[Dust2]

Radio don't play a song based on popularity. It is played based on a record label relationship with the radio people (fancy dinners, free promotions, artists flying to do a radio station concert etc....)



http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/...ake-a-hit-song

But it's not a hit until everybody hears it. How much does that cost?

About $1 million, according to Daniels, Riddick and other industry insiders.

"The reason it costs so much," Daniels says, "is because I need everything to click at once. You want them to turn on the radio and hear Rihanna, turn on BET and see Rihanna, walk down the street and see a poster of Rihanna, look on Billboard, the iTunes chart, I want you to see Rihanna first. All of that costs."

That's what a hit song is: It's everywhere you look. To get it there, the label pays.

Every song is different. Some songs have a momentum all their own, some songs just break out out of the blue. But the record industry depends on hits for sales. Having hits is the business plan. The majority of songs that are hits — that chart high, that sell big, that blast out of cars in the summertime— cost a million bucks to get them heard and played and bought.

Daniels breaks down the expenses roughly into thirds: a third for marketing, a third to fly the artist everywhere, and a third for radio.

"Marketing and radio are totally different," he says. "Marketing is street teams, commercials and ads."

Radio is?

"Radio you're talking about . . ." he pauses. "Treating the radio guys nice."

'Treating the radio guys nice' is a very fuzzy cost. It can mean taking the program directors of major market stations to nice dinners. It can mean flying your artist in to do a free show at a station in order to generate more spots on a radio playlist.

Former program director Paul Porter, who co-founded the media watchdog group Industry Ears, says it's not that record labels pay outright for a song. They pay to establish relationships so that when they are pushing a record, they will come first.

Porter says shortly after he started working as a programmer for BET about 10 years ago, he received $40,000.00 in hundred-dollar bills in a Fed-Ex envelope.

Current program directors told me this isn't happening anymore. They say their playlists are made through market research on what their listeners want to hear.

.....

They say their playlists are made through market research on what their listeners want to hear.

If this is true that songs are played by what the listeners want to hear, the song that sold the most in a given week (296,000 downloads) should have better radio airplay than a song that sold say 50,000 downloads.

Yet,

The song that sold 296,000 downloads got 6 million AI and the song that sold 50,000 downloads got 15 times as much at 90 million AI.



RADIO AIRPLAY IS BOUGHT (legally through fancy dinners, artist free concert for a radio station etc...). There are exception to the rule of course.



But to me, it seems like radio airplay is usually based on:

A radio friendly song + a record label relationship with the radio people (fancy dinners, free promotion/concert tickets, artists flying to do a concert etc...).

A mediocre song will not do well on airplay despite how hard the record label push it. After a few weeks and 'meh' reviews (listeners research), the song will be off the playlist.

[babyboy44]

wow .. it coats alot to make a song !!

[L.B GAGA]

This explains it all. :sorrow:

[Dust2]

Here's the chart (there are exceptions to this but for most part, it will look like this):

Good radio friendly song + strong label relationship with radio people = lot of airplay
Mediocre radio song + strong label relationship with radio people = good airplay at first, then mediocre airplay because the song got average listeners feedback

Good radio friendly song + weak label relationship with radio = mediocre airplay
Mediocre radio song + weak label relationship with radio = very little airplay

[IVY]

of course relationships play a big part but if a song is good and people like it and start buying it then it's automatically will do well on the radio

[Dust2]

A lot of Top 40 Radio Stations have a concert each year and this concert will have multiple artists.

Why would big name artists fly around the country and do concerts for radio stations that often provide big profits to said radio station?

Also, why do Top 40 Radio stations got free concert tickets to giveaway to listeners? And flyaway airplane tickets to see a concert thousands of miles away?

It's a legal way of doing business. You play our songs more and in return, we give you free tickets, VIP tickets, backstage passes, and even fly our artists to appear on your radio concert.

It's legal because it is not payola.

[Rentboy]

there's corruption everywhere.

many artists will have more money and clout behind them to begin with. They get those big TV promo gigs when others don't. So it works in all kinds of unfair ways.

Just enjoy what you enjoy and dont place too much importance to chart placings. ATRL is way too obsessed with chart positions as if thats the whole worth of a song.

