oh please, enough of the classics. Summers here, kids are out partying, theres so much great dance music coming out, Hip Hop is at an all time low in terms of hits... This is the perfect oppurtunity to boost Dance back up in this country. NY is the leader - you can set trends. The classics are sickening now. Quit living in the past - People enjoy NEW music. Help dance grow... Its so frustrating to hear your station nowadays.
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KTU - Please.....
- Thread starter JayD
- Start date
Talk about beating a horse to death, this topic... on a related topic, I was listening to the online stream the other day, KTU seems even more classic dance online. During the commercial breaks we hear over the radio, the online stream plays classic dance songs. It makes it feel even older and more classic...
Yes it has been beaten to death but damn, its so frustrating to listen to stations living in the past... Hip Hop is quiet right now - nothing from NY is making noise, the southside hip hop is just ok, no real club bangers.... Dance songs like Elektro by Outwork, Your Body by Tom Novy are so catchy and work so well in the clubs, even with an "urban" crowd... Songs like this is what they should be playing. Kids are subjected to songs with bad lyrics cause they have no other options. With KTU playing classics today... what are gonna be the classics for us in 10-15 years?
But the kids aren't putting on KTU. They all have on Hot 97, Z 100, Power 105.1 where these stations are playing hits. Speaking of hits their are a lot of new hits being played on Top 40 stations. I am not sure or not but Z 100 should just do a Friday, Saturday, Sunday night dance night or something. With that why not make KTU country, lol. New Yorks Country at 103.5 KTU. Hey Clear Channel just added country to Detroit to compete with CBS Radio's country leader.
Retro is in across the country in nearly every format... from the death of many CHRs to that Variety formats, to the death of active Rock stations and growth of Classic Rockers, even Hot Country stations are slipping in a lot of 80 and 90's songs to counter a pop sound of the newer stuff. Even the mighty Z 100 throws in a lot of 90's throughout the day to counter the rotation of its newer hits and to let us remember... I'm hoping this 70's-90's kick ends soon... we need some more newer battles in all formats... EVERYTHING is stale...
Here I am...the king of beating this topic to death! ;DPersonally, if a station could gain great improvements in numbers with a current dance format, I would tell Mix 102.7 to go the format. With all these changes going on at 'KTU, it makes me wonder how long does the station really have left. Sure, they could have went mainly current....I and countless others here have been demanding it but to no avail. Does that mean I;m giving up?? Nope. Just have to approach it in a different manner.Mix 102.7 might have made a small dent to 'KTU's numbers...but both stations are fighting for their lives since the retro sound (at least in New York anyway) is getting VERY stale.You would think with satellite radio and Internet streams, radio would become more creative in trying to come up with something vibrant. I'm seeing that it is NOT the case.The positive thing that I WILL say is that although the station does not have a strong signal outside of Suffolk County, Party 105.3 is the EXAMPLE of what a current dance station should sound like. Even the "retro" recurrents are something positive...instead of just hearing Barry White, Donna Summer or The Beegees for the umpteenthtrillionbillionth time.
AMEN!I have no more patience with KTU! Such a valuable signal and great calls to do a current and creative dance format in a globally eclectic, creative and trend setting city and we have to suffer through "Staying alive" yet once again!I'd rather see them go polka than keep teasing New Yorkers with their slogan..."New York's dance leader"What a joke!
