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Homogenized Music
Mansing writes "The connections between broadcast radio and music industry are well known. In the old days, payola was the method to increase a song's (or album's) exposure. But now, the same "free market" corporate music that infects the music industry is also infecting the broadcast radio industry as well. What makes the article so informative is not the business angles, but how business has changed what is broadcast. Seeing the parallels between the recording industry's force fed music and Clear Channel's "nothing is left to whim or chance" programming, I now understand how hard it is for any non-corporate sanctioned music to become widely heard."
outside of college radio stations, there's nothing left worth listening to, and this tells you why.
:)
can't someone show a business model to some exec. that shows that
good music=listeners=money?
instead of
crap music we're supposed to play=industry is happy=money
where's the listener come in?
oh yeah, as a stat on some marketroids excell spreadsheet showing that if you play enough Britney Spears, people's standards drop low enough to where they can sell their product.
if you can't tell, i hate almost all broadcast radio. it's been crap for years now and getting worse. i feel like an old man before my time.
College radio tends to have very low power broadcast, and hence low range. If you don't live in a college town, or even on the outskirts, you don't get it.
Besides, from the last slashdot article on payola in the music industry, seems like a lot of the big college radio stations are where the corporate fuzz do their test runs.
College radio has no advertising. Nobody knows it's there. And most people are scared to go below 92 on their radio dials, because that's where the boring classical stations and *shudder* NPR are.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
The market is working just fine. The problem is that the majority are willing to listen to the homogeneous crap that CCU broadcasts. You can argue all you want that the airwaves are a "public good" and not just another form of property, but in the end of the day, someone is going to be arbitrarily choosing what goes on the airwaves no matter how the power to choose is apportioned. And if it's the public (read: majority) choosing how to use that good, you can be assured they're not going to waste that bandwidth on indie rock, metal, big-band music, or African tongue-clicking.
Instead of complaining, choose one of the alternatives: listen to satellite radio, internet radio, listen to CD's (the real ones, not those phony pseudo-CD's), etc. If CCU truly isn't performing a service that people want, advertisers will stop buying airtime and it will go bankrupt. I'm guessing that isn't about to happen anytime soon.
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i think the problem here is one of bandwidth... here in the UK, we have a small number of large indepedent radio networks, as well as regional stations that are currently peddling almost exactly the same type of music as each other, all going for the least offensive (to the average listener) and most bland music 'product' that they can find, in order to maximise advertising revenue - a 'one size fits all' system.
However, I can't see that this will last for long, as soon as any of the following technolgies reach the average consumer household: Net radio, Stand alone recievers for audio-only channels over satellite, digital radio (we are a long way ahead of the US in this field, I believe, as the BBC have pushed the technology) and increased spectrum avaialbilty due to theproposed switch off of terrestrial analogue TV transmitters (which the UK governement are keen on as they stand to rake a fortune in from selling the bandwidth off).
When any (or all) of the above technolnogies are mature, then it will be possible to deliver cost-effective radio to much smaller markets (with tightly targetted adverts), so the constant search for the lowest common denominator will no longer be the best way to maximise advertising revenue, providing a wide spectrum of choice will be more cost effective.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Check out the extensive coverage they've gotten over at Salon for the past year or so. There's about a dozen articles about various aspects of their business practices.
http://www.salon.com/ent/clear_channel/Did you even think to research this before you spewed it out?
The
-- "Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?"
That being said, some of you might find the college radio station better to listen to becuase you get to hear different stuff, things that you don't get to hear on mainstream radio. Now, did you ever seem to think that the reason that it's not on mainstream radio is because mainstream people think that the music sucks?
Commercial radio is there to make money, so they need to play what MOST people want to hear, not what you want to here. I like techno, most places don't play techno, why? becuase mainstream people don't like techno, in fact some people hate it (my brother included).
To say that college radio or internet radio is better then commercial radio is silly. Just becuase you don't like it doesn't rule out the fact that somebody must like it, because it's still around, and it's doing well. I've also found that there's some people (an ex-coworker comes to mind) that listens to non-mainstream stuff just becuase it's non-mainstream. I found it to be shit and could see why it wasn't played on the radio. This just goes to show, different people have different tastes, and just because you don't like Britney doesn't rule out the fact that a lot of people do.
