crbigband said:
McCoy used to tell me, "You should never be too far away from a hit."
But I fail to see exactly WHY that is wise advice when it comes to playing music that is OLD.
I can see why it makes sense when one is playing MODERN music because the list of recordings which are considered "hits" is a moving target constantly evolving and changing. By the time a recording becomes shopworn and loses its luster, the station has moved on to something else.
The problem with that notion when it comes to OLD music is the fact that the list of recordings which were considered "hits" back in the day is forever static and never changes. Stick with the philosophy you attribute to McCoy for very long and it will eventually grow repetitious and stale - which is how KAAM sounded back when I occasionally listened.
Now, I DO understand that people like to hear music which is familiar to them. But if that were true in the extreme, music would NEVER evolve - people would listen to the same exact recordings forever because it is familiar. If you think about it, most people like to hear a certain MIXTURE of both familiar recordings as well as new ones.
Are older people somehow different in that respect? I understand that a lot of them DO wish to hear again the big hits from their youth. But is that the ONLY thing they want to listen to? Have they zero interest in hearing at least SOME amount recordings that are different - in this case, "different" meaning recordings from the same era and genre which did not necessarily sell as well?
My experience is that most people's musical tastes tend to BROADEN as they get older. It is very YOUNG people who tend to be almost dogmatically devoted to a narrow range and are borderline contemptuous of everything else. As people grow older, they acquire new tastes and learn to appreciate stuff which they were once indifferent to or perhaps even once disliked. That certainly has been true for me.
A good friend once suggested that the mindset behind the "focus on the hits" approach to the "standards" is that such stations are simply going for the lowest hanging fruit on the tree - and they figure that those who crave something more beyond that are going to listen in anyway no matter what because, where else on the dial are the old geezers going to go?
My guess is that probably
was a valid approach when mass media was dominant and there were few alternatives. But today there ARE alternatives - Internet radio being only one. And while older people are a bit further behind the curve when it comes to adopting new technologies, they have been online in great numbers for several years now. They DO have alternatives - and the only thing that prevents more people from using them is a lack of awareness that they exist plus a certain amount of built-in inertia towards changing one's routine. That's why those mid-day infomercials mentioned earlier in this thread are suicidal - that will DEFINITELY motivate people to look for and try alternatives. And once they find them - well, they probably won't come back.
On the other hand, I certainly do not mean to be disrespectful of Jaan McCoy. In his defense, he has obviously knows SOMETHING about what he has been doing by virtue of his staying power in an industry where that, by itself, has always been an accomplishment. The man still has a paying job playing "standards" in an industry where many highly talented individuals playing for more commercially viable formats have been forced to move on to other things. Once again, that is an accomplishment. And, by contrast, I am just some nobody who programs an Internet station that has never made a penny or even tried to make a penny.
So let's for a moment just assume that my questions are ill-informed and that McCoy is right and that IS the best way to be successful with a "standards" station. But successful - at what? Appealing to an aging audience that is, sadly, only going to get smaller with the passage of time?
If that's what KAAM's game plan is - appeal to that older audience and make what money they can from it now and, when it is no longer around, move on to something else - then MAYBE it makes sense.
But I DO know this much: if you are a person who is passionate about post World War II standards type music and wishes to see it still around on the radio dial with an appreciative modern audience after its original generation of fans has passed on - then the McCoy approach is
TOXIC and will basically ensure that the music dies when its generation dies.
To illustrate my point, imagine if I were to use the McCoy approach when I program Radio Dismuke which plays recordings from the late 1920s and early 1930s. Yes - you don't have to say it. I am FULLY aware that there is a difference of NIGHT and DAY between a hobbyist programing an Internet station and programing a commercially viable terrestrial station. I know that the two are NOT the same. But please follow me on this for a moment while I made a wider point.
The approximate cut off date for the recordings I program is 1935. That means someone who was 15 when my newest recordings were made turns 90 this year. That means that most people who are now in
nursing homes are too young to have strong memories of most of the recordings that I play.
Obviously, it would be pretty pointless for me to program the station based around people from the music's original audience wanting to relive their youth. Most people who listen to my station were born well AFTER the music's heyday -
which will also be the case at some point in the future for any "standards" station that might still be on the air.
The fact is that the people who listen to my station don't CARE whether a particular recording was or was not a big hit in its day. They judge each recording based on its own musical merits.
If I were to rework the format and exclude most or all recordings that were not big hits in their day - well, I would not only be throwing out a LOT of really great stuff, I would be tossing out many of the very recordings that people gush about when they email me. It would mean tossing out many truly OUTSTANDING recordings by so-called "territory bands" which only had a regional following at the time. It would mean throwing out recordings by some of the very best bands of the period which happened to be segregated black bands which were not considered "respectable" in many circles and tended not to have hit recordings.
SOME recordings become hits because they are truly excellent. But, ultimately, a hit recording is one that has been successfully marketed AND which appeals to a very wide common denominator, which sometimes means the LOWEST common denominator.
