Music as a Visual Experience
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The radio industry may be turning another corner. This time it has nothing to do with advertising revenue, program quality, or community service. The new challenge, for anyone involved in bringing music to the masses, is dealing with a user's desire to view music videos.
YouTube has announced a new "Musicians Wanted" initiative, which solves two often-discussed issues from the musician and consumer sides: 1) How do I get my music heard? 2) Where can I find new artists?
There's no shortage of complaints from musicians on trying to expose their music through commercial radio. Playlists simply do not allow enough time to break new acts. Being a local band doesn't help because the radio industry gave up on being a local new music source long ago. This has an obvious effect on the audience, which is not finding songs by anyone other than label-sanctioned groups and is not able to hear bands that play local clubs.
Even a war between the radio industry and music labels on the Performance Rate issue hasn't changed the fact that an unknown artist trying to get radio airplay is akin to winning a lottery. Consumers can't hear what's not played. So, consumers are moving in greater numbers to online destinations featuring some great new talent - and some less-than-great.
With YouTube's "Musicians Wanted" being the latest place where artists look for exposure, you can bet that consumers will quickly follow as the YouTube Music pages begin to fill with unknowns.
What's the difference between uploading to YouTube and, say, Clear Channel's "New! Discover & Uncover" Video? Video of musicians being musicians, doing what they do best, playing music they wrote, recorded, and own. YouTube is filled with it. CC's "New!" has new artist audio without video, though Clear Channel offers video at its station web sites. (See comment to 98.1 The Bull below.)
Clear Channel does feature its "Stripped" series of videos, but these are typically by established artists. As with most YouTube content, the unknowns float to the top as pageviews of their music grow. Locating new videos by unknown talent, in any genre of video, is what YouTube is built on.
Here is a quick, very unscientific, view of five radio industry web sites. Because radio groups use the same template for all stations within their group, these examples show how most things are done by radio stations online. Featured are sites from Clear Channel, CBS, Cox, Emmis, and (what I consider to be one of the best radio station web sites) CD101 in Columbus, Ohio. (That last one is owned by Fun With Radio, LLC.)
Do your own search on any of these and try to uncover something that melts the public's insatiable appetite for online video with music.
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101WRIF |
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Emmis |
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Detroit, MI |
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Limited listing - possibly 50 videos in all. Only a small portion are music videos. |
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WMMO-FM |
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Cox Radio, Inc. |
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Orlando, FL |
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Listing Audio/Video in a drop-down menu; if you choose "Video Vault" it comes up empty. |
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98.1 The Bull |
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Clear Channel |
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Lexington, KY |
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Large playlist of videos. Unfortunately, since it's a country radio station, the six videos I started by random selection only produced one country song. |
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KSFM 102.5 |
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CBS Radio |
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Sacramento, CA |
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Looked but only found one link, to a Ludacris video. Definitely not a "new" artist. (PS: Video comes from YouTube.) |
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WWCD CD101 |
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Fun With Radio, LLC |
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Columbus, OH |
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List of videos. I was only able to view one - which was hosted at YouTube - before being greeted by "Server Error in '/' Application." That ended my session. |
Having spent a few minutes at some of the radio web sites above, now glance at what's listed under the "music" category at YouTube. If you want to try a lesser-known independent music site, try MusicDish TV... which also happens to be posted at YouTube. The key, for either of these two services, is depth of content.
As we move farther into consumers searching for online content, the radio industry is turning a new "corner." Your radio station web site will not be a player unless its "player" also shows videos.
Music is becoming a visual experience. We need to ask, "Will the radio industry follow with its online music?"
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