Free Mac Mini
Clear channel was pushing that top-level domain, and originally had changed all their radio and television stations and even provided sponsors websites .cc domains. (as in clear channel)
It does stand for Cocos Islands, but was being sold as meaning "Clear Channel"
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
So what? I haven't listened to music on the radio since high school. Why? Well I can decide what I want to listen to for myself. If you can't investigate new music on your own then the radio telling you what to like shouldn't be a concern of yours.
Checkout some independent or smaller labels. Labels like Matador Records, Prawn Song, Fat Wreck, and may others. It's a shame that labels like Grand Royal were forced out of business for not force-feeding the status quo. Read Nude As The News for non mainstream album reviews.
Find a band you Like and check out their influences. This is a good way to find new stuff to listen to. Like Led Zeppelin? Listen to Muddy Waters. Like Trey Solo? Listen to Count Basie, Sun Ra, or Little Feet. Like Primus? Listen To Rush. Ect.
GO SEE LIVE MUSIC! If you live near a large city there are tons of show to go see, there are some good websites dedicated to finding shows in your area. Check out Jambase for example.
Trade Live Music! There are several communities for the trading of live tapes, a large number of bands ok the taping of their shows and the thousands of tapes are out there for free. One Such community Etree is a great example of this.
Listen to College radio if you live near one!
Don't complain about the lack of variety on the radio, just don't listen to it.
It's obvious there's a growing backlash against this kind of radio. People don't want to hear 15 minutes of commercials out of 30 minutes of air time. People grow tired with oft-repeated tunes. That doesn't necessarily mean we need to have a political solution. It means those people who feel they are disenfranchised need to start their own radio stations, non-commercial or commercial.
"All mankind is at the mercy of a handful of neurotics". - Norman Douglas
Capitalism does tend towards monopoly. But the monopolistic trend is countered by some things Marx never considered. Inventers, developers, people who just think outside the business box, they then provide more competition. Of course, the Monopolies will try to eat them up, but they can and do fail at that, and get washed up and forgotten.
While Communism, that's the Monopoly of the state, with no chance for competition, after all the State KNOWS what you need and want. Even if it's true for the majority, the Tyranny of the Majority is not something to be desired either.
So Monopoly, from Communism or Capitalism is bad. But at least with Capitalism, we have a chance against it.
Bill
Hey Taco! Any chance of getting a "Full of Crap" moderation option?
"We were half way to Rivendell when the drugs began to take hold."
-- Hunter S. Tolkien
To save folks the time, here's a quick summary of the article: middle-aged manager of a group of radio stations tells us all how hard it is to make ends meet in today's radio marketplace.
Hint: Skip to the last 2-3 paragraphs and find the real point of the article. You'll be glad you did.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
All that the payola laws and hearings of the 60's did was take the power of music influence from the individual (disc jockey) and put them in the hands of the corporations. The large radio corporations of the day (rko, gannet, etc...) saw that the control of their content was being usurped to the talent of their stations. The DJ was the all important business and creative liaison at the stations. Record labels did anything to get to the talent, including bribes and perks. All the payola hearings and laws did (brought about from the investigation of the Miami DJ convention) was remove the personality from the equations. Enter the more influential role of the program and music director of stations in the late 60's and 70's. The only real exception would be the "progressive" radio essentially invented by Tom Donahue in SF. Payola was seen as a threat to the radio corporations of the day, God forbid that an indiviual (ie: dj) could have that much control over their (the corporations) widget. So a public spectacle was made. And the dj was villified as a wolf, while the real wolfs were in fact the corporations afraid of loosing control of their publicly liscenced product... that was supposed to be in "the public interest."
Today in the corporate mentality of the radio world, the individual, the station DJ or the program/music director has any real say as to the music being played on the station. All edicts are essentially made by the corporate programming heads. Everything from play lists, national contesting and yes... even talent. Most talent is run on an automation system (usually prophet) that essentially has destroyed the job market for radio talent and stifled any creativity and the talent pool, stagnating radio to where it is in the present day. Radio listenership is down in the last few years. There just not much compelling. As my daughter puts it, "radio sucks." Hopefully something will happed to shake it up soon, so some rebel out there can get back to creating something compelling again on the radio dial.