Agreed. The give Dance a bad name to the corporate folks and non-dance listeners. People think thats what real dance is, when KTU hardly touches the surface.I hear some of the songs that KTU plays from the past - songs like Marrs - Pump up the Volume, Bizarre Inc - Im gonna get you, etc - lets say those songs came out today and that was the sound - they wouldnt even get a chance to be on radio... So many great tunes dont get the chance they deserve and its a shame. There will be no future classics if THIS era. Mix 102.7 does the classic dance thing well. Lately though, Ive been hearing some not so classic dance songs such as Daft Punk and 1 year old Deborah Cox songs. Both stations sound so alike, its pathetic. Party 105 would do so well here, especially in the summer - Jersey Shore, Jones Beach, NYC - they'd all be tuned in. Ive lost my patience with KTU and I dont even bother tuning in anymore. Im sick of hoping for a new song to come on... Whats even worse is when they have their nightly mixshow - its the usual songs on their playlist thats mixed together. Maybe 1 or 2 "real" club hits thrown in but for the most part, its Cascada into Bob Sinclar into Freemasons into Reggaeton..lol
mass market stations appeal to 'casual' listeners who use the station as a sort of 'wallpaper'; the majority of listeners are not as music intensive as you guys are,and I'll bet those casual listeners couldn't care less if they NEVER hear a 'new 'song, it's hardly a priority for them...and much thanks to PARTY 105 for still playing my 'current',"Dance Floor",which was designed for those 'casual' listeners,to bring them back to a new dance track,,but has been mostly ignored in favor of the 'diva tracks' which I predicted,years ago, would lead to the downfall of dance at radio....and it has.
Probably not but I do believe, inherently, that those casual listeners WANT something new. Problem is that they aren't getting exposed enough TO the new material, that is if you go by how 'KTU and Mix are "branding" their sound. And going back to Jay D's argument (a very good one at that) about "Pump Up The Volume" and other late 80's/early 90's material, which was played BRAND SPANKING NEW, not getting any sort of play if they were new today.....dead on! I've always said whatever 'KTU or Mix is playing now, it WAS brand new when the original 'KTU and Hot 103/97 played it. People were given exposure to the current music and it did help make the original 'KTU a success as well as Hot 103/97. The "death" of disco killed off 'KTU and the bad financial decisions by Emmis killed off Hot 97 as a dance station.Okay, one can argue about the current environment of today's generation continually embracing hip-hop and now reggaeton. Yet if you DO play a house track or club material in one of those clubs, people will dance to it. And I truly believe that if a station like a Party 105.3 were to exist in New York City, people would flood it! At best, "Dance Floor" would be heard on a larger scale and more listeners/dance fans could appreciate it. Hearing it on Party 105.3 made me appreciate it!Believe me, I am getting VERY concerned about the way 'KTU and Mix 102.7 are headed (my thoughts on that are expressed on another board). I think Mix has a chance to save themselves if they went current based. No doubt what Andre is doing over at Party is the PRIME example of what a current dance station should sound like.Too bad the execs don't "get it".
Clubs do not reflect reality. They dim the lights, provide drinks, pump up the volume and provide members of the opposite sex. Not your radio listening environment. The key to KTU in its original 70's incarnation and the current one was the second generation Puerto Rican audience. Dance is pretty much dead amoung Newyoricans and Puerto Ricans on the Island. A few club cuts may get folks on the dance floor, but reggaetón and perreo are the things with the 18-34 crowd. The base of the format is, thus, gone. Executives get it. They order research, and the ones that get good research well conducted and interpreted, look for alternatives to exiswting formats or variants that will ding competitors. Were there a current-based dance passion, there would be a station.Tony Santiago said:
exactly!....the trend starts in the 'street',as disco did, and MicMac 'freestyle' did,and then, radio reflects it; it's not radio's job to sell cds,radio is a mirror image of whichever audience it's courting...as i've said many times, 'dance' was taken over by insiders with the 'club' mentality,the insiders who look down at pop/crossover dance,and who try to'out-underground' each other to show how hip they are..they've completely lost touch with the 'man/woman in the street' and they're proud of it~!By deliberately distancing themselves from a mass audience, they now have NO audience.
I remember when Kiss-FM up in Poughkeepsie was dumping "Freestyle 4 At 4" on Friday afternoons last year replacing by "Reggaton 4 at 4". I miss freestyle music from the late 80's and early90's like TKA, Sweet Sensation, Stevie B, Shannon, the Cover Girls and many others.
