Keeping Smooth Jazz Alive

[wsbzjazzkat]

With all the "doom and gloom" out there about the radio format, it is interesting to see smooth jazz concerts and ticket sales still remain strong in most parts of the USA.   Obviously there is still a market ready to spend money (and sometimes travel) to see shows and support the music.  The Smooth Jazz Cruise is adding a Fall Jazz Cruise up the Pacific Coast in October on top of their two one-week Carribean cruises in January.  Many of these cruises (like Dave Koz's) are booking up a year or more in advance.  Our radio station, WSBZ The Seabreeze, is celebrating our 15th Anniversary this year with the Seabreeze Jazz Festival.

http://www.seabreezejazzfestival.com/

We have even created a Seabreeze Jazz Festival Foundation (not-for-profit arm of the event) to award music scholarships to local high school band students and purchase instruments for local band programs with proceeds from the event, which gets kudos from local Northwest Florida listeners and educators. 

I wish more smooth jazz radio stations would take a chance on bringing concerts to their market before pulling the plug for good on the format.  It's great non-traditional revenue that is NOT dictated by Arbitron or the People Meter, plus it's way off the radar of the Big Box Broadcasters like Clear Channel and Cumulus.  It's definitely a "silver lining" for those who see it, and could be an
important part of the revenue stream in keeping this format accessible across the country.

Mark Carter
WSBZ-FM
The Seabreeze

[Bill Harmonic]

Hey Mark...

You're on point and the music remains strong but there's such a problem with terrestrial radio right now that I don't know if the format will make a comeback or not on that platform. I would have thought by this time that more of the little guys (like your station) would have figured out that they could make a go of it with out the PPM dog and pony show but so far it seems there are few belivers in the vision. It's going to take operators like you to make it work. It's going to take dedication and commitment with staff and resources to not only grow the box but think outside of it when needed. The non-traditional revenue is most important, just like it was in the early format period but will someone take the shot or fall back on the same old crap. Then you will have to believe that the platform of terrestrial radio still has legs. On that count, I'm not sure. I've been doing this for a long, long time and I don't listen to the "box" as I call it anymore. I'm now listening to my new "transistor" radio which is my iPhone. I listen to WSBZ or what's  playing on the internet stations in Seattle, Denver, Maryland or wherever. It's all about content and choice. I want the content I want and the choice to consume it where and when I want. It's the new world. I have a real chuckle with iHeart radio because for the most part it's just the usual suspects with the usual 300 songs but now you can listen to lots of them. It's the invasion of the clones. You have figured out that your shows in April mean a lot to the bottom line but I think that most operators are just to lazy to go to all the bother. We used to do that in Columbus with our summer concert series that people still talk about. And we have not even talked about where the format has to to move ahead in this new world. The only thing that's keeping the internet stations from really pulling ahead are the music rights fees. Now I'm all for paying the artists but right now there are three different levels of payment if you hear the same song on terrestrial radio, satellite radio or on internet radio and that has to stop but I digress. The music is still good, if not better than it ever has been. The doors that are opening so an audience can find it are few and far between. Everything changes and everything ends. Part of our problem for so long was the we did not change. I just hope we have not waited to long to make the right changes and that the end is in sight.   

[AC Tones]

Preach on, fellas!  Bill, the little Internet station I listen to in Maryland had some "technical difficulties" yesterday...chalk it up to the ghost of Mr. Smooth.

[jimford1973]

Mark,

I vacationed in Fort Walton Beach last week, and I listened to 106.3 The Seabreeze quite a bit.  It's a great sounding station, and I enjoyed spending a small aprt of my vacation listening to it.  I also enjoyed the ABC newscast with the 20 in a row music sweeps.

[crainbebo]

Do any of you have vacation plans to go to Albuquerque? I listen to KOAZ 103.7 a LOT from Washington online. GREAT station! Advertising is good as well.

-crainbebo

[AnotherCat]

The key phrase is right here: "concert and ticket sales still remain strong.."  That is because concert performances are strong. And energized, entertaining, charismatic, and fun..four elements that were eliminated from the genre when the smoothing out occurred in the mid 90s. Fans are screaming and cheering over high energy performances that include all the things forbidden by smooth: uptempo songs, electric guitar solos, "thumping" bass, powerful sax, hot horn sections, keyboard players who play whole chords instead of just one lightly touched note. Has it not occurred to anyone that if people are seeking out and responding to that aspect of contemporary instrumental music in a live setting they might enjoy it on the radio too.