Er, could it be that people like what they hear because they only hear what they're given to hear, and not the other way around (that they hear only what they like)? If people actually were exposed to a wide variety of music on the radio, they might suddenly discover that they like other music, besides manufactured factory-farmed "bands" like Britney et al.
Perhaps an example: the Insane Clown Posse, who, although (yes) they're on a major label, have so far managed to sell multiplatinum on several albums with NO commercial airplay whatsoever. On the other hand, I'd say they're the exception that proves (in either sense) the rule.
In any case, a pithy thentiment from the Dead Kennedys keeps playing through my head:
Could it be they put out one too many...lousy records?
Who do we tell to get off the air NOW?
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
OK Tired of radio and MTV? Me too! Who the heck decided that bad Eddie Vedder impressions would be popular this year?
Here's some bands worth checking out: (reply and post your own)
Neutral Milk Hotel
The Microphones
The Shins
The Dismemberment Plan
Need New Body
The Mountain Goats
Boards of Canada
... and You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead
Sparklehorse
Belle & Sebastian
Brighteyes
Matmos
The Hot Snakes
The White Stripes (yeah, they've got a video, but they rock harder than anything since Zepplin)
music has always been comercial and pandering to trends, but in the past five years or so it has gotten *much* worse. There has not been a single innovative band to make it to the popular stage, music hasn't seen anything like this since the dark ages of the late 50s/early 60s. Think about it, what was the last novelty hit? What was the last song that got popular just because some DJ thought it was amusing? It's been quite a while. The early 90s saw innovative acts like Nirvana, Beck, and Liz Phair getting tons of airplay, and now we just have 1001 Pearl Jam/Creed rip-off acts. I won't comment on the R&B teen pop, that's obviously commercial fluff, and it wouldn't bother me if there were good things elsewhere. When we had the New Kids on the Block, we also had U2 and REM. Rap is, thankfully, still going strong, it probably has a good 10 or 15 years of life left in it.
Rock and Roll is approaching death. It will soon be as dead as Jazz. It will still be made. There will still be people doing amazing and creative things with it. But it's period of cultural relevancy is nearing the end.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the Strokes/White Stripes garage/blues punk thing will take off. That would be cool.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
I'm convinced that the Internet is what will lead to the demise of the recording industry and the broadcast industry.
As it is today, radio and record sales are the two main ways for an artist to become popular, sell out their shows, and make money. However, there is a high barrier to entry; the recording and broadcast industries want to profit, and so they only support music that will make them money--regardless of quality.
But the Internet allows all artists to be heard, by all people, with no strings attached but the size of your pipeline. Since artists never get paid for record sales to begin with, it hardly matters whether their music gets copied online--so long as it's good, they'll still sell out their concerts.
Ten to twenty years from now, the recording industry will be a crumbling colossus. People will get sick of being force-fed their music, of having to pick between identical blonde models with equally bad style, of seeing the same old stuff on the charts every week. By then, the Internet will have become powerful enough that any artist who wants to be heard, will be.
If you wanted your own daily radio show, Clear Channel would sell you the time for about $1,200 an hour.
Wow! That's really sad and kind of cool at the same time. It shows that a lot of their stuff really is basically extended commercial time, but it's also a chance for something else to slip in the lineup.
Think about it. For about $300 grand (yes I KNOW that's a lot), pretty much anyone could have his own show for an hour a day on weekdays, all year long. Now they probably wouldn't let you do anything "subversive" like rant on about corporate radio sucking, BUT: why not get a coalition of several dozen smaller labels together to get a show?
Clearchannel stations are by nature large-market ones, and if you picked a slot at like 3 or 4 pm, you would get kids after school and it would be before the "rush hour" slot that's so valuable. Say 50 labels chipped in, they could each get at least a couple songs on per week, and take some time to promote local shows, websites, band interviews, and all that.
