K
Kevin
Guest
The music industry is getting scary if they give awards to talentless individuals. No wonder music on radio is dying, now I know why the under 35 crowd is flocking to other platforms.
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Entercom Launches Alt 98.7
- Thread starter atthestars
- Start date
When they go to other platforms, they seek out her music and music by her brother. That's why radio plays it. There is very little that is popular on other platforms that isn't getting radio airplay. The only exception is the music that is too obscene to get airplay.
It's not like radio programmers don't see the streaming charts. We do and we know what people stream. It's one of the metrics we use when we add songs to the playlists.
"Therefore I Am" by Billie Eilish is #3 on the alternative streaming chart. That's what people are listening to on other platforms.
Is that the same Recording Academy that shut The Weeknd out of this year's award nominations? Great barometer of talent there.
For the record I thought Billie Eilish deserved her wins but the Recording Academy still has a credibility problem.
Don't misunderstand me. Radio stations don't play songs just because they win Grammy awards. If they did, WYCD would be playing Brandi Carlile, Tanya Tucker, and Jason Isbell.
K
Kevin
Guest
All of these award shows are just that, they’re shows. In the scheme of things they are meaningless. This alternative music genre is just a fancy label for the music no one else wanted in any other genre. Alternative is not the same that it was back in the 80’s and 90’s. The music industry is always crying about money and royalties and how they’re hurting, well maybe if these music executives turn out a good product then you will make money and get some good talent, not the garbage like Billie Eilish and this rap trash that is on the radio. This is the very reason the young people tune out radio and tune into Spotify and Pandora, they may listen to some of this subpar product when they want too but not every two hours from a limited playlist. How many times can one listen to the same Eilish tune in one day.
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Except when they listen to Spotify and Pandora they listen to the exact same songs we're playing on OTA radio. We know. We can see what they're listening to. We can see their rotations. On top of that, the record labels know what they're listening to, and they use the streaming data to market their music for OTA airplay. People are not hearing different music at Spotify. That is just false. The people who create the curated playlists at Spotify are former FM programmers who use the same metrics to achieve the same playlists. I know them. I know how they work. Every week I look at their lists to see if there's anything I'm missing. There aren't songs that are exclusive to Spotify or Apple. We all work with the same universe of songs, given to us by the same record labels.
This is pretty much what our parents and grandparents used to say about our music. In the 90’s, they couldn’t understand why we were listening to No Doubt, Nirvana, Collective Soul, and Seven Mary Three.
While I agree that the alternative format caught lightning in a bottle in the 90’s by figuring out a formula that worked for the masses, part of the problem today is that you and I are no longer who the alternative format is targeting. I'm not big on Billie Eilish either, but my 17 year-old niece is. She's also Hispanic and generally prefers rhythmic to rock. She will, however, listen to other genres and will sit through both long stopsets and songs she might not otherwise be familiar with if she knows she'll hear Billie Eilish in a few minutes. Billie Eilish is mass appeal to her generation, which is the most diverse in American history, and, in a year, her opinion of what constitutes good music is going to start carrying weight. What we think of Billie Eilish is irrelevant. We no longer get a vote, but a diverse group of people do, and they don’t agree. Her 46 year-old uncle here, meanwhile, is listening to the same station her grandpa listened to and is only five years younger than he was when he died.
Now, git off my lawn, you little whippersnappers!
K
Kevin
Guest
It just seems that every time the radio plays a Billie Eilish song, she sounds like she’s always depressed. Music is supposed to lift one up, not put the listeners into depression. Perhaps Billie’s physician needs to change her prescription.
That's your definition. Alternative music isn't about being happy. Ask Kurt Cobain.
Billie Eilish Is Not Your Typical 17-Year-Old Pop Star. Get Used to Her. (Published 2019)
A teenager with more than a billion plays already, Eilish will release her angsty debut album, and may very well become a household name.
K
Kevin
Guest
I would but Kurt changed his phone number. I’ve been trying to get a hold of him since the early 90’s, but all I get is “This number has been disconnected, please check with the operator“.That's your definition. Alternative music isn't about being happy. Ask Kurt Cobain.
Billie Eilish Is Not Your Typical 17-Year-Old Pop Star. Get Used to Her. (Published 2019)
A teenager with more than a billion plays already, Eilish will release her angsty debut album, and may very well become a household name.www.nytimes.com
Serious question: Were you playing Olivia Rodrigo's drivers seat on January 11th? That's the day she broke the record for most streams in a day -- on Spotify. And with that, there were headlines all over the internet and traditional media about her phenomenal performance -- on Spotify.
Not a word about how she was doing at radio. The song hadn't even been serviced/promoted to FM yet, I think the label finally got around to it a week later on Jan 18th. There's probably no more glaring an example of how irrelevant FM radio has become for breaking new music than that one.
I wonder if Alt is playing it yet.
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That's not just an Alt format problem. Right now at country radio, Morgan Wallen has one single in the top 20 on BDS airplay: "7 Summers", at #17, which was released to radio in the early fall.
