The past week saw New York host the New Music Seminar – a lively interchange between the music industry and the broadcast and streaming industries. We posted two reports from the seminar by Billboard, one from the beginning of the week and another from the end.
Beginning the seminar was a keynote address delivered by Michael Huppe, CEO and president of the SoundExchange, a non-profit performance rights organisation that collects royalties on the behalf of sound recording copyright owners.
Unsurprisingly, Huppe used his address to mount a withering attack on Radio by posing the question, “If FM radio went away tomorrow, would music sales go down or up?”
His rather counterintuitive answer was that sales would increase, an assertion that formed the backbone of his address. Huppe’s argument claimed FM radio hurts music sales, fails to set trends, profits enormously to the tune of $17 billion a year while failing to fairly compensate musicians and labels.
But by week’s end delegates were hearing exactly the opposite. A panel discussion of radio execs entitled Radio: The World’s Best Discovery Engine pointed to the format’s human, hyper-local element as the primary driver of its continued success.
“When you land in L.A., you’re listening to [hip hop station] Power 106 because it’s embedded into the community,” explained Michael Martin, VP of Top 40 programming, CBS Radio. “It’s very different than the way that you listen to Spotify or even SiriusXM. It’s dictating what the kids are saying on the street.
“By playing what’s hot on the street, radio can reinforce and develop rising acts in a way that streaming is still figuring out. “[Radio] knows what movies [the audience] sees, clubs they go to, songs that they listen to,” he added. “If we can reflect that, [songs] can explode in a bigger way. Once it hits radio, you can see it travel from one circle of people to other circles of people.”
The article went on to say, In addition to Nielsen people trackers, program directors now rely heavily on social media metrics to develop programming and add new records.
The panel’s programmers specifically shouted-out Shazam as integral to their strategy, as it gives nearly real-time, location-specific data on “Shazam’ed” songs.
Terrestrial radio is important in helping to break artists but hamstrung by tight programming regularly playing only 10 to 12 records at a time. “What these guys do is very important because if they’re not breaking new music, it’s very hard for a streaming service to [do well],” said Charlie Walk, EVP of Republic Records.
For Billboards more detailed report on Michael Huppe’s keynote click here. And for the radio execs panel, click here.
Concert Crowd Photo: Shutterstock