And since the labels themselves are putting together the shows, rights shouldn't be an issue. I'm sure I'm missing a dozen reasons why this wouldn't work, but it SOUNDS so neat... *sigh*
If something is truely "good", or at least something that would be popular to sufficient people to sustain the band, it will be heard. Look at Fugazi. They are a D.C. area neo-punk band that does not have merchandise, is not on a major label, and does not make videos. The receive little to no radio airplay outside college stations, and are completely self-sustaining. They continue to charge only $5 admission to their shows and their CDs (I believe) are $10 post-paid from their record label (which they own and operate).
If you want to do it, and you are talented enough, you do not need major labels or commercial radio.
http://www.naildrivin5.com/davec
Here's a newsflash from turn of the 20th century economics for you: the world's economy is not a zero-sum game. If you get rich, that doesn't necessarily make someone else poor.
I'm sure you knew this, but it's hugely surprising how many people have clearly never read an economics book in their life, but consider themselves experts because they read a website. It's sad.
If it ain't broke, you need more software.
Just like George Lucas and the other vendors of schlock film don't have to worry about the millions of over-30 people who don't watch 40 movies a year, the Warners and Sonys and such don't really care about the millions of over-20's who only buy a handful of albums each year, and get a lot more bang for their buck by peddling one mega-star whose every bit of merchandise kids will eat up. The savvy mature music listener isn't enough of an economic force to displace the Brittney Spears and boy-bands from the center stage, or from the radio.
For more info on U.S. call letters, see http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/statid.html. If you loathe what's available on radio now, start your own station. The FCC Media burea has some information on how to do that, see http://www.fcc.gov/mb. Yes, that's nontrivial.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
I'm not sure how "voluntary" many of these sales were. They weren't compelled, in the sense that property is occasionally condemned for a new road or public facility, but that's about all you can say about it.
Imagine for a moment that you're the owner of a local station (or small chain), and someone like Clear Channel decides they want your radio station. You're making enough to meet payroll, sponsor some community events, but you don't have deep cash reserves. Then CC comes in and tells you to sell for a lowball price.
You refuse - and they tell all of your advertisers that there's a new sheriff in town. If they sign exclusive agreements with CC stations, they get an ad rate substantially lower than what you can offer. It's far below cost to CC also, but they can pull in money from other stations nationwide.
But if they don't agree to that exclusive agreement, they're blacklisted by CC stations. Accounts are closed (even if that involves penalties), and even after they're removed from the blacklist (when CC is the only game in town) they'll never get prefered customer rates.
How long do you think you'll hold onto customers? A few may say with you, but anyone running ads on multiple stations will be forced to dump you. And all CC needs to do to target your advertisers is hire an intern to listen to your station and jot down what ads they hear.
This isn't an abusive monopoly since CC doesn't yet have a monopoly in that market, but it's as unfair as an unlimited stakes poker game where one player has $100 and another has $1000, and you can't not play.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
While the article talks about Clear Channel's massive amount of stations, I don't think most people realize just how many stations they have until they see a list of them.
So, on that note, check out the list of stations that Clear Channel owns:
http://www.cjr.org/owners/clearchannel.asp
Go ahead, pick out the stations in your town. There are 5 in mine, and all of them are just awful; they play the same songs on an almost daily basis.
... looks grim.
/.ers are, from what I can tell, aren't mainstream.
Radio is a business, like any other. The object is to spend less money than you take in. Turn a profit. Keep your owners (investors, individuals, corporate sire, whatever) happy. The income for these stations comes from advertising and selling air-time to whoever wants to buy it. The reason "it sucks" is because the advertisers want to get their message to their target audience, and they have very specific target audiences. If "market research" shows the mainstream target audience wants to hear a non-stop beat-mix of Brittney Spears and Weird Al Yankovic, that's what the station will play, because that's what the advertisers will pay to advertise on.
The "mainstream" listeners are the targets. They don't really care about the niche markets or the fringe because there's no advertising money in niche markets or the fringe.
Why are listeners abandoning radio? Lots of factors. 6-disk in-dash CD players for the morning commute. MTV or the CD player at home. MP3 collections on the file server. Simple bordom with "mainstream" mass media music. Tired of 40% commercials. Whatever.