And for this version of a dance format, do you really need to base it mainly on Puerto Ricans? (I am one myself). Italians and other white cultures tend to flock to dance music. Party 105.3 seems to be leaning towards that direction. If such a dance format can lean there and at the same time, get the few Puerto Ricans/Dominicans or so that loved dance to come on, I think it could register numbers.
Then I have a question. How did Hot 103 get into the dance music format? Freestyle didn't really explode until a year after Hot 97 launched (in 1986). Yes, freestyle WAS there but by '87 and '88, that's when it really took off.
While I can understand your point Jimi, what boggles my mind is this......why would a record label produce something so that very few consumers could buy it? I would think, and correct me if I am wrong, that the labels would WANT some sort of profit generated if a club track is liked by many people and they want to get it. How does that relate to your quote? Insofar as the fact that the mentality with the insiders is virtually "chopping the nose to spite the face". Granted, I am not expecting club denziens to hit a club for the sole purpose of learning about dance tracks....they wanna get drunk, get numbers and get laid. But if a track does well in a club, then "the insiders" holding a track "hostage" to their club certainly doesn't help in any growth of dance music. And THAT pisses me off.Sure, I love the underground. It's really about trying to change that mentality (admittedly...DIFFICULT TASK) of getting the underground to mainstream. Hip-hop was underground for quite a long time and look where it is now. Reggaeton was underground outside of Puerto Rico...until now. I realize dance music had their moments with disco and 80's freestyle. I just think it is time with trance and whatever future sounds that come out that dance music has another renaissance.Yes....difficult task.
Clubs do not reflect reality. They dim the lights, provide drinks, pump up the volume and provide members of the opposite sex. Not your radio listening environment. The key to KTU in its original 70's incarnation and the current one was the second generation Puerto Rican audience. Dance is pretty much dead amoung Newyoricans and Puerto Ricans on the Island. A few club cuts may get folks on the dance floor, but reggaetón and perreo are the things with the 18-34 crowd. The base of the format is, thus, gone. Executives get it. They order research, and the ones that get good research well conducted and interpreted, look for alternatives to exiswting formats or variants that will ding competitors. Were there a current-based dance passion, there would be a station. [/quote]That may work in KTU's favor as they try and appeal to a latin population but it doesn't mean there is no market for a dance station in NYC. There is alot more to New York than Puerto Ricans and reggaeton and with all do respect, the average non hispanic Manhattanite would not even know what Reggaeton was.In addition, I don't believe the execs. do get it because Madison Avenue would sell to a downtown audience that frequents clubs, bars and restaurants all of which cater to a trendy, wealthy chill/dance music fan.A dance station wouldn't break 3.0 but it would be an easy sell in a city with a mentality like New York.DavidEduardo said:
J
JohnParker
Guest
Same argument has going on for about 9 of KTU's 10 years. A couple of things from my view in no particular order:1) David Eduardo is dead on when it comes to "Club Music". Anyone that has access to an ounce of research in this area can tell you that 99.9% of the stuff that is considered club music will not react with the radio listener or the record buyer. Sales of Dance Music in NYC proper is horrible compared to that of the Suburbs. Club Music is not made for the radio, nor do the people that make it care if it gets on the radio. Dubs, endless beats, sparse vocals equals dull when it comes to radio. And this is what's happening in almost every club that plays dance music in America, unfortunately.2) Jimi is right. For a trend to happen it needs to start from the streets. Everyone that does marketing knows this. Word of mouth equals killer numbers. Be it Movies, Television, Books or Music. He's also right when he says that it's not Radio's job to sell music. That's my job. But exposure on radio makes it a hell of a lot easier. 
