Arcade Fire and Indie music

[davideduardo]

Equating club attendance on a weekend night into a viable radio format, though, just doesn't work.

Point taken, why doesn't it work? Those attending such concerts/performances are restricted to iPods etc I guess.

Speaking of LA, a significant general market music station needs to cume in the 2 million persons range; we wonder about stations like KLOS and KTWV that "only" cume 1.8 million.

How many fit in a club?

A club is a social experience, while most radio listening is personal. A club has dim lights, booze (and whatever is being consumed in the rest rooms), babes and hunks, and music louder than your neighbors would stand without calling the cops. In other words, a mind altering experience.

Plus, the reasons to go to clubs are not always the music... they tend to be hormona, in fact.

 

[davideduardo]

"The Year of the Indie" at the Grammys.

The Grammys are insiders doing the self-congratulation dance. The awards are in no way based on popularity, sales or airplay... just like the Oscars are to movies.

And the Grammys in no way indicate trends unless your whole audience is made up of record company employees.

 

[hubcity]

But when we compare what Arcade Fire has achieved with what Lady Gaga has done for the music industry, it is nearly criminal not to give her the award. Right down to her entrance at the Grammy event, she has put a good amount of "entertaining" back into entertainment and the industry should encourage that.

I think I've got a problem with this assertion, on two counts:

1. "The Fame Monster" was only an album by the skin of its teeth. It only contained eight new songs, originally intended to be sold as an addendum to Gaga's first album, "The Fame", and at 35 minutes it's pretty short. Both the Eminem and Katy Perry albums were better at being "Albums" than The Fame Monster, though the three singles from "The Fame Monster" certainly provided value for money paid.

2. What the voting members of the NARAS should have done is what they did do: vote for what, in their experience, was the best album. Many of them also voted for Gaga in song-specific categories, and she rightly won those; it just so happens that it's in that area that she's also done the most for the industry. Radio doesn't play albums.

Ultimately, when the votes were counted, "The Suburbs" was voted the best album from among the nominees presented. If we're giving the award to artists based on "what they've done for the industry", we should have just let Streisand walk off with the award.

This isn't a "what have you done for the industry" award, it's an award for best album of 2010, and The Arcade Fire won it, full stop. It's probably more newsworthy that "The Suburbs" didn't lose votes because it was out on an indie label - empirically, the majority of voting members didn't feel the need to keep their votes "in the family", so to speak.

Ultimately, though, I'd think that radio, as an industry, grows when it has more things to play to more people, and enough of those people listen that advertisers want to advertise to them. A whole lot more people now know who The Arcade Fire are, and may be seeking out stations that play them.

(Though I suspect their choice of "Month Of May" as their pre-award song was more because they thought there was no way they were going to actually win. Boy, did the strobing look like hell on HDTV...and it sure contributed to the general reaction from the uninitiated: "Really? *Them*?!?" Eh, what can you do? They're indie like that.)

 

[davideduardo]

2. What the voting members of the NARAS should have done is what they did do: vote for what, in their experience, was the best album.

Again, this really comes down to the fact that this type of award has to do with a lot of internal friendships, feelings and awareness inside the industry. I know quite a few people who are voting members or have been, and the general impression is that if some are not familiar with some selections they vote for the familiarity. Or, if one kind of music is your preference and passion, they may vote against things they consider trashy or bad...

This is why the awards may make a nice TV show with some very good artists, but it does not have much influence over radio or, even, over sales.

[/quote]Many of them also voted for Gaga in song-specific categories, and she rightly won those; it just so happens that it's in that area that she's also done the most for the industry. Radio doesn't play albums. [/quote]

Radio plays from albums... although the real issue is that most people are so burnt out on albums that follow the 2/10 formula (2 good songs out of 10 cuts) they buy singles instead. So the industry may evolve into a singles based system where new releases occur every few months, and consist of 1 or 2 songs at a time.

 

[SuperRadioFan]

So the industry may evolve into a singles based system where new releases occur every few months, and consist of 1 or 2 songs at a time.