Are college stations, pirate stations, or internet broadcasters an alternative? Of course they are. Are they "better"? If they serve -your- niche market, they certainly are - for you at least. It's one reason I have an internet station of my own - I can cater to my own tastes.
Is radio dead? No. But it's ill. If the radio markets all collapse and the big conglomerates start abandoning stations we may see a change back to "the good old days" when stations took risks and used variety to compete for listeners. I just wouldn't count on it.
Never attribute to malice what can as easily be the result of incompetence...
Has anyone mentioned internet radio as an alternative? Ok, it's broadband only in terms of possible audience... but that doesn't stop me from listening to Bassdrive.com all day, everyday.
Sure it is usually non-mainstream music. Who cares if it doesn't appeal to the widest, most general audience?
The key of internet radio is that you can usually find what you like. I have stations that play early 90's jungle, hard-step, tech-step, garage two-step, jungle-ragga, acid jazz, russian pop/rock, independent US hip-hop, french hard core.
Ok so it might just be me listening to it. Oh, boo-hoo. Either you listen to what you like with the distinct possibility of ostracising yourself from the mainstream, or accept the shill Godsmack/Creed/DMB so you can talk to other folk about music/hit bigger shows with your friends. Of course then you can pay your 400 bucks for a Rolling Stones ticket.
And that is another thing: underground/independent metal, rock, death metal, electronica, detroit house, hip-hop, and jazz have all survived very well without any help of the mainstream. Steve Albini, Martin Adkins, El-P. Sometimes you have to accept that most people aren't looking for what you are serving.
But if you like this kind of thing, this may be the sort of thing you kind of like.
What is music when you despise all sound?
It's a constant source of amazement to me that the big record labels keep whining about their revenues dropping due to piracy. Did it ever occur to them, even once, that their declining sales just might be due to the fact that people simply don't like what they're putting out? That they may not care for what they're hearing on commercial radio?
Fifteen years ago, I was buying 5-20 CD's a MONTH. I found much to listen to in terms of 'New Age' (primarily instrumental, related to Jazz) artists like Ray Lynch, Michael Manring, Checkfield, Pat Metheny, etc., to say nothing of rediscovering all of my rock-and-roll faves from earlier years.
Guess what? Almost all of what I bought were copies of what I had already heard on commercial radio. KKSF, in the Bay Area, to be exact, plus a few other stations playing "classic" rock.
Granted, there have been a few of the more recent vocal groups and singers that have caught and held my interest; Don Henley, when he went solo from the Eagles, Bruce Hornsby, Bryan Adams, etc. HOWEVER -- The real reason my CD buying has dropped like a rock (maybe two a year if that) in the past decade or so is because I'm not hearing hardly anything worth listening to, either on or off the radio.
Music, to me, is a form of storytelling. Whether it's fact, fiction, or somewhere in between doesn't matter to me as long as it is sung with a good voice ('from the heart' is a good way to put it), and with DECENT music to back it up.
By 'decent,' I'm referring to the idea that the singer also be the songwriter, if not also playing their own instrument. Jimmy Buffett is a great example. He has a band, yes, but he also plays guitar and Lord only knows what else, and he writes his own material for the most part.
I think what I miss the most about today's (alleged) "pop" music is that much of it is as empty of real meaning, of real 'heart' if you will, as the Mojave Desert is empty of water in midsummer. Real musicians put a lot of their own personality and feeling into their work, and that's what makes it unique.
Anyway, it seems (to my ears) that the only "good" stuff is showing up on the few independent stations left, and on "web radio." This pisses off the big labels, though, because they now seem to think that music should be lip-syncing "pop stars," dressed in glittery costumes with colors that no living creature would be caught dead in, putting on a show that I don't think even a Las Vegas producer would touch with a 3.048 meter pole.
Can't have any real creativity running around now, can they? It shines a bad light on their predigested pap-spewing money-machine, and makes the way they've been trying to trample fair-use rights look even more greedy and stupid than it already is.
Unimaginitive jerks...
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies