Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] RIAA Hardball

[Jonathan King <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Thu, 4 Dec 2003, Mike Miller wrote:

> A big problem though is that the RIAA people play a big role in
> determining what gets airplay.  Not only do people listen to what
> they enjoy, but people learn to enjoy what they've been hearing.  
> So the RIAA is manipulating people's tastes by controlling radio
> airplay.

OK, what music gets promoted heavily certainly isn't up to the RIAA
(which is a trade organization) but to individual record companies.  
And, as it turns out, not by any means entirely to them.  Massive
radio station chains (e.g., "Clear Channel") program their music to
maximize advertising dollars, and have made the cold hard
calculation for each market segment to go only with the first
principal component of who spends the money.  For many possible
music markets and formats, that FPC turns out to be depressing.  
For pop/Top-40 places, that would be teenagers and especially teen
age girls.  Hello, 'NSync.  For stations targeting adults, that FPC
turns out to be women between the ages of 25 and 35 who do 80% of
the household purchasing.  Hello, vapid country/pop/whatever.  To 
capture the male market segment, that turns out to be news/talk 
radio and not music at all.  Or, if it is music, that would be more 
vapid country and/or really dorky "classic rock".  Moreover, most 
radio listening these days happens in cars or trucks, so the music 
has to be the kind that sounds good on marginal stereos with lots of 
wind noise...

> (Amazingly, the "you like what you've been hearing" effect can be
> demonstrated in rats -- they even prefer unfamiliar music by
> familiar composers to unfamiliar music by unfamilar composers!  
> Robert Zajonc did these studies of "familiarity and liking" back
> in the '60s and '70s.)

Right, so what the station does is choose the "unobjectionable"  
favorite genre/sound for the FPC of the market in question, and just
run with that.  Record companies buy into this model of
boring/predictable music to feed the radio stations.  Interestingly, 
it also helps them in another way: what act actually performs the 
vapidity doesn't matter much as long as it sounds a lot like 
whatever else is out there.  

So say you've got an artist signed who produces an album under their
contract that you think is too large a departure from what they did
before.  What do you do?  Sell the new sound or drop them?  Yup, you
drop them.  Of course, every once in a while that band was "Wilco"
and the album was "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot"  and it does probably sell
well enough on its own, but that's okay: just stiff them at 
the Grammies or something. :-)

jking



_______________________________________________
discussion mailing list
EMAIL:PROTECTED
http://mlug.missouri.edu/mailman/listinfo/discussion