Interesting Article Speculating on the Chances of CD Success

[Sarah]

Originally posted by jwd

And thats what sucks about radio today. Some very good music by these veteran acts and newer acts needs to be heard on the airwaves. There's nothing challenging or remotely different on mainstream radio. It's all the same crap that is being forced on the listener by the conglomerates and the likes of MTV. That's why I rarely listen to anything but NPR. (edit.. yadda yadda.. etc.)heavy demand for it by the general public.

um. yeah. k.

i know for a fact that radio stations don't just play whatever song they want. our music director spends lots of time on the phone w/wrekkit companies who are asking what their particular song's rotation is every week. he decides the rotation from the chart & requests. it's all about what the people who are listening are gonna like. its the dolts who respond to surveys & tell billboard et. al. that they like {insert ****ty song here} best this week who screw us over.

don't blame it on radio. blame it on the general population. if it wasn't for radio and artist exposure on MTV (channel x) , we'd be in an even more horrible popular music situation than we already are. granted.. mtv is pretty damn horrible. and yup, it is a conglomerate. but, the brain dead drones love it, so, whatever.

We have USA Today to save us. That's right.. I forgot.
It seems like there's something WAY wrong when the only outlet for praise for your favorite band is USA today. Hmm. Maybe when they get a little more mainstream.


Sarah

[Skylark]

Sarah...Can we as Fleetwood Fans call our radio stations
and ask for what we want to hear? They did not pay
any attention to my request! Who can I call near Pittsburgh?

This is very exciting for us! The Dance sold 1mil. did it not?
Perhaps the day of huge concerts and numbers is over!Sky

[Christopher]

Originally posted by Sarah:

It seems like there's something WAY wrong when the only outlet for praise for your favorite band is USA today. Hmm. Maybe when they get a little more mainstream.

yeah, dont get me wrong- I am estatic that they are getting press...But what about: Billboard, RollingStone and other notables....I keep looking at those sites for updates...and now that there IS a press release...They have seemed to ignore it...hmmmm very interesting.....are they dissing the Mac ??.

Also Sky, "The Dance" has sold 5 million copies and counting.......

[Skylark]

Thanks Christopher for correcting ME!!!
5 million is wonderful! They're rich!!!
Gosh, the guy said 1 million on Lindsey's BTM so...
that is where I got that figure! Thanks a LOT!!!Sky

[golddustwoman77]

I thought the article was very realistic. The author gave the album promise, and talked about the probable success of their tour. Thanks for posting that, DownOnRodeo!

[jwd]

i know for a fact that radio stations don't just play whatever song they want. our music director spends lots of time on the phone w/wrekkit companies who are asking what their particular song's rotation is every week. he decides the rotation from the chart & requests. it's all about what the people who are listening are gonna like. its the dolts who respond to surveys & tell billboard et. al. that they like {insert ****ty song here} best this week who screw us over.

umm...yeah...that's pretty much what I was complaining about.
How do you get to like a song unless you hear it and why would you request a song if you've never heard it?!


Joe

[ERigby818]

Sarah, I don't blame radio, the medium. I love radio so damn much I've chosen a career in it and want to stick with it. But there are certain GREEDY radio monopoly conglomerates that manipulate what gets played so much and make way too much money by cheating the system and the result is mass-marketing that doesn't make sense and forcing it down people's throats even if it's crap. Did you know that a certain radio conglomerate in kahootz with record labels allows them to pay for advertising spot time to get 2 minute ads in for new "hit records." The radio stations play enough of the song in these ads that it counts as a "spin" and all the trade mags and billboard say this song got x number of spins. It's called payola, folks! You'd think people actually requested them, but this greedy conglomerate doesn't actually take requests much anymore because all the djs are voice-tracked (that's when all their "breaks" are pre-recorded as early as days before) and the studios are unmanned and those phones are ringing with requests to play and not play stuff, but the dj is as his other job because he won't get the salary or health benefits he needs from the ugly corporation. So when billboard says the songs get played, the rule is, you gotta play them more, the record companies make a gazillion dollars and they give tons of cash to the radio conglomerates in the form of "perks"...lots of free tickets for their listeners to win and other stuff. There are SO MANY examples of these unethical practices, many of which can be found here. I'm telling you, these sweet litle deals are just one of the reasons there is such tight, tight control over what gets played on the radio these days. It encourages the already big problem of ageism in the music industry (I've said before the reason Sheryl Crowe can be such a mainstream "pop" star at 40 and not just an adult rock artist is because she looks and sounds 30 and is buff in a tank top)...it also has to do with the freshness of what's new, so we'll buy, buy buy....implying that older artists can't do anything "new."