Hey back in '62 wasn't that the formula for... Seventy Seven DoubleYou A-B-C!! <DING!!>

 

[davideduardo]

So the industry may evolve into a singles based system where new releases occur every few months, and consist of 1 or 2 songs at a time.

Hey back in '62 wasn't that the formula for... Seventy Seven DoubleYou A-B-C!! <DING!!>

No, because the first single promoted the album release, and the next ones, if there were any, still promoted the album. Only teens and juke box operators could deal with 45's... adults bought albums.

I think the album could eventually disappear, with each single or two song release having nothing to do with the ones before or after... maybe special prices on all the releases for each year bought together, things like that. Look at the Arcade Fire Amazon deal... an album for $4.

Check out www.davidgleason.com with the audio on... you should hear a recut version of one of the WABC PAMS jingles, with a sting instead of the ding.

 

[briancraig]

Arcade Fire will be remembered for putting out great music long after Lady GaGa is in the same trash heap that we would now put Color Me Badd, Timmy T, PM Dawn and other forgettable, disposable pop of the last 20 years.

The problem with "prefab, lipsynced, auto-tuned, dance artists" is that they have ZERO staying power because no one likes those acts the same way that people like Elvis, Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Aretha Franklin, Frank Sinatra or other icons of popular music.

There has always been disposable music in the top 40, but the problem of the last 15 years is that most of it has become disposable. I'm as burned out on "classic rock" as anyone, but you can't argue that the fans still pay big bucks to see the acts of the late 1960s to early 1980s in concert and those acts still sell out huge arenas. How many acts of the last few years do you think will be doing that in 20 years?

Sean Ross, as knowledgeable about radio as anyone there is, has long argued for an "indie" style top 40 format and thinks radio is missing a large audience that likes this kind of music.

The sad thing about radio today is that there are no Chuck Blores, Bill Drakes, or Rick Carrolls out there today willing to take a chance on doing something different with music on the radio.

 

[Buckethead]

David,
For once we agree. The album is dying. The reason is that most "artists" today cannot put together a collection of 10 good songs. SO they have mayve 1 or 2 good songs and the rest are trash.

That is not the case however with Arcade Fire. They make an albums worth of good songs.

Brian,

Couldn't agree with you more. A top 40 style Indie station would work. That's pretty much what the original KROQ was.

 

[TheBigA]

The sad thing about radio today is that there are no Chuck Blores, Bill Drakes, or Rick Carrolls out there today willing to take a chance on doing something different with music on the radio.

I disagree. There are a lot of people like that in radio, but the artists and the music industry don't have the same commitment to radio that they did in the old days. They feel they can exist without radio, so they don't want to put the time in with radio that it takes, particularly with reaching larger national audiences. No question that any Top 40 style Indie format would work IF the music fit into the hit song system. There used to be record label people who understood that system, and focused around delivering hit songs, not albums. My fear is those people don't exist any more.

 

[justpassingthough]

Arcade Fire will be remembered for putting out great music long after Lady GaGa is in the same trash heap that we would now put Color Me Badd, Timmy T, PM Dawn and other forgettable, disposable pop of the last 20 years.

The problem with "prefab, lipsynced, auto-tuned, dance artists" is that they have ZERO staying power because no one likes those acts the same way that people like Elvis, Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Aretha Franklin, Frank Sinatra or other icons of popular music.

There has always been disposable music in the top 40, but the problem of the last 15 years is that most of it has become disposable. I'm as burned out on "classic rock" as anyone, but you can't argue that the fans still pay big bucks to see the acts of the late 1960s to early 1980s in concert and those acts still sell out huge arenas. How many acts of the last few years do you think will be doing that in 20 years?

I respectfully disagree. Maybe this speaks to the stagnation of the music industry rather than my argument, but a substantial group of artists have had staying power over the past 20 years. Top 40 and other forms of CHR is still dominated by the likes of Mariah Carey, Britney Spears, Usher, Pink, Eminem, Beyonce, Jay Z, Lil Wayne, etc. Their music has endured anywhere from 10 to 20 years- and despite protestations- they are still the heavyweights in the industry, best album Grammys aside.

