Radio Never Left
It might be a little difficult to remember the time before on-demand music was available and all we had was the radio. Maybe you had an iPod or a generic MP3 player, but auxiliary cords and Bluetooth stereos were things you dreamed about. Your best friend was the thick CD case you kept all of your music in. Jump forward to modern day, and FM radio seems like just a backup if your phone is about to die. It conjures the question of how broadcast radio can manage to survive in modern day. You may be surprised to know that radio is still as strong as ever and is still giving on-demand services a run for their money for a few reasons.
First and foremost is the idea of playlist curation, or having another individual or team choose what music is featured in a playlist. While services like Spotify have some curated playlists, the nature of almost all broadcast radio is to have a team that monitors musical trends and creates a playlist worth listening to. With Spotify hosting over 35 million songs, and Google Play Music hosting even more, an individual can easily be overwhelmed by their options. By tracking data such as listener trends and song popularity, radio stations can maintain a playlist that their target audience will appreciate. Companies such as BigChampagne (now owned by LiveNation), who offer this sort of data, even track the frequency of downloads on programs like LimeWire in order to accurately predict music that is on the rise.
A study done by Bridge Ratings between 2012 and 2014 shows that while music streaming and on-demand services are thriving, they are supported by broadcast radio and its predisposal to introduce new music to listeners. Program directors, or the people who organize radio shows, are frequently listening to independent radio stations and monitoring other, similar radio stations in order to maintain an idea of which up-incoming bands are worth adding to their playlist. This continues on in a similar fashion to influence those who create playlists. While radio stations find and feature artists on the rise, on-demand playlists usually feature artists or singles that are in their prime.
While on-demand services offer playlists oriented to showing you music you may enjoy, such as Spotify’s “Discover Playlist”, they lack the discerning mindset that radio uses to improve song selection. Discovery-oriented playlists usually work by looking at the playlists of other people with similar musical tastes and playing music from their playlists on yours. The issue with this is how wide another individual’s musical tastes may be or if an account is shared by multiple people, both of which will fill your playlist with songs you may not like. Radio, on the other hand, is more selective and must satisfy a larger audience. They value quality in discovery as opposed to quantity that auto-playlists offer.
Alan Cross, music historian and radio host at 102.1 The Edge, commented on the sheer volume of music constantly being released that radio stations need to keep up with. “There is more music to be evaluated than ever before”, Cross responded when asked about the ratio of discovered music to music that makes it on to the radio. “I get more than 450 unsolicited music releases every week”. For those wondering, a conservative estimate would put those 450 songs at over 26 hours of music per week.
That’s just the start of it though. Though professionals like Alan get over 450 songs a week, that number is restricted to artists who were able to produce radio-quality music who would also fit the modern/alternative rock that The Edge plays. A service like Spotify or Google Play, who encompass every genre, receive 24,000 songs a day. While many are re-releases or higher quality copies, even a quarter of this (6000 songs a day) is too much to keep up with. A service called Forgotify capitalizes on this, as it focuses on the close to 4 million songs that have never been listened to completely. Unless a playlist is curated, it will probably fall behind in a matter of weeks.
While the curation is a benefit oriented towards the listener, radio stations can offer beneficial relationships to artists as well. Recently, the Hamilton band, Arkells, released a single from their upcoming album, ‘Rally Cry’, on radio stations across Canada three hours before it was released on streaming services. The single, ‘Relentless’, was announced on the band’s Instagram page with a request for fans to tag their local radio stations. The band then got in contact with the tagged radio stations and distributed the single. A similar event happened mid-August 2016, when Metallica spontaneously released the song ‘Hardwired’ from the similarly named album released later in the year.
