That may be, but what I see is that rock acts are the only ones who aren't interested in getting bigger. They feel becoming bigger is selling out, and they don't want to sell out. Their fans love them because they're pure and stick to what they do. They don't seek out TV, they don't do sponsorship deals, and they keep ticket prices low. And as a result, their music remains a cult among a small group of fans, and never grows to the point where the audience can be sold to advertisers. That's great for the fans, but it doesn't make it attractive to radio. So they will stay as a non-commercial format. Which is fine, if you have a non-profit station in your area. There are a few college stations around NYC that work just fine with this, so I encourage people to listen to them.
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- Thread starter leethalweapon
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That may be, but what I see is that rock acts are the only ones who aren't interested in getting bigger. They feel becoming bigger is selling out, and they don't want to sell out. Their fans love them because they're pure and stick to what they do. They don't seek out TV, they don't do sponsorship deals, and they keep ticket prices low. And as a result, their music remains a cult among a small group of fans, and never grows to the point where the audience can be sold to advertisers. That's great for the fans, but it doesn't make it attractive to radio. So they will stay as a non-commercial format. Which is fine, if you have a non-profit station in your area. There are a few college stations around NYC that work just fine with this, so I encourage people to listen to them.
That's what modern Pop is. It's a formula to get enough teenagers and soccer moms to listen. And, it works. Country figured out the formula. What does Pop and new Country do? They pump out new songs that all sound the same. What happens to the older hits. Most of them are forgotten. But because they are new, people see it as refreshing. What do you all do with Rock? You call Monkey Wrench, Comedown, Smells Like Teen Spirit, Hunger Strike, Enter Sandman, etc new music. You pepper in a new song here or there. Yet, you barely give any new acts a chance. If a song is hot, you play it like you would play the hell out of the newest pop song. Then you forget it.
So yes, you as an industry play to the lowest common denominator. That's the issue with Rock from your end. We all suck as listeners, because the industry pumped out garbage acts like Puddle of Mudd in the early 2000s, and because of what happened 19 to 14 years ago, your business decided the formula was to never leave the 90s. Take some ownership in your buisness's fault in this situation. As I said, there are more than enough new acts out there to revitalize rock as a dominant format. The executives in the record companies and the executives in the radio industry don't like it, therefore they all bury it.
"We play what appeals to the biggest group of people." Well then apply your formula that you use with Pop and Country to rock. Until you do that, you will never change my mind. It can't fail, because your business won't even try it. Try it, and if it fails, then I'll shut up.
Alternative finally figured it out. They found the new sound. The new sound is out there with rock. We all know where to find it. Satellite radio knows where to find it. The only people acting gormless about it are those in terrestrial radio. Acting is the keyword
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But those stations are listened to mainly by folks 50 to 65 who were still listening to current rock and even some pop in the late '80s/early '90s but couldn't adjust to grunge and rap. The bands played on AAA radio were making new music that wasn't much of a stylistic leap -- if any -- from the music they'd been listening to for the past couple of decades. They got booked on Letterman when the twenty-somethings had largely moved on to edgier/snarkier/cruder late-night entertainment, AAA is basically a nostalgia format done with current music.
You act like New York radio hasn't tried rock before. Take a look at this thread. WPLJ was once a rock station. WNEW was once a rock station. Then there was WRXP The New York Rock Experiment. How many more times do you have to fail? Keep paying for Sirius. I have no problem with that. Enjoy!
Go back and read my first post in this thread. I openly stated that I wasn't specifically speaking to the New York market. I said that New York has stronger listenership in other formats. The statement was about Rock as a whole. It doesn't matter if it's New York, Boston, Philly, or anywhere else on the East Coast. When we got into the 2000s, the radio industry decided to stick to 90s acts. Look at the commonality between most Rock stations that failed. The ones like WYSP that went classic rock had their own issues. But, the ones that claimed to be modern rock were all heavily focused on mainstream 90s acts. Any new music mainly was from established 90s bands, like Foo Fighters, Pearl Jam, The Offspring, etc. These are all bands I like, but how many times do you play My Hero and call it new rock? Bands from the 2000s that have survived the rock-pocalypse still don't get the same playtime as their older 90s counterparts. I'll hear Rape Me way more than Down With The Sickness on the modern rock stations. Forget about anything by more mainstream modern acts like Breaking Benjamin and Volbeat.
So, I'm the bad guy for identifying the common theme. Thanks for bringing up WRXP. If I remember, first, did the station fail or did Emmis have financial issues? Second, wasn't WRXP's playlist a lot like I previously mentioned? Terrestrial radio did exactly that to rock. Where Country and Pop get new music routinely played through, rock stations refuse to allow through new acts.
