was a bad song, then said, paraphrasing here, that if it's a good song, radio stations will play it. If 'Some Girls' isn't being played, we can't blame the radio station.
Au contraire, my friend. 1) Good songs aren't automatically played. 2) Yep, we can blame the stations, or more specifically, their owners.
So here's the article I've been meaning to post, on the state of radio in the country. The most appalling bits are the part about MTV (wow, no surprise there). It's long so I'll just snippetize the part that applies, but you can read the entire thing at the Las Review Journal. The article is by Doug Elfman.
By Doug Elfman
Friday, December 27, 2002
As for commercial radio stations, a lot of people complain about it, but no one does anything about it, hardy-har-har.
Except, suddenly, local commercial radio has made a noticeable jump in quality. The reason is simple. There's more good stuff out on the national scene for local radio to choose from. (This still doesn't alleviate the problem that we have no college radio station!)
Commercial radio stations can be blamed for being myopic about their niche demographics. Teen pop goes here. Classic pop goes there, for people who want to hear Gary Numan's "Cars" for the 1,000th time. (Uh, that would be me, actually.)
But mostly, commercial radio is driven by a few obvious factors.
For one thing, if a station is owned by Infinity or Clear Channel (two companies that own more stations than any others in America), then a station is going to play song lists shaped by Infinity's or Clear Channel's national headquarters. Just like a local Burger King sells Whoppers, and not alligator-on-a-stick.
Radio stations also reflect the pop, hip-hop, rock and country charts in Billboard magazine.
And stations pick up cues from the top music video play list at MTV and VH1. That's not good. Radio stations have already cut standard rotations from Top 40 down to top 26 or so. If they follow MTV's lead, that list could get cut to 10. The Los Angeles Times last week reported that MTV is cutting the number of music videos and artists it will play to a "Big 10," plus a few stragglers. What jackasses.
The corporate angle on radio stations can't be stressed enough. A recent series of stories about commercial radio ran on public radio, decrying the end of the DJ as the DJ used to be defined, by personality and power. DJs have far less ability to play favorites and requests.
Instead, they get handed play lists, which is a dirty rotten shame, but what can you do? We live in a company, not a country, anymore. George Orwell had it all wrong. Big brother isn't the government. Big brother is corporations. Two of them.
At the Board of Storm and Fury, in the ongoing debate over 'Some Girls' as a choice of single, someone opined that it was a bad song, then said, paraphrasing here, that if it's a good song, radio stations will play it. If 'Some Girls' isn't being played, we can't blame the radio station.
Au contraire, my friend. 1) Good songs aren't automatically played. 2) Yep, we can blame the stations, or more specifically, their owners.
So here's the article I've been meaning to post, on the state of radio in the country. The most appalling bits are the part about MTV (wow, no surprise there). It's long so I'll just snippetize the part that applies, but you can read the entire thing at the Las Review Journal. The article is by Doug Elfman.
By Doug Elfman
Friday, December 27, 2002
As for commercial radio stations, a lot of people complain about it, but no one does anything about it, hardy-har-har.
Except, suddenly, local commercial radio has made a noticeable jump in quality. The reason is simple. There's more good stuff out on the national scene for local radio to choose from. (This still doesn't alleviate the problem that we have no college radio station!)
Commercial radio stations can be blamed for being myopic about their niche demographics. Teen pop goes here. Classic pop goes there, for people who want to hear Gary Numan's "Cars" for the 1,000th time. (Uh, that would be me, actually.)
But mostly, commercial radio is driven by a few obvious factors.
For one thing, if a station is owned by Infinity or Clear Channel (two companies that own more stations than any others in America), then a station is going to play song lists shaped by Infinity's or Clear Channel's national headquarters. Just like a local Burger King sells Whoppers, and not alligator-on-a-stick.
Radio stations also reflect the pop, hip-hop, rock and country charts in Billboard magazine.
And stations pick up cues from the top music video play list at MTV and VH1. That's not good. Radio stations have already cut standard rotations from Top 40 down to top 26 or so. If they follow MTV's lead, that list could get cut to 10. The Los Angeles Times last week reported that MTV is cutting the number of music videos and artists it will play to a "Big 10," plus a few stragglers. What jackasses.
The corporate angle on radio stations can't be stressed enough. A recent series of stories about commercial radio ran on public radio, decrying the end of the DJ as the DJ used to be defined, by personality and power. DJs have far less ability to play favorites and requests.
Instead, they get handed play lists, which is a dirty rotten shame, but what can you do? We live in a company, not a country, anymore. George Orwell had it all wrong. Big brother isn't the government. Big brother is corporations. Two of them.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-03-07 09:07 am (UTC)I admit, I would not have chosen Some Girls as the first single. But, I understand why JC was excited about it. He felt like he had a story to tell. Sad, but no one was interested. And I don't care what people say either. Jive could have gotten that song some serious airplay on MTV if they wanted. They just didn't do it. Especially since he did have a really good video (IMHO).
no subject
Date: 2004-03-07 01:44 pm (UTC)I also would not have chosen SG as the lead-off single, but I don't think it's failure to impact radio has to do solely with its' quality. And the video, jeez, I was so disappointed when I realized that MTV would not be adding it to its playlist. We're talking about the first single here, I thought JIVE would've pushed it a little more. I could be way off, but I really think they didn't give radio a push to play it either. It just didn't seem to have any support.