Does Urban Radio Have A Responsibility To Develop Artists?

Where Does The Buck Really Stop?

One of the most-often heard complaints from label executives is that Urban radio no longer has the patience nor a commitment to develop new artists. Radio, on the hand, says while they understand record labels' plight, their focus is on building audience. Radio is saying they still like the old-school approach, developing acts through grassroots marketing.

Independent labels' response to that is that they simply don't have the time or staff to let artists develop before going for adds at radio. "We want to deliver something that's going to generate a response, something that's going to be part of an ongoing story as opposed to just a single on the radio by an artist who happened to have one good song," says a major SVP/Promotion. "We could depend on radio to break the act from the get-go, but we feel better about coming to radio when we can prove that there's something real happening with the artist."

Even for the format's most musically adventurous and artist-friendly programmers, the feeling is that there isn't a manager or VP/Programming who tells their programmers to develop artists so that they can have great ratings a year or two from now.

Once, when Urban and Urban AC became formats from which other formats cherry-picked artists, you didn't really have the time to develop an artist. The artists left behind were almost, by definition, not going to be mass-appeal artists. So having a station or a group of stations that recognize the need for artist development, now that Urban formats have become mass-appeal has become a real challenge.

We spoke to a major-market East Coast programmer who said, it's unfair to say that Urban programmers aren't developing artists today because we do break new artists. The PD's job is to get and keep ratings and to do it any way possible. Generally, that means playing the best available jams. As an offshoot, you would prefer to have artists develop so that you have artists you own."

We also spoke to a well-respected, senior label executive who expressed his feelings this way. "More than ever, I have confidence that while Urban-formatted stations may not always want to be the first one out of the box on a new record, they will give artists that have had successful first singles a second chance. I think the concept developed from major-market stations that were playing disposable one-hit wonder tracks and realizing their ratings weren't growing. They needed to find new artists and grow with them.

"Part of this also stemmed from PDs anticipating that some of the major releases would carry them, but those releases came and went so quickly, the big artists suddenly didn't feel so big. So now they seem to be trying to grow with artists and find their own, and staying just one step ahead of the other stations." Another promotion exec said that the biggest obstacle labels face today is callout research. He said, "I think it's a cop-out."

Is There Too Much Reliance On Testing?

Assessing whether an average record can test well if played enough, most Urban programmers we spoke with said "No." They feel an average-sounding record won't earn better test scores the more it's played. The first indication you get when you hear a new song comes from the gut. It's not always the same feeling listeners have and occasionally, our professionally trained programming ears will be wrong. What happens when an average record gets lots of airplay? Listeners scratch their heads, wonder why and switch stations, especially if the record is not set up properly. A song that listeners like and one that receives heavy airplay stands a better chance of sticking and scoring. But the purchasing decision is still stimulated by two things: awareness and appeal.

Today, Urban radio is still letting go of some songs that they think, or their research has shown, are no longer relevant or hip with their P1s. That's something that happens a lot once they cross over. Once listeners who are P1s to the format start hearing those songs on "their little sister's or brother's station," they quickly change their opinions of it.

Who influences these opinions? When certain programmers go on a record, we've noticed it getting added in other cities by stations owned by the same company. Now, each station isn't playing the song exactly the same number of times. Yet we have noticed that when the PD at the flagship station pops something in, the rest of the stations tend to follow. We love when that happens, but if the programmer rejects that record, you're in trouble.

Just because an artist gets picked up by multiple formats doesn't mean that we should stop playing it in drive time. After all, isn't that what we want? As a business we may be over-thinking this issue because of the complaints of a very vocal few in the audience. Not that we don't care about those vocal few. We do, but we're in a mainstream business, which means we have to cater to the desires of the majority.

If it's an artist you consider still important to your audience and the format, you should support it. But it's also important that the artist(s), their management, and labels know that imaging the artist with the station will be necessary for the station to consider treating them as core artists instead of song-to-song.

Consumer Spending, Marketing & Syndication

Despite the economy, what is also emerging in 2009 are statistics that show the tremendous buying power that exists in the estimated $300-billion consumer market created by African-Americans. The total black population has increased at twice the rate of the majority population in the last decade. Projections for population growth by the end of this decade show increases to at least 35 million consumers. Spendable income should grow at the same pace to exceed the $300 billion now available to advertisers, including record and CD purchasers.

The size of today's African-American population coupled with the propensity of blacks to spend a disproportionate share of their disposable income on music, continue to make marketing to African-Americans essential to the record industry.

With so many Urban and Urban AC stations today airing syndicated morning and afternoon shows, there is little time for a station to give daytime spins to a new artist they believe in. If medium rotation is down to one or two plays a day, then who knows what light is. In many cases, you can take a new artist top five and it means little until another format comes to the party.

The other problem is the Urban AC format itself. In the past Urban Adult stations used gold and recurrent songs as flavoring, but now these two categories tend to be the preponderance of what they air.

The smart thing to do going forward is combine all these elements and then leverage what the audience remembers best. Artists are remembered for their hits. A hit is remembered for its hook and a station is remembered for its "audio snapshots." So being consistently good is really a lot less important than being occasionally great.

There are many things that affect the state of the industry in general and Urban formats in particular. Some say today's audience isn't listening they way it used to; that it's merely practicing. Indeed, "audience" is an antique a term as "record". One is archaically passive, the other archaically physical.

In 2009, an endless recombinant and fundamentally social process generates countless hours of creative product. To say that the way to get some long play is to have a strong rap is simply not true. Radio decision-makers are busier now than ever. Even the ones who want to return phone calls often can't. But usually the first ones to get returned are those who come from label people who know the station and who do their homework before they call. Those who say that this is unfair, that they're busy, too, don't realize that this attitude poses a threat to the record industry, or they really don't understand today's radio. That's because the technology has changed and the record industry has become the characteristic pivot of the turn of our two worlds.

We seldom legislate new technologies into being. They emerge and we plunge with them into whatever vortices of change they generate. We legislate after the fact, in a perpetual game of catch-up, as best we can, while our new technologies redefine us as surely and perhaps as often as the formats themselves have been redefined.

Finally, what we need is more honesty in both formats and a better understanding of number jumps. When station moves a jam up, the number of plays generally increases as its popularity builds. Label execs need to understand that the size of the jump and chart location influences how people judge the move. A record in the bottom 20 that moves sideways is usually marked for an early death. But a sideways move in the top 15 or top 10 doesn't necessarily mean the record is over. It may simply mean the station is adjusting for balance. Also, when the station is not playing a record, it's flat-out lying to report a record that's not being played.

Honesty cuts both ways. Labels have to figure out that, just like radio, a job worth doing is worth doing well. So even if the project requires more heavy lifting that you'd originally intended, roll up your sleeves. You might just get the benefit of the doubt on add day.

Word.