If I were to follow the McCoy approach with Radio Dismuke, some of the most interesting and most compelling recordings would no longer be in my playlist. To be sure, many fine recordings would remain. But, following the McCoy approach, I would then play those same recordings in a tight playlist over and over again year after year because, after all, what constituted a "hit" back in the '20s and '30s is forever set in stone.
The result would be that, after awhile, the station would start to sound very stale and almost become a sort of caricature of itself - which, in my judgment, describes KAAM before I stopped listening to it. That is NOT an effective way to present a forgotten genre of music to a new generation of listeners.
The people who helped make particular records "hits" in the '20s and '30s often had FAR more conservative musical tastes than the individuals who purchased the more obscure recordings I feature. But it is precisely those "hot" dance band recordings and jazz recordings that didn't always sell all that well that modern audiences tend to go wild over the most and which are now considered to be classics by modern fans of such music.
The people who listen to my station view the music I present though
very different eyes and bring with them
very different experiences than the people who purchased the 78 rpm records when they were new.
And given that I operate on a shoestring budget with zero revenue and zero promotional budget and have become known mostly through word of mouth, I have had at least SOME success in doing what I do. For the 30 day period ending March 1, the station had 80,692 tune-ins and 50,977 listening hours. My stream on the LoudCity.com network was in the top 10 percent of the 13,695 stations available in the Shoutcast directory in February - and if one adds my smaller audience from the simulcast on Live365.com which is NOT tracked by Shoutcast, it would be in the top 8 percent. That's jack diddly squat by terrestrial standards, I know. But in the realm I operate, being in the top 8 percent spinning 75 year old plus 78 rpm records by artists few people alive have even heard of - well, I am not displeased. If I had the money to promote it more, the numbers would be much better as the audience I have is but a small fraction of its potential.
Again, McCoy and KAAM operate in a completely different realm than I do. They have a payroll to meet and a lot of other overhead that has to be paid every month. Their FIRST priority HAS to be bringing in revenue.
My priority is different. Ever since I discovered '20s and '30s music as a child, I have regarded the fact that so few people are familiar with it as a profound cultural injustice - and when the Internet came along, I decided to put my personal collection to use to help correct that injustice. For me, it is a sort of private, personal crusade.
I am mostly lukewarm about post war "standards" type recordings. But there ARE undoubtedly people out there who are as passionate about "standards" as I am about my music. And such a person, undoubtedly, would consider it to be very tragic if the music were to die with its generation as my music died decades ago long before its generation even reached old age. I have no idea whether McCoy is such a person or not - having listened to him in years past, I certainly thinks he has an authentic love for it. But if the music he plays is to have a future, then it MUST be presented in a way that appeals to younger listeners. Doing so does NOT mean going "modern." It means taking a fresh look at old recordings with new eyes from the perspective of a generation that is too young to be blinded by the generational biases and stereotypes that dismiss such music as "square" or "old people's music." It means selecting recordings which COUNTER the stereotypes, NOT the ones which tend to perpetuate them. It means selecting recordings based on the fact that they DESERVE to remain alive - not that they appealed to the mass market which existed decades ago.
They stopped making the music I am passionate about over 70 years ago. But, for me, it is NOT a static thing and it NEVER grows old. For me, the ADVENTURE of discovering it has continued unabated since childhood. I am constantly acquiring 78 rpms records - and when I do, I put them in my station and my audience gets to share in that discovery as well. And it would be impossible for me to live long enough to run out of "new" 78 rpms to discover. The two major discographies that cover the period, Brian Rust's
American Dance Band Discography and his
Jazz Records are both around 1,800 pages each with rather small typeface. And that is only the AMERICAN recordings. The recordings from England and Europe from that period were outstanding as well. And the amount of records made during my era is DWARFED by the amount that was available during the era covered by KAAM when records were MUCH cheaper and there was a proliferation of small, independent labels.
That spirit of regarding the music as an ADVENTURE and as a process of DISCOVERY is something that I do NOT pick up on when listening to KAAM. But that is EXACTLY what it is going to take if they wish to broaden the appeal of the music they present. I am NOT suggesting that they totally abandon the "hits" or be as loose on playlist size as I am or do ANYTHING to jeopardize those aspects of their existing business model which work. What I AM suggesting is getting someone on staff who is PASSIONATE about the music that is being played and who ALREADY spends a great deal of time constantly looking for new and wonderful examples of it and just CANNOT WAIT until he gets a chance to share his latest outstanding all but forgotten discovery with the rest of the world by playing on the radio. I am suggesting that they do it in ADDITION to what they are doing how and which works for them. It would ENERGIZE that which has become tired and stale. I guarantee you if they did that, the station would not only be more appealing to a wider audience - the old geezers will enjoy it too.
Like I said in a previous posting, I am notoriously long winded - especially on subjects I find interesting.