[Tsuko]

I think you can get massive amounts of radio airplay without having a radio friendly song, and without having relationships with radio stations. Like Someone Like You isn't radio friendly (to the US) and Adele isn't on one of the big record labels.

Another thing is that radio is largely driven by requests. Give Me Everything was the most requested song on US radio last year, which is one reason why it got so much airplay. One of the reasons RnB and hip hop dominated around 2004 time was because that's what all the listeners were requesting to hear on the radio, and that's one of the reasons why dance is dominating now, probably.

If that fun. song explodes, and people start requesting it on the radio more, it'll get loads of radio airplay. It's not just indie songs it happens to either. Young, Wild & Free by Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa got to #1 on iTunes MONTHS ago, and is only now getting airplay, No Sleep by Wiz Khalifa went to #1 on iTunes and got very little airplay, Strange Clouds by B.o.B and Lil Wayne went to #1 on iTunes and got very little airplay, and there's many other examples.

[Dust2]

Originally posted by Tsuko

I think you can get massive amounts of radio airplay without having a radio friendly song, and without having relationships with radio stations. Like Someone Like You isn't radio friendly (to the US) and Adele isn't on one of the big record labels.

Another thing is that radio is largely driven by requests. Give Me Everything was the most requested song on US radio last year, which is one reason why it got so much airplay. One of the reasons RnB and hip hop dominated around 2004 time was because that's what all the listeners were requesting to hear on the radio, and that's one of the reasons why dance is dominating now, probably.

If that fun. song explodes, and people start requesting it on the radio more, it'll get loads of radio airplay. It's not just indie songs it happens to either. Young, Wild & Free by Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa got to #1 on iTunes MONTHS ago, and is only now getting airplay, No Sleep by Wiz Khalifa went to #1 on iTunes and got very little airplay, Strange Clouds by B.o.B and Lil Wayne went to #1 on iTunes and got very little airplay, and there's many other examples.

Adele is on Columbia Record. One of the biggest labels in the world and the biggest for Sony Music Group.

Someone Like You is a follow up to Rolling in the Deep and it's a good song. I don't see why you are surprised that it did well on the radio.

Anyway, my beef is that people think radio airplay is a better reflection of popularity than sales. It is not. Billboard Hot 100 doesn't reflect a song true popularity as accurately as the Sales Chart.


Anyway, radio will decline big time 5-10 years from now when subscription music took over. Pandora is gaining too (100 million Americans use Pandora Radio).

[Dust2]

Modern payola.

Indeed, in what has become another notch under Madonna‘s commercial belt, her latest single ‘Give Me All Your Luvin‘ has commanded a 14 million audience on US radio, a day after being released to its stations. To be exact, the single reached a total of 14.262 million listeners yesterday following the release of its video, which features Rap star Nicki Minaj and Brit sensation MIA. This places the cut alongside a select number of songs which have fared this well in this space of time. Two name two, 2006 saw Beyonce‘s ‘Deja Vu‘ make major waves with an audience of 10 million in a single day, followed by Mariah Carey‘s 2008 cut ‘Touch My Body‘ with 7 million.

While this is no doubt a commendable feat for the icon, it is worth noting that her label recently inked a deal with the Clear Channel conglomerate, which guarantees the song will be played non stop on the stations they own.

This, despite the transparency of the deal, has forced some to question how well ‘Luvin’ would have done had it not been put in place.

Clear Channel, which owns 850 stations nationwide, estimated the promotional campaign would reach more than 150 million people around the world.

Preparations for her next album’s launch in March include an exclusive deal with Clear Channel, aimed at reaching 150m people. On Friday, the group aired her new single repeatedly on its radio stations and music websites from the US to Australia and played her new video on digital billboards from Times Square to Piccadilly Circus.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/24288fdc-4...#axzz1lUpPRtGU
http://thatgrapejuice.net/2012/02/ma...smashes-radio/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...n_1252383.html

[Cheers]

Lol @ people being surprised.

[The Best One Yet]

I think that's only the beginning, but when a song is meant to be a big hit, you know it, there's also digital sales and youtube views that reflect how succesful the song is.

If it was all about payola it would be easier and everybody would be #1. Marry The Night, Britney Spears and multiple Rihanna singles prove that you can smash or you can flop.