Meanwhile, at Spotify Morgan Wallen has:
* #1 country album on Spotify,
* The #10 single "Somebody's Problem" (all genres, not just country - almost 700k plays yesterday),
* 6 of the top 10 country singles on the Billboard "Hot Country" chart, which accounts for streaming.
"Somebody's Problem" has yet to crack the top 60 in the BDS country airplay chart released yesterday. I checked "New Country 101.5" in Atlanta, and "New Country 93.1", and neither seems to be playing it. Atlanta had only played one song by Wallen in the last 6 hours.
A lot of this is nostalgia. "Alternative" music has changed many times. I couldn't personally stand the format when it became a slew of grunge warmed overs + rap metal and "post grunge" sludge. I liked it in the 80s to mid 90s, and like it now. That being said, I don't personally care for the repetition - but I'm not in a major metro with millions on the line either. I think a station like WEQX strikes a good balance of playing what's now and what's next in an "alternative" framework, but I don't pretend it would work in Detroit.
Several people in this thread just seem to have a problem with "the music" changing - and it's as unrealistic to expect it to be to your taste today as it was for me to wish the "Edge" stations sounded like WOXY did in the late 90s.. most of us here are not average listeners, who have way more going on than what 98.7 plays and how many times a day they play it. As sad as it makes me at times, radio is not the primary driver of music culture the way it was in the pre-streaming days.
Several people in this thread just seem to have a problem with "the music" changing - and it's as unrealistic to expect it to be to your taste today as it was for me to wish the "Edge" stations sounded like WOXY did in the late 90s.. most of us here are not average listeners, who have way more going on than what 98.7 plays and how many times a day they play it. As sad as it makes me at times, radio is not the primary driver of music culture the way it was in the pre-streaming days.
You have inadvertently identified several real issues.
Record labels are not in the "art" business. They are there to sell music, and the material that makes them money is not alternative rock. It's a limited genre when compared to others.
You disparage "rap" without realizing that hip-hop sells. A lot. It sells to Blacks, Hispanics, whites and everyone else, hyphenated or not, in the age groups that consume the most music. It sells. Alt does not come close.
The "young people" you mention, by and far, do not listen anywhere near as much to rock as they did. The decline began in the 90's, and could be seen easily in the 2000 and 2010 Edison research studies of music trends. In the decade beginning in 2000 rock fell by more than half, in fact, in its partisanship... and even more among the music-buying consumer group.
It's the old "why do you rob banks?" question. Rock is not where the money is.
Yes. But you're comparing two different metrics. Streaming charts are in real time. Airplay charts are cumulative and get released at the end of the week. So you wouldn't see the song on the airplay chart until the 18th. Unless you subscribe to Mediabase, in which case you can see it in real time. Songs get delivered to radio the same way they get delivered to Spotify: Digitally. No more mail distribution of music. You're also comparing individual streaming to curated airplay. If you compare apples to apples, it will look different.
BTW not to be a stickler but the title of the song is Driver's License.
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Why on earth would they be playing Tanya Tucker? She's one of my all-time favorite female country singers, but her voice is shot and there was nothing on that award-winning comeback album of hers that I'd ever want to hear more than once or twice. Did it get much AAA play? I remember hearing songs from it on Sirius XM's Outlaw Country, but even that exposure is pretty much gone now.
And then you get Junior Walker's "Shotgun" and Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper" as music on hold?
Had you checked the airplay charts last month, Morgan had two songs in the Top 30. One of them has since dropped off. He released a new album on January 8th, and that immediately pushed 30 new songs into the space. A lot of country stations were part of the album release promotion, so they played as many as 5 or 6 songs from the album and they all charted that week.
The 7 Summers song was interesting, in that the label was working another song to radio at the time. Then Morgan put that song out on his Instagram page, and everyone jumped on it. They didn't play the official single any less. So he had two singles in the Top 30 at the same time, which kept out other singles by other major artists.
But as I said in the previous post, a streaming chart is not the same as a curated airplay chart. People don't buy music and listen to their own copy on their own device any more. They stream it over and over, and that's what you see in streaming charts. It's a different process than airplay, either on a Spotify curated station, a Sirius channel (such as The Highway), or a radio station. Different process, different metrics, different results.
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The song wasn't promoted to radio until the week of Jan 18. Fact.
I do have access to Medibase and yes I checked on Jan 11th...and 12th, 13th, 14th. I was getting next to zero airplay at radio yet. And I doubt you were really playing it yet either, even if you're at a CHR station. Radio totally missed what was happening because radio doesn't normally play songs until they're told by the labels to play them.
Wrong again Mr. A. It's all lowercase, no apostrophe.
That's OK. Radio plays lots of songs that aren't officially promoted. The Morgan Wallen song I mentioned was one of them. It says "Impacting Songs," so they're hoping for impact on that date. But stations usually start ahead of that.
The song charted in the Jan 18 chart, and that covers airplay from the 10th to the 17th. So obviously it received airplay during that time.
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