But, it's the listeners' fault for finding Jeremy to be overplayed for the last near 25 years. The same for Self-Esteem, Push, Machinehead, etc. Your answer is to tell me to go away for saying that your formula is broken. At what point do you realize that you are thinking with arragance and ignorance to what us as listeners are saying? You say we went away. We went away, because you are playing 20+ year old songs under the guise of new/modern rock. Go back to 1999, did modern rock stations play a heavy rotation of 70s acts with a small amount of (then) modern acts peppered in? No! We got Stairway added to the rotation here and there, but the acts of the time got the spotlight. How about the 80s and the hair bands of that era. Did you turn on a modern rock station in 1989 and hear an abundance of The Beatles and Janus Joplin? No! Again, they were in the rotation, but they didn't take the spotlight from the acts of the day. Yet, I listen to modern rock stations and hear Bulls on Parade. It's a song I like, but it isn't modern.
I would have greater respect for you if you just admit that you don't like modern rock and that's why you give it a chance. Instead, it's the bands, record company, listeners, the drummer's mother, etc fault. It's not the radio station that refuses to play new rock. It's not the fault of the station who plays songs sung by a guy who committed suicide almost 25 years ago, under the guise of "modern rock". That's not at all why listeners left. It's that they like more rhythmic music. Perhaps because the rhythmic stations play more actual new and modern songs from those formats that people lean that way. You don't need a damn record company to tell you what to play. You don't need to see a band on MTV to play their song. Last time I checked, stations have music directors for a purpose. How about having them listen to new acts and giving some airtime to these acts. But hey, it's easier to just say that there isn't payola. How many points did WAAF get off Godsmack's album "All Wound Up", which was remastered into its self-titled debut album? I actually own a copy of All Wound Up. Bought it at Newbury Comics in 1997.
I'm going to stay right here and share my perspectives. I'll listen to satellite and feel hurt to see FM slowly become the graveyard that AM now is, because the people in the buisness are too aragant to see their involvement in the problem. Instead it's easier to bash me with my pesky questions and observations. You don't have a defense to my points, just a runaround claim for me to be making a statement that I openly ensured to clarify yesterday.
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Music on the radio begins with the music. If the music industry isn't supporting the music, there's no point in radio bashing its head against the wall. Let me know when the music industry changes its perspectives and starts investing in new rock bands.
I already cited just one source where signed acts are getting playtime. You seem to imply that I'm talking about unsigned acts. I challenge you to listen to Octane. Again, its just one source. Listen to Octane and take a list of the songs played for one day, then compare that list to the modern rock station in each market.
These bands are there with record contracts. Terrestrial radio as in industry foolishly ignnores them. Heck, I can find a list of songs that are approximately 10 to 15 years old that don't get playtime on FM stations, which people would see as "new". That's because of instead playing these songs, we were hearing Santeria yet again.
Of course no one in the industry uses the term "Lowest Common Denominator." It isn't a complimentary characterization of radio's target audience, but it is accurate. It matches radio's objective as you state it perfectly. To be adventurous would result in too many non-favorite songs being played, driving away radio's audience. Listening measurements apparently show that radio's listeners will endure repetition of songs if they don't dislike them enough.
But most people like more songs than radio plays and don't want to hear that much repetition. They have voted with their ears by listening elsewhere - more specialized streams and hard drives. Those people generally aren't of concern to radio programmers because they aren't ever again going to be radio's audience. Hence, they are left out of the discussion, except if they tune in to a terrestrial morning show for 2 minutes to get traffic and weather; then they are included in that 90+% total audience number that "uses" radio weekly. Eventually those 2-minute users will migrate over to Waze and weather.com or similar.
When that happens, the surveyors will have to redefine "using" radio to include those gazing lovingly at unused FM presets on a screen, I guess. Or they'll have to accept that even the lowest common denominator is shrinking.
Actually, "no" on several counts.
It's not radio's job to revitalize a genre by playing a lot of new, unknown and unproven acts. Without the label working the acts actively as support, it comes down to simply playing stiffs when the audience want their favorite, familiar songs.
Stations that have tried to play newer rock in any significant amount have failed. Research by stations exploring format options does not show current rock as an option. Millennials, those 18-34's who are the group that contains nearly all the new music experience people, are far less interested in rock at all than the same group 10, 20 years ago were. That group, now approaching 50% ethnic in the US, wants more rhythmic material and rock is far less appealing.
It's been researched in many markets. The real issue is that labels are not behind rock as it is no longer a big profit center. Those with 360 deals find that new rock bands can't pull big concert crowds or sell as many records. The rock fans want the big, known names. And the money now is in touring, not in music sales.
Alternative is not a format. It is a gathering of dissimilar groups under a common banner. Among alternative partisans, there are subsets that each like some of the songs from other subsets, but hate much of the rest. That is why, using LA as an example, the morning shows on the two alternative stations perform vastly better than the music dayparts. And it explains why newer alternative stations in places like Miami and NYC are mediocre performers.
You actually get it, but these statements "break" your argument.
Interest in new music drops off dramatically somewhere after age 30. That's where you find adults accepting a couple of new songs each month, but not seeking out sources for music discovery per se.