The dance music industry was taken over by "insiders" when I first started on the record side. It was impossible to deal with a lot of those people. They set the stage for what was dance musics biggest fall. Something that we are still trying to recover from. This is far bigger that the whole "Disco Sucks" trend (Sorry Jimi) which really only lasted 5 - 6 years. By 85-86, we'd moved on and were having dance hits again. These people started to make the music something that became insolated. They didn't want the mainstream, they wanted "too cool for the room". All of these people, well almost all of them, are now are out of the business or have moved on to promote on the Crossover side because that's where the bills get paid. And us, well were still paying for their nonesense.3) Tony to answer a few of your questions:"do you really need to base it mainly on Puerto Ricans?"No but in NYC there is as you are aware a very large hispanic community which has always been on the forefront of starting trends here. So to have that community on your side is a very big advantage. That community still loves dance music but hasn't really been latching on to the current "dance" sounds. KTU, while I can't speak for them, seemly has tried to grab that community by airing reggaeton and putting more latin based tracks into rotation. Makes sense on paper but when they started airing Spanish language tracks they tend to lose a lot of their listeners from the people that I've asked about it. So it's a fine line to ride."How did Hot 103 get into the dance music format? Freestyle didn't really explode until a year after Hot 97 launched (in 1986). Yes, freestyle WAS there but by '87 and '88, that's when it really took off."Hot 103 was really a "Crossover" station for it's time. Rhythmic Urban tracks were gaining a foothold and Hot nailed it. Freestyle was alive and well in the clubs at that time. We had our little dance station B91 (10 Watts and a Cume of 250,000, yes that's not a typo) that started a few months before Hot and the music was on fire. It was easier for Freestyle to make the jump from clubs to radio because they took the form of traditional songs. Today's club music for the most part isn't close, nor does it want to be."why would a record label produce something so that very few consumers could buy it? I would think, and correct me if I am wrong, that the labels would WANT some sort of profit generated if a club track is liked by many people and they want to get it."This happened because the club departments at the time pretty much had free reign to put out singles and do whatever they wanted. At that time, pretty much anything would sell. They ran into problems when they mistook the record buyers taste as being their own. Sales started to slump a bit and labels started to inquire as to why so much money was being spent on Remixes (20-25,000 a mix in some cases). The number crunchers came in and shut them down. While that was good for business, it took away the only guys that gave Dance a voice at the major label level. Without a voice at the top, the music started to sink to the bottom of the publicity pecking order. When you have no voice, you slowly disappear. So poor A&R choices and over spending caused the musics death at the majors."Hip-hop was underground for quite a long time and look where it is now. Reggaeton was underground outside of Puerto Rico...until now"Hip Hop was underground but never made an effort to conseal the fact that they wanted to be commerical. They were all about making money. The dance music scene seems not to have this desire. It's all about "keep it real". It seems that real means some people are jamming in your club to the latest voiceless, hookless track that's all about the drum loops. That's cool but you can't then complain that KTU or Z100's not playing your song.Again, this isn't late breaking news. It has been this way for some time. The only way for this music community to succeed is to have better songs, harder workers and an audience that builds from the ground up. When we have those elements, radio will run to us. Until then we're just spinning our wheels. We can't rely on Madison Avenue or Corporate America to help us. We need to help ourselves.jp
The dance music industry was taken over by "insiders" when I first started on the record side. It was impossible to deal with a lot of those people. They set the stage for what was dance musics biggest fall. Something that we are still trying to recover from. This is far bigger that the whole "Disco Sucks" trend (Sorry Jimi) which really only lasted 5 - 6 years. By 85-86, we'd moved on and were having dance hits again. These people started to make the music something that became insolated. They didn't want the mainstream, they wanted "too cool for the room". All of these people, well almost all of them, are now are out of the business or have moved on to promote on the Crossover side because that's where the bills get paid. And us, well were still paying for