One could argue that current hit radio has never been so stable.

 

[RBB05]

The fact that we live in a market in LA and have no station that breaks new bands or new music seems sad. I get the business end of it as well as anyone....it just does not speak well to the artistry of radio in LA.

Radio is a business, not a gallery that hangs undiscovered artists. If a station owner discovers that playing a few newer bands and songs enhances their ratings, they will do it. But if they find that going over the definition of "a few" hurts ratings, they know that such a practice endangers the whole station, the future of the format and the jobs of all the staff members.

We've found over the years that deep playlists and too much new, unfamiliar music will hurt a station, some times very badly. And in the US, the ability of a station to survive and continue is based on getting an audience that a group of advertisers wants to reach, not on art.

When radio is state controlled and listeners pay a license fee for every radio, programming can be less driven by what listeners want and more by what the station bureaucrats think the listeners need. Or when a government controls content, percentage of artists and rotations, you get lots of songs that otherwise would not be played.

I get that programming gurus like yourself get paid for the numbers....and that bad sales people live off numbers, (good sales people can sell conceptually, which is how Indie made its money). But under your business premise, we would have missed out on a large amount of great music in LA over the last 50 years because it wasn't tested, re-tested and proven before it hit the air. Too many programmers have their incomes tied 100% to the numbers and thus are unwilling to take a chance. That is not their fault so much as it is the station ownership and management for living with that system.

 

[RBB05]

David,
As always the bottom line is profit.
The 1.1 El Gato is not as lucrative as Indie was, even though the overhead is almost nothing.

I guarantee you Entravision is wishing they has the 7-10 million a year that they were seeing with Indie.

I am reluctant to agree with David on anything because I think programmers need to put away the numbers sometimes and have a feel for what they are doing.....but in the case of Indie versus Gato....the issue is not the billing, but the margins....

Indie was costing nearly as much to run as it was making....the salary DJ's were high....the extraordinary promotions were expensive and Indie did them whether they recouped the money in sales or not, because it was part of the imaging and branding of the station. Gato on the other hand will make millions less in sales revenue than Indie, but it is barely costing 6 figures to run the station, so the margins are greater for corporate.

 

[RBB05]

As always the bottom line is profit.
The 1.1 El Gato is not as lucrative as Indie was, even though the overhead is almost nothing.

I guarantee you Entravision is wishing they has the 7-10 million a year that they were seeing with Indie.

Indie did about $7 million in 2006 and $8 million in 2008. By 2007, the station, which had been around a 1 share, was down to a full book average of 0.6 with 9,800 AQH persons. The market billed about $1.1 billion.

By 2008, we had a recession and PPM. Market billing was down around $700 million (nearly 40%) and PUR in the market went from 16 to around 10, which reset the pricing model for cost per point buys. And Indie slipped to around a 0.3 share and an average of 4,100 persons AQH.

So, it was reasonable to think that the billing would be off by the combination of AQH decline (50%) and market revenue decline in value per point or share by 40%. So the $7 million pre-recession gets us down to about $1.6 million using the same metrics. Gato bills much more, on much lower expenses.

So I think the Entravision people are thanking their lucky star that they moved before the higher expenses of Indie caused them to lose a lot of money.

Contrary to the numbers analysis, the drive to have Indie's signal be in Spanish was forged long before PPM declines and a recession. There was an internal battle at EVC with a few having their eyes set on the signal the minute they walked through the corporate doors. All they needed was 50 cents worth of justification.

 

[Buckethead]

Very true RBB05, on all accounts.
However I don't think it was the margin issue as much as it was a need to
severe some overhead so that they could report that back to the shareholders.
They were falling below a dollar and desperate to do anything to bring the stock price back up so getting the expenses (salaries) off the books was the most important issue.

A very short sighted move. They could be employing awhole lot of people and making the same margin but that would be bad for the stockholders meeting so it looks better to drop a large percentage of employees.