 Pre-smooth instrumental music was exciting..and if you dig into your collection back to those WB and GRP releases in late 80s and early 90s they still hold up, not just because of the quality of the musicianship and the songs but because every song on an album didn't sound just alike and sound just like every song on other albums you already owned. As smooth got more deeply entrenched the sound got homogenized. Everything sounded like a Paul Brown produced slow jam.
Then even strong melodies went away and songs started to sound like intros that lasted 3 1/2 minutes with no song attached.

this isn't to say that the music mix needs to be in your face and loud, but to bring in a marketable demographic and keep listeners of all ages awake there needs to be a variety of tempos, textures and instrumentation and the energy level needs to move away from B/EZ and more toward the soft end of hot A/C at least. Less "smooth and relaxing" and more "entertaining and uplifting." SBZ is in an extremely upper demo market so softer works for y'all but in cities that have more 35-54 than 45-64 gotta put some life ito it.

[AnotherCat]

ctd.. We have a series of free Sunday evening concerts on the beach in the summer. They draw a lot of people who are just already on the beach or walking past and stop to check out the music, get hooked and end up staying and buying CDs when people like Mindi, Spyro Gyra, or Paul Taylor play..the artists who really "bring it"  At the time when we had a very EZ oriented  SJ station I can only imagine how these people felt when they had just been to a concert that totally rocked, they searched for the station that had the banners up, and heard a series of EZ instrumental versions of 40 year old songs.

[MRFLASHPORT]

ctd.. We have a series of free Sunday evening concerts on the beach in the summer. They draw a lot of people who are just already on the beach or walking past and stop to check out the music, get hooked and end up staying and buying CDs when people like Mindi, Spyro Gyra, or Paul Taylor play..the artists who really "bring it"  At the time when we had a very EZ oriented  SJ station I can only imagine how these people felt when they had just been to a concert that totally rocked, they searched for the station that had the banners up, and heard a series of EZ instrumental versions of 40 year old songs.

This is so true. The problem is CORPORATE RADIO.
In the late 1980s when I first discovered MODERN JAZZ (notice I did not call it "smooth"), it was on an A/C station at the time, WQXI-FM, then known as 94-Q, had a program at night called Jazz Flavors. You would hear EVERYTHING from Chick Correa, Al Jarreau, Paul Hardcastle, mixed in with new age like Andreas Vollenweider, then a track from Jean-Luc Ponty, Weather Report, Dave Grusin or some of his brother Don Grusin's uptempo stuff, then Steely Dan's "Time out of Mind"- it was never boring or sleepy- enough to catch this then 8th grader's attention and had me hooked.

When I saw Al Jarreau open Lakewood in Atlanta in 1989, I was the youngest guy there. Andreas Vollenweider came to town that year, I had to go. It was a packed house at the Fox Theater- and it was E L E C T R I C. My Dad went with me, and he was blown away.

In the 90's the "Smooth Jazz" stations came online in ATL, first WJZF 104.1, and I thought "cool! my music's back!" but it wasn't, it was watered down. I RARELY heard any JLP, Weather Report or Andreas Vollenweider- just the same 200 song playlist of Toni Braxton with a few "easy" tracks mixed in. Sounded no different than the soft A/C station down the dial.

No one wants to do ANYTHING outside the corporate cookie cutter moldy molds anymore- not just in jazz radio but rock, alternative or R&B.

Why does radio just seem to be on a suicide mission? One would think at a time when we have so much choice the industry would STEP UP and bring back a great OUT THERE sound like Russ Davis did on WQXI-FM.

I am dreaming, it isn't 1987 anymore.

[Carmine5]

A good friend of mine, Dr. George Shaw, who produced George Shaw & Jetstream, Tim Heinz, Frank Potenza and a bunch of the smooth jazz TBA artists back in the 80's told me that his website averages about 50K hits a month.  People from all over the world log on to it--and that without any promotion on his part.  They just find it on their own.

So, clearly the interest in smooth jazz, both today's and back in the day, is there.  In fact, the interest has encouraged him and the other former TBA artists to pair up and book some small gigs around the L.A. area and make live recordings of them.