their nonesense.3) Tony to answer a few of your questions:"do you really need to base it mainly on Puerto Ricans?"No but in NYC there is as you are aware a very large hispanic community which has always been on the forefront of starting trends here. So to have that community on your side is a very big advantage. That community still loves dance music but hasn't really been latching on to the current "dance" sounds. KTU, while I can't speak for them, seemly has tried to grab that community by airing reggaeton and putting more latin based tracks into rotation. Makes sense on paper but when they started airing Spanish language tracks they tend to lose a lot of their listeners from the people that I've asked about it. So it's a fine line to ride."How did Hot 103 get into the dance music format? Freestyle didn't really explode until a year after Hot 97 launched (in 1986). Yes, freestyle WAS there but by '87 and '88, that's when it really took off."Hot 103 was really a "Crossover" station for it's time. Rhythmic Urban tracks were gaining a foothold and Hot nailed it. Freestyle was alive and well in the clubs at that time. We had our little dance station B91 (10 Watts and a Cume of 250,000, yes that's not a typo) that started a few months before Hot and the music was on fire. It was easier for Freestyle to make the jump from clubs to radio because they took the form of traditional songs. Today's club music for the most part isn't close, nor does it want to be."why would a record label produce something so that very few consumers could buy it? I would think, and correct me if I am wrong, that the labels would WANT some sort of profit generated if a club track is liked by many people and they want to get it."This happened because the club departments at the time pretty much had free reign to put out singles and do whatever they wanted. At that time, pretty much anything would sell. They ran into problems when they mistook the record buyers taste as being their own. Sales started to slump a bit and labels started to inquire as to why so much money was being spent on Remixes (20-25,000 a mix in some cases). The number crunchers came in and shut them down. While that was good for business, it took away the only guys that gave Dance a voice at the major label level. Without a voice at the top, the music started to sink to the bottom of the publicity pecking order. When you have no voice, you slowly disappear. So poor A&R choices and over spending caused the musics death at the majors."Hip-hop was underground for quite a long time and look where it is now. Reggaeton was underground outside of Puerto Rico...until now"Hip Hop was underground but never made an effort to conseal the fact that they wanted to be commerical. They were all about making money. The dance music scene seems not to have this desire. It's all about "keep it real". It seems that real means some people are jamming in your club to the latest voiceless, hookless track that's all about the drum loops. That's cool but you can't then complain that KTU or Z100's not playing your song.Again, this isn't late breaking news. It has been this way for some time. The only way for this music community to succeed is to have better songs, harder workers and an audience that builds from the ground up. When we have those elements, radio will run to us. Until then we're just spinning our wheels. We can't rely on Madison Avenue or Corporate America to help us. We need to help ourselves.jpTony;remember, in the mid 80s, acts like Madonna, Gloria Estefan, Dead Or Alive,Alisha, etc shared a Top 40 AND dance audience,and 'dance' at the time was regarded by radio as a staple in the night clubs;now, the Ambers, Reinas and Kim English's of the world are no longer shared by a Top 40 AND dance crowd, they belong just to the small but vocal dance audience;'dance' is no longer regarded by radio as a staple in the the night clubs that their audiences frequent,the new staple in hip hop, r&b, and the varied latin/hispanic based sounds;dance needs to get harder ,with more male vocal presentations if it wants to compete,because the giddy girlie diva vocals do not and will not ever cut it with the 'gangstas'.
John Parker, so right on,now pick up the rights to "DanceFloor" so at least there'll be one Top 40 dance hit this summer......(as to the "Death Of Disco",the only thing that really killed disco was 'very late 70s" disco itself,and movies like "Can't Stop The Music" and "Thank God It's Friday"; a truly solid music genre will survive any public assaults, as 50s and 60s rock did(""Don't Knock The Rock") and more recently hip hop survived all the nay sayers, government officials,and journalists who've tried to bury it for decades.The 70s dance scene committed "Disco-cide",killing itself with goofy, redundant,unsellable product,and made it an easy target for snotty little punk rockers like me...
J
JohnParker
Guest
Jimi,We can only work one smash at a time and that Summer Top 40 hit's gonna be "Miracle". jp
jp- Status