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AG News:
Wednesday - 9/1/2010
How Long Does It Take to Be Forgotten?
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The headline to this story may be used in a variety of settings within the radio industry. It pertains to an air talent leaving, a song being dropped from the playlist, a station seeing its numbers go down, or a well-known industry exec being relieved of his position. In all cases "out of sight is out of mind."
When you're out of someone's mind, how long is it before you (or your brand) becomes a has-been? When there's no continued exposure, how many weeks does it take before the masses move on? There's a variable called "popularity," which gives very few a little longer run, but I'll offer that it's a matter of weeks before those who've grown used to being in the public's eye disappear off everyone's radar.
These points are made because of two issues facing the radio industry today - a performance royalty, and a slow listener migration to alternative audio platforms found online. The latter is a long-term problem with a short solution; radio needs to better position itself on search engines if it wishes to be where people are looking for online's "new" radio. Fighting for a chip in cell phones is not a winnable approach. Enhancing the audio stream of a station's web site is good for now, as long as a person finds your station at the top of a search engine's returns.
In a vast majority of cases, radio stations are not highly ranked for search terms like "country radio stations" (as an example), leaving on-air promotion of your station's web site (and stream) as the only method for people to find it. Considering that the percentage of on-air listeners likely to tune into your online programming is small, online visits depend on multiple ways of promoting your web site.
The number of people looking for radio stations online is growing, making positioning on search engines more important. Between July and August there has been a 9.1% increase in visitors and an 8.6% increase in pages viewed at Audio Graphics' RadioRow. (This shows that more people are looking for online radio stations, and they are looking harder once arriving at this web site.)
Searching for stations via "mobile device" at RadioRow is up 114.3% since January 2010. But, as of August, mobile represents only 2.8% of all visits to RadioRow. (Listening to radio stations through "mobile audio devices" rose 10.4% between July and August 2010 at RadioRow.)
If you are banking on your over-the-air programming and advertising revenue to carry your station through the next few years, then do nothing.
If you see that expanding both audience and revenue sources is the future, you cannot ignore the importance of improving your station's search engine ranking.
Concerning the other option refered to in "How Long Does It Take to Be Forgotten," let's spend a few paragraphs on music - particularly the radio industry's claim of promoting artists. Stop the play of many songs linked to performance royalty by introducing more new artists who sign waivers, and you'll see how it will only be a matter of weeks before the audience forgets the old and starts loving the new.
I've been a believer in by-passing the record labels' demands for over a decade - establishing a system where artists may request airplay by signing a waiver of performance royalties. My mistake, early on, was in thinking you could do this on a much grander scale - as in building an entire playlist of unknown artists.
Through years of research, and months of building a waiver-supported system for internet radio, I now believe it possible that the radio industry could introduce new musicians while offering the public a few of the established acts that draw. New musicians will quickly become the "established" acts, and the draw. This approach won't work in an oldies format, but it could in a variety of other music-formatted radio stations like country, urban, pop, and rock.
A radio industry-backed waiver system designed to solicit artists for airplay in exchange for exposure is possible. I do it on a small scale for internet radio at RRadioMusic.com, and with our new "Intro to Indie Artists" program series, which now airs 81 programs on 38 online stations (with no promotion). (Here's how it's positioned to musicians.)
There is no shortage of good music. There is also no shortage of quality musicians who are willing to sign waivers for airing songs on your station.
Introduce this concept to the broadcast radio industry and watch how quickly the record labels begin showing a willingness to negotiate terms more favorable to radio.
Out of sight, out of mind, also works well with sound.
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