As for TV, they know sex and youth sells and they abuse that to the point where it ain't "music" television unless it's a young, hot, panting Britney Spears. Faith Hill was a conservatively dressed country singer but her record execs could tell she was pretty and had a lovely voice, so to make lots of money off her, now you don't see her in a video where she's not either writhing in a bed or in the rain or something sexy in the cliché sense.

Ugh. Sorry if all this is depressing. It sure is to me
-Sonia

[becca]

This is why so often a new song or group breaks through on a college station, pirate or net station, NPR (CBC in Canada), or some low budget small station left that still wants to have some character or won't pay for one of the programming 'services' where what gets played is some kind of screwy science based on number son pieces of paper which initially seem to come out of thin air. It's amazing how many songs are labelled as hits the very day they are released if not sooner! Some stuff that gets the big machine backing it is still good though, but who knows how compromised the artist had to become to get there. It seems to me FM is compromising by catering to the market as what the market has said is Buckingham & Nicks. If it had said Bob Welch and Bekka Bramlett instead they'd go for that I guess.

[Sarah]

Originally posted by ERigby818
Sarah, I don't blame radio, the medium. I love radio so damn much I've chosen a career in it and want to stick with it. But there are certain GREEDY radio monopoly conglomerates that manipulate what gets played so much and make way too much money by cheating the system and the result is mass-marketing that doesn't make sense and forcing it down people's throats even if it's crap.

see also "Clearchannel," "Citadel," and "Journal." (et. al.)

voice tracking is highly effective if used properly.. if you path the voice tracks straight to the automation system (we use SS32), then it's instant.. you dont have to wait to upload. (which is a pain in my ass.. cuz dispatch never works.. its always sorting. grrrr..) if i VT for say, 10 to 2.. i start at 9:30.. and do it in intervals.. its just like planning ahead.. and most times, even after factoring in requests, you wont change the log much ANYWAY because there's a good reason everything is in the order it's in. plus.. i'm a perfectionist.. so i like being able to redo what i'm doing if i dont do it perfectly. (or up to my specifications.) i am much relieved that i dont have to dj much.. (pm news director)

and as far as the tight deals and junk.. i dunno about all of that. on satellite programming.. perhaps. if you hire a consultant to do your log & playlist.. maybe. but i think it's dead wrong to say that stations dont keep their listeners in mind. stations DO keep their listeners in mind.. very strictly.. if for no other reason than.. ARBITRON.

btw.. thanks for clearchannelsucks.org. i didnt see that till after i started typing. i like that. i like tradeouts though.. tradeouts will get you a new set of tires... internet service.. yadda yadda.

and.. sorry, but.. i HATE npr. i hate it. i think it is the suckiest bunch of sucks that have ever SUCKED spreading their suck messages and suck programs on SUCKY frequencies. npr sucks.

..phew..

Sarah

[Sarah]

Originally posted by Skylark
Sarah...Can we as Fleetwood Fans call our radio stations
and ask for what we want to hear? They did not pay
any attention to my request! Who can I call near Pittsburgh?

its all in who you talk to. if you get the receptionist.. if shes anything like the receptionists at the stations i've worked at.. she'll forget to write the thing down.

if you talk to a dj & he's in the middle of somethin or pushed for time.. he'll forget.

if you call & ask for the same thing over & over.. they wont play it on purpose because you annoyed them.

yeah, djs are annoying.. offensive.. blahblah.. but if you offend them, you wont get what you want at all.. and they will laugh at you.


Sarah

[chiliD]

So, basically narrowing down to one word what has made radio so "bad" is:

Deregulation

They deregulated airlines and what happened??

The deregulated utilities and what happened??

Deregulation is not the best solution for everything.

[CarneVaca]

I simply can't see where prerecorded radio chatter between songs is a good thing. I can't see how narrowing playlists to 30 songs a day is a good thing. Or the payola that Sonia so aptly described.

What it all comes down to is the insidious corporate domination of everything that touches our lives. Some people embrace it because they don't realize it's happening. Or they simply shrug and don't see what's wrong with it.

Fleetwood Mac's new song debuted in a TV spot and the general reaction seems to be, What's wrong with that? What is wrong with it is that it is another way for corporations to control everything we do. Why should I have to listen to a song for the first time as the background to some greedy corporate effort to make more money off me? This rampant commercialization that controls our lives is troubling, and it is very Orwellian. Our friend Eric Blair had it right; he only missed on one thing--that the corporations, not governments, would be controlling our minds and lives. Government has become but a puppet of the corporations.