The music industry is not far from the cinematic or visual art industry; while there are many artists present, there are a select few who become notable and attract most of the attention. For every one fan who catches news about a band like Arkells, there are a few hundred fans that catch news about artists like Kanye West or Shawn Mendes. Alan Cross commented on how “[a]rtists are always looking to gain an edge when it comes to attracting attention” and how it “seemed to work well for [Arkells and Metallica]”. A good way for an artist to get their name buzzing is to make agreements with alternative markets, like radio stations, who can debut music before the largescale releases.
In addition to exposure is the hotly debated topic of royalties from being played on the radio. For a little background info, while streaming services are likely to pay artists directly, radio stations usually pay artists through a Performance Rights Organization, or PRO. Artists join these organizations, such as BMI, the controversial ASCAP, or the exclusive SESAC, and make their music available to them. These organizations then license out their catalogues to radio stations (as well as TV stations, cinematic production companies, and so on), and keep a track of how many times each song is being played. Artists negotiate per-play royalty payments and are paid at regular intervals by the PROs. Every country has different laws about additional royalties, but this is the general formula.
When it comes to streaming, each service pays different amounts. Depending on if an artist is signed to a respective service or not can affect these numbers. On average, though, artists must reach between 200,000 and 250,000 plays to make the average monthly minimum wage of $1,472. That being said though, many on-demand services operate at a loss, such as Spotify which is yet to make a profit in its 10 years of activity.
This is not to say that radio is a radically superior source of income for an artist. Popularity and frequency of being played is the cornerstone of being paid as an artist, but siding with PROs includes certain perks. For instance, BMI offers two royalty bonuses depending on how well a song performs. BMI calculates everything quarterly, and if a song happens to be played more than 95,000 among all the radio stations involved with BMI, it receives a “Hit Song Bonus”. Think of this as a pool that is reserved for top performers, and is divided depending on how well you do – the higher you go above 95,000 plays, the more you’ll get of the pool.
Additionally, there is the “Standards Bonus” which operates similar to the pool method of the “Hit Song Bonus”, but is given to songs that have more than 2,500,000 lifetime plays. The classics you remember like Sum 41’s “Fat Lip” and Green Day’s “American Idiot” are in this category, and receive a bonus per play on the radio.
Finally, there is the idea of a radio station having a personality to it. What a playlist has in song choice it lacks in familiarity. A playlist may have thousands of songs you can choose from but a radio station – and a radio host – become a familiar voice that adds another dimension to your commute. A radio show with one or more good hosts is a large part of what makes radio continue to be popular. It almost bridges the divide between radio and television – every day, at the same time, you can tune in and listen to a radio show just as you would a TV show like Big Bang Theory or Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
In addition to their personality is what a host can bring to the program content-wise. Radio is known for playing music, but can include anything such from news to comedy segments to enhance the station’s listening experience. The news may be as simple as pop-culture events, like commenting on popular videos or social media stories, or as notable as keeping listeners updated on important events happening around their city or country. Traffic reports from around your area can be the deciding factor between getting to work on time and waiting to get around a car accident.
Another major part of many prominent radio shows are the contests being run. While some give away small amounts of money or concert tickets, others offer prizes as large as vacation abroad. They also range from daily contests, which you can participate in on your daily commute, to contests that accept participants or winners for months. For instance, 102.1 The Edge’s “Secret Boarding Pass” contest began on August 20th and accepts contestants every day until October 5th, with winners being selected daily for the duration. Even the smaller contests have the opportunity to build into larger prizes, such as 680 News’ Weather Guarantee which grows every day until their weather forecast is wrong.
Alan Cross put it best when he told me, “[r]adio doesn’t need a “resurgence” yet. It’s still powerful, profitable and popular. Its death has been greatly exaggerated”. On-demand streaming services are increasingly popular for their ability to play any song you want, when you want it, as many times as you want. Yet they are far from being the radio killer many see them as. Alan did continue on to say that “radio does need to evolve with technology [and] how it will do that remains to be seen”, but this has yet to hinder radio. With benefits to both listeners and artists, their revenues continue to rise and radio continues to be a staple in the entertainment industry.
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