|
AG News:
Wednesday - 7/7/2010
Music Distribution - Shifting Power to Indie Artists
|
|
Not sure if you saw the headline at Reuters, "Google, Bing search engines turn to music." It's another signpost on the road to self-marketing by independent artists and smaller labels. To the radio industry it's one more chance for change if it hopes to recapture the spotlight as a vehicle for introducing new music.
Read what's posted at many radio industry trade magazine web sites and you'll see reports on radio still being the leading source for discovering new music. Dive into the online world, though, and you'll find nary a mention of radio being where youth go to find tomorrow's stars. Visit Facebook, and you can follow suggestion after suggestion of unknown acts as their names are written on a "friend's" wall. There is an obvious disconnect between what the radio and online worlds show as the way people find their music.
This business of introducing quality musicians - and it is a business - is in upheaval. Apple, Google and MSN are all moving to fill the void as they expand their systems to brand themselves online destinations for music new and old. What is happening with the radio industry relative to fans finding new music? Not much. Clear Channel is the only radio group actively pushing a roster of new acts, but it's doing it with scant mentions (as a low priority part of its business).
Radio is faced with the possibility of paying a performance royalty. Its response has been to tell the audience there may be less music in the future on broadcast stations unless the audience acts to stop the "injustice." The audience is going to buy into this concept with as much vigor as it bought the message "HD Radio, the Stations between the Stations." (There will be a performance rate levied on the radio industry. It may not come this year, but it is coming.) Point is, do radio executives really believe that telling the audience there's a chance the industry will deliver less music in the future is a healthy approach at a time when music venues are everywhere online?
Visit the Facebook pages of radio stations listed here. See how many times you are told of new artists that a station isn't playing on air. Wonder why these radio stations aren't using Facebook as a way to give their "fans" something unique, music that they cannot get anywhere else? Try something easier; go to your own station web site and see if there are any links to music made by independent artists. The radio industry is missing opportunities both ways.
Apple, Google and Bing know the value of leading people to music. None does it in a "program," where the audience has to wade through multiple well-known songs to hear new music that generates excitement. Instead, introducing a single song gives reason for a visitor to forward the indie act to another person, with a note that they found it at "X" radio station's web site.
The way music reaches the public has changed. The way radio uses music as a means to draw audience has not, unless you consider tighter playlists and less information about the music you hear on a station.
The power to distribute music is shifting to the bands themselves. Though it's not a landslide shift yet, in the next few years you will see movement that places greater emphasis on a band using a growing number of independent artist web sites. It's common knowledge in the indie community that the chance of getting airplay on a broadcast radio station is nil to none.
Start embracing the act of introducing new music at your station. Growing numbers of fans are forcing independent musicians to do it on their own through the use of Apple, Google, and Bing.
Two years from now you don't want to read how the radio industry didn't see this coming - as radio industry trades explain a continuing downward shift in audience.
|
Share:
|
|
|
Comments may be published.
About
Contact
Indie Artists
Radio Stations
Audience Data
Privacy
|
|
|
|