And here's why I've been somewhat harsh about the band's plans for this release. Lindsey himself said in his Behind the Music that he hoped his children would look at his work and see the integrity in it. Well, sir, I hope all they look at is the music itself, because if they look at everything that is surrounding it right now, they might well be disgusted. Here is a man who sounds like he kicks himself in the ass for capitulating to the corporate interests with the Mirage album, and to some extent Tango, and he turns around years later and does the same thing.

And I maintain, and will continue to maintain, that it didn't have to be this way. I can think of lots of artists who have bucked the system and are living comfortably: Wilco, Aimee Mann, Camper Van Beethoven, Rodney Crowell, and many more. These are the artists who are finding ways to reach their audiences without whoring themselves to the corporations. And they are doing it for the love of the art itself, not to line their pockets.

Here's a prediction: The labels and corporate bands like Fleetwood Mac are on the dangerous species list, folks. It's artists like the ones I mention above who will continue to succeed when our dormant public finally wakes up and stops swallowing everything the greedy corporations continuously ram down our throats.

Having said that, I am very much looking forward to the new album. And I can't stand Aimee Mann's music. But I reserve the right to stay pissed at my favorite band. Oh, and if I do decide to go to a show, a dubious proposition at this point, I'll be the one in disguise.

[blinker12]

I have to say, Lindsey really does look good in these new photos. He looks thinner in the face, and he seems to have gotten some sun recently... Maybe it was all the time spent in Hawaii!

[tommer]

Originally posted by CarneVaca
Here's a prediction: The labels and corporate bands like Fleetwood Mac are on the dangerous species list, folks.

one doesn't have to be an economist to analize this, look at the variants:

1- music sales are dropping 6-8% per year
2- music downloading could never be stopped
3- major artists' contracts prices keeps getting more and more inflated
4- promotion prices increasing

it's no longer a question of "if". the question is now "when".

[ERigby818]

Originally posted by Sarah

voice tracking is highly effective if used properly..
Oh, definitely. I don't have a problem with voice tracking in itself...when the jocks are actually there. Heck, if I were a jock (I'm not) I'd VT an occasional break to make sure it came out smooth. I have a problem with people only getting paid 5 hours to do 40 hours of radio...they're paid to voicetrack and leave (the bulding) and there is no one in the studio to answer the listensers requests. This is not the part-timer's fault. It is cheap management which is part of the corporate policy whether the local PD and jock likes it or not. This is commom practice in many places owned by those big corporations, and I've seen it first hand.

stations DO keep their listeners in mind.. very strictly.. if for no other reason than.. ARBITRON.
Yeah...but actual local PDs are not gven nearly as much creative freedom under big corporations are they were before. Good PDs now who care about their listeners don't actually pick much music anymore...they try to keep their listeners and their arbitron books good by having contests, attractive imaging and organizing the clock to get maximum listening. They also spend a lot of time on morning shows which are one of the few things making stations unique.


i like tradeouts though.. tradeouts will get you a new set of tires... internet service.. yadda yadda.
I love tradeouts. They're great! There are a few restaurants in town that give me free food all the time because we advertise them, and I don't even do the ads. But tradeouts are supposed to happen through the station's sales department, not payola between corporate headquarters and sleazy greedy record companies.
Keep in mind this whole time I have been making a huge generalization about radio mass-owned by nasty corporations, It's no secret "cheapchannel" is the worst offender. Locally owned radio is not like this at all, and small companies that own radio stations still have some dignity, imo. I work for one of those tiny low-budget stations that still wants to have some character that becca described. I got so disgusted working in corporate radio (can you tell?) and it was very hard to find the job I'm in now, because stations like mine are few and far between. It has a shoestring budget, but it's done right. People never seem to understand that radio in general is NOT a profitable industry...and the only way it is is if you do greedy, cheap, sleazy things and own many, many stations. You compromise the quality and make all stations of a particular format sound exactly the same....but you make a buck.


I must say I love the new Tom Petty album for shedding some light on all this. It's got some GREAT songs


and.. sorry, but.. i HATE npr.

*gasp*
Hehe, I guess it's an accquired taste. I love NPR and the things they stand for...I admit some of their programming does put me to sleep, but I feel like I'll appreciate it more when I'm older
-Sonia