So the record industry, the artists and radio don't push a lot of new music at the over-35 crowd.
And, as mentioned before, the 18-34 group, also known as Millennials, is nearly half ethnic in today's USA and the music that is being demanded is rhythmic and pop sounding, not rock.
Radio is not going to program new rock to an audience that, for the most part, no longer exists.
Regarding those "2 minute (radio) listeners" I wouldn't use the adverb 'eventually' haha most of "us" have long used WAZE or SigAlert and Yahoo weather
Wow, I'm about your age, David, and I'll be the first to admit that I am a total anomaly in the respect that I seek out new music and I get quite a fill of it on AAA non-coms like KCSN/KSBR 88.8 FM. Even WXPK 107.1 The Peak has fewer new adds. AND of course I support ($$$) what I listen to. I feel so out of touch (haha)
And to many in the former happy hunting ground of rock -- youhg suburban white males -- rock of any stripe is increasingly seen as "dad's music," with less of a sense of rebellion and danger than gritty, urban rap. The real-life beefs that the music media report on in such detail only adds to the music's appeal. Also, with new rock of the sort preferred by listeners to stations like KLOS having even less appeal to women than the rock of their parents and grandparents, that part of the millennial demo has abandoned rock for country and rhythmic pop. Even as a complete outsider, I find the evidence for rock's decline impossible to deny. The largest number of rock fans have aged out of the sales demos. That is not going to change given the changing ethnic mix and the increasing popularity of rhythmic genres among young white people. There is no profitable pie slice for FM to claim anymore or in the future, no matter how "hip" or deep-playlisted any programmer tries to make his or her station. (Her? Has a woman EVER programmed a modern/hard rock station? Many have a female jock or two, but do they ever move up to MD or PD? They sure do in country, pop and urban.)
I'm 64 and I sometimes check out The River (WRSI Turners Falls, Mass.) and The Point (statewide network of AAA stations in Vermont) when I'm driving up to visit family in New Hampshire. The Point is what my 54-year-old brother listens to almost exclusively. WFRD Hanover is the active rock station in that area of New Hampshire. It's no ratings powerhouse, but I'd imagine it probably does better than most nationally due to the lack of diversity in that area's population, and that area can also support two AAAs (Great Eastern Radio's WWOD (The River) in Woodstock, Vt., being the other) better than most because, outside the transient Dartmouth College student body, most folks up that way are older than the national average.
It has been reported that Entercom's big boss is a big fan. This barely passes the sniff test with me, but I can't see any other way to account for it. Bizarre behavior for a modern corporate radio exec, to be sure.
And that, of course, neglects to take into account the fact that 2 minutes is not enough for the listening to be credited to a station. It takes listening in five discreet minutes in a quarter hour to get credit for that quarter hour.
That is the only answer I get. Apparently the corporation favors the format, despite its somewhat mediocre results in many of the markets they have put the format in. Miami, about the least alternative market in America, is a borderline disaster; the market is about 75% ethnic. NYC, with perhaps 70% ethnic and immigrant populations, is also an unperformer.
I believe that the reason for Rock being seen as "Dad's music", as you rightfully stated, is because the majority of what is played on Rock radio is what I mentioned as older 90s songs. I'm out of the norm of what you present as the "normal person 35 and older." I get that. I know that my interest in new music is due to my love of music as a whole. New Country is really the only music that doesn't suit my taste. And I run from classical with Mozart, Beatoven, etc, through the 1920s with Let's Misbehave to 2019 and much of what is played now. My roots are in Rock and The Blues, but I have an appreciation for most forms of music.
I feel a mess was created about 15 years ago when the decision was made to remain 90s focused, which caused a decline in listenership. And here we are a generation later, and you're right. Rock isn't considered rebellious anymore. But, that isn't because of the genre declining on it's own. It's because of a systemic decision to shut out new bands/acts, which stopped it from evolving in the mainstream. It has evolved, but is now underground. I compare it to tearing down a species natural habitat, thus effecting its evolution. My aim is to call it out and hope someone in terrestrial radio ponders what I am saying and corrects the wrongs that the radio industry did to the format for the last decade and a half. Nobody has tried it with solely modern music. It has been a hybrid of Classic Rock or what is now "new classic rock" under the guise of modern rock.
The corporations in terrestrial radio caused this. I blame the now defunct CBS radio more than anyone else. After what happened to K-Rock, WYSP, and WBCN, I saw them making the same argument that it didn't pull in ratings. Yet, they neglected to recognize how much they stunted the playlist and kept to the overplayed songs. They did the same thing and blamed the listeners. When WBCN went HD Radio only, I posted these sentiments on their website, the same as I do here today. What I got in return was the post deleted and an email stating that I was unwelcomed to post there. As that was 10 years ago, I don't have any proof of that, just my word. So yes, I do hold a big chunk of the blame on terrestrial radio. If they allowed the format to evolve gracefully as it did from the 60s to the 90s, I think this would all be different.
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