Why good songs don't get airplay.

[foxmonkey]

I 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.

Comments

[charlidos.livejournal.com]

I think this is infinitely sad and it's the reason I don't listen to our commercial stations (although it's not quite as bad, in terms of who decides what gets played). We have a great station that is stateowned and commercial-free. The mix of music they play is fanastic and often it's whatever the producers care for. And that's how it should be. Who the heck wants to hear the same song 3000 times in one day? It's baffling.

[diggybear.livejournal.com]

You can see from your radio stations playlist what they play a majority of the time and honestly, it's songs of videos I see on MTV all the time. I can say that a couple of years ago, there would've been no question that my radio station would've played "Some Girls." The only time I hear it is on AT40. It used to be listed in their play list but it's so far down on the list that it'll never be heard. Yet, I can hear "Toxic" 4 times in one hour. Seriously. 4 times in one hour is too much. It's at the point where you think there is no other music out there. And the comment about radio playing only good music? Ha! There are some songs that I definitely think are not good that get played.

It's interesting because on Newlyweds you see Jessica go to Z100 and they are debating whether or not to pick up her song. Of course, they play it pretty often now but it was interesting to see what else they had on the table that they'd consider before her.

And seriously, Z100 would've picked up SG, had JC in the studio that day he did TRL or talked to him over the phone. But it's sad. It surprised me when I saw then at his Irving Plaza show because they NEVER mentioned it on air or even play his music. The state of radio is so sad.

[swabian.livejournal.com]

I agree with what everybody else said. I hear the same songs over and over again to the point where I start to dislike songs. Take for instance Outkast's Hey ya. I loved that song when it came out and my local Top 40 station played it into the ground.

Also, here in New Orleans I'm hardpressed to hear anything but hip hop and rap anymore. It makes for very boring radio and thus I don't listen anymore.

Limiting the playlist to that extend strikes me as a very foolish business decision. One can only hope that at some point the people in charge wake up and smell the roses.

[brighton-girl.livejournal.com]

This makes me really sad, because I know it's true. When you are still hearing Where Is the Love and other songs like that months after they were at the top of the charts you know that radio stations do not program at the local level.

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).

[without-me.livejournal.com]

Reading this, I couldn't help thinking how lucky we in LA are to have JoJo. Granted, he's a tool of Clear Channel, but at the same time he (I like to think) has some modicum of that personality/influence that allows him to play songs that otherwise would never get aired, and talk them up, and then if they take off, they may get picked up other places.

Of course, it didn't work for Some Girls. On the other hand, I wonder if BMU would ever have gotten national airplay if JoJo hadn't pimped it first.