That's what radio has come down to in post-consolidation America.

Hopefully with some sell-off inevitable there will be some mavericks back in the game.

 

[TheBigA]

Hopefully with some sell-off inevitable there will be some mavericks back in the game.

You are obviously living in dreamland. There are no "mavericks" in this country any more, or if there are, they aren't going to spend money on radio. That wouldn't be a maverick move, but an insane move. The news today that Cumulus is buying Citadel should be enough to show how far off your post is.

 

[davideduardo]

Contrary to the numbers analysis, the drive to have Indie's signal be in Spanish was forged long before PPM declines and a recession. There was an internal battle at EVC with a few having their eyes set on the signal the minute they walked through the corporate doors. All they needed was 50 cents worth of justification.

First, Indie came about as part of a JSA with Clear Channel. New market cap rules including JSA's in a cluster ended this. The JSA had been very advantageous to the station(s), which had not been succesful as a simulcast with KSSE when it was on 97.5... and which was no longer needed when 107.1 went to Entravision.

Then, the manager who had kept the property billing at a decent level (everything considered) left.

Finally, the PPM killed Indie's audience. After 8 books, it was obvious what they had to do.

Entravision has a bunch of English language stations... and seems to have no issue with operating in English in those cases where it makes or made sense. The dance stations in Dallas and LA are examples of actually going into a less than mainstream format, in English. And the company does not have any trouble making format changes when needed...

 

[davideduardo]

However I don't think it was the margin issue as much as it was a need to
severe some overhead so that they could report that back to the shareholders.
They were falling below a dollar and desperate to do anything to bring the stock price back up so getting the expenses (salaries) off the books was the most important issue.

Shareholders are the owners of a company. And going below a buck a share for any period of time results in a stoc being delisted from the exchange it trades on... reducing the visibility and marketability of shares in the company, producing significant losses for the owners. So it is quite understandable that management would look to improving operating performance; in a deep recession that means cost cutting.

 

[davideduardo]

I get that programming gurus like yourself get paid for the numbers....and that bad sales people live off numbers, (good sales people can sell conceptually, which is how Indie made its money).

As a former GSM and NSM, I can say it is not as simple as that. In transactional markets, sales to most viable (meaning that they can pay decent rates) are agency accounts and they buy... in fact in many cases are forced to buy... based on numbers. A good seller can get more of a buy or a bit better rate, but you can't get a buy that will not survive a client audit to go through.

But under your business premise, we would have missed out on a large amount of great music in LA over the last 50 years because it wasn't tested, re-tested and proven before it hit the air.

Nobody tests music before it goes on the air.

Too many programmers have their incomes tied 100% to the numbers and thus are unwilling to take a chance.

Programmers typically have a portion of their incomes pegged to ratings, but I don't know of a single case of it being 100%. In the case of really good programmers, they may exceed management's expectations and make a good deal above the base pay... but if they are that good, they were hired with an impressive base, too.

That is not their fault so much as it is the station ownership and management for living with that system.

Performance bonuses are common in almost every field of private enterprise.

 

[davideduardo]

David,
For once we agree. The album is dying. The reason is that most "artists" today cannot put together a collection of 10 good songs. SO they have mayve 1 or 2 good songs and the rest are trash.

Albums have been that way for decades...

Recorded music was originally based on single songs (OK, two with the B side) starting with 78's. "Albums" were sets of several 78's, often in a book with sleeves in it... thus the name. When technology permited better fidelity at slower speeds, the vinyl LP came about, and it was thus necessary for artists to fill the album with songs, even if they only had a few good ones.

So it's always been more of an exception to find an album with more than a couple of really good songs.

 

[Buckethead]

David,

The CC JSA lasted a year and a half.

Indie lasted 5 years.

So the station was profitable to Entravision in the 3.5 years after the JSA, until the economy fell and ad revenue dropped below an acceptable level.

And by "after 8 books" you mean 8 weeks, yes after the PPM became currency in October Indie had 8 weeks to turn things around and they were flipped in January.