Radio
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Satellite radio company SiriusXM Holdings said on Tuesday (April 4) that Thomas Barry will take over as chief financial officer later this month, according to a company statement.
Barry succeeds Sean Sullivan, who is leaving Sirius on April 28 for an opportunity at another publicly traded company “outside the industry,” according to the statement.
Barry, a 14-year veteran of SiriusXM, takes on the job of head of finances amid a company-wide reorganization that involved eliminating 475 jobs in March, as SiriusXM shifts resources into technology initiatives.
Barry has experience in “organizational transformation,” the company said, having played a key role in the integration of Sirius and XM after its 2008 merger, including as it relates to Pandora and the connected vehicle business. Barry previously served as senior vice president and controller and as chief accounting officer at the company.
“Tom is an experienced leader who has played a key role on SiriusXM’s finance team for the last fourteen years and … (who) has deep insight into our business and SiriusXM’s strategic, operating and financial priorities,” Jennifer Witz, SiriusXM’s chief executive officer said in the statement.
SiriusXM will report its first quarter 20203 financial results on April 27.
BET has joined forces with iHeartMedia to bring over the award-winning radio show The Breakfast Club to its 2023 programming lineup. The famous show from New York’s Power 105.1 FM with personalities DJ Envy and Charlemagne Tha God will air a special televised edition for an hour beginning April 17 at 9 AM EST on BET and VH1, with episodes running Monday through Friday after that. Episodes from the week will be available to stream every Sunday on BET+.
“We’re thrilled to partner with iHeartMedia to bring The Breakfast Club and their unique brand of entertainment and cultural commentary to our audiences,” said BET CEO and president Scott Mills in a statement. “We recognize the show’s influence and popularity, and we are confident that the partnership will be meaningful to our viewers and to our partners. Hosts Charlamagne and DJ Envy are long time members of the BET and Paramount family, so we couldn’t be more excited to welcome The Breakfast Club home to BET.”
Adds iHeartMedia’s president of Entertainment Enterprises, John Sykes: “What began as a daily morning radio show over a decade ago in New York City has now become a cultural beacon across America. This new partnership with BET will expand the radio show’s reach to millions more watching on this iconic television network.
Since Angela Yee departed from the show last December, The Breakfast Club has enlisted celebrity guest co-hosts to occupy her spot, including Ray J, Jason Lee, Nene Leakes, and more. This also marks the BET’s first daily program since 2014 with 106 & Park.
Latto will be taking some lucky listeners on a ride of a lifetime with her new Apple Music 1 show 777 Radio, which will be landing on Apple Music’s global live-streaming radio station Thursday, March 30.
Apple Music announced the “Lottery” MC’s new show on Monday (March 27), who was dressed in the flyest flight attendant outfit and addressing the rest of the passengers (herself) from 30,000 feet in the air. “Welcome aboard 777 Air. I’m Big Latto, and I’ll be your flight attendant today,” she announced over the intercom. “Please make sure to put the BS on airplane mode and leave all your baggage at home. ‘Cause we goin’ outside, baby. Sit back, relax and enjoy the ride.”
Latto
Courtesy Photo
Her “For the Night” collaborator Chloe Bailey will be 777 Radio‘s first guest on Thursday at 11 a.m. PST, when they’ll discuss relationships, body image, comparisons with her sister (and the other half of Chloe x Halle) Halle and more.
“I’m going to keep it very personal and play what I actually listen to,” Latto said in an Apple Music press release. “I’m going to highlight new artists that I feel like the world needs to hear, artists that I think deserve more spotlight. I listen to a lot of female rap, so definitely supporting the girls, and definitely a lot of Southern music.”
The radio show’s title comes from Latto’s sophomore album 777, which she released a year ago on March 25, 2022. The album — which spawned hits like the Billboard Hot 100 No. 3, multi-platinum smash “Big Energy” — peaked at No. 15 on the Billboard 200 and No. 8 on Billboard‘s Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart.
See the trailer for Latto’s 777 Radio Apple Music 1 show below.
Universal Music Group, the country’s biggest record label, has recently taken steps to rein in the costs of radio campaigns, multiple sources tell Billboard. The move comes at a time when there is debate around the music industry about the most effective methods of spending marketing dollars and promoting a record, and traditional outlets — airplay, late-night television appearances, and even prominent playlisting on streaming services — don’t always drive engagement.
As many radio formats focused on new music are struggling, more label executives say it’s an open question whether paying big money for airplay is worth it. “The math is just not working,” according to one major label promotions executive outside of the UMG system.
Record companies have long supplemented their in-house radio departments with help from contractors, known as independent promoters. Working multiple songs in multiple formats across hundreds of stations around the country requires a lot of staff and local relationships. Indie promoters often cultivate those relationships with specific stations by region or format. Some operate on a retainer basis, charging a set amount for the duration of a promotional campaign. Others charge for each add they obtain for a song on station playlists, with costs ranging from a few hundred dollars to several thousand.
When it comes to the latter model, the world’s leading record company wants to limit the cost of adds, according to four veteran promotions executives. A rep for UMG declined to comment.
“It’s common knowledge Universal has drawn back” from spending as much on radio promotion, says Joey Carvello, a veteran who previously worked in-house for major labels and as an independent. “It’s a hot topic,” adds Daniel Glass, founder of Glassnote Records, who notes that Universal’s new approach was “being spoken about everywhere” at an industry event earlier this year in Los Angeles.
Major labels have attempted to limit the cost of radio campaigns multiple times over the years. More than four decades ago, Billboard’s Nov. 8, 1980 issue reported that labels in the Warner Music Group system were looking to “realize as much as $3 [million] to $6 million a year in savings by dropping their outside promotion help.” Today, a label aiming to get to the top of the mainstream R&B/hip-hop airplay chart is going to need to budget more than $100,000, executives say; in some cases, a pop campaign can cost over $300,000.
Past efforts by the majors to curb promotion costs were often undone by the necessity of radio exposure. The key difference nowadays is streaming’s ability to mint major artists with little or no radio play. Take 23-year-old rapper Youngboy Never Broke Again: Only Drake and Taylor Swift earned more streams in 2022, according to Luminate, but Youngboy has only ever cracked Billboard‘s all-genre Radio Songs chart once — as a featured act.
Streaming now accounts for 84% of U.S. music industry revenues, according to the RIAA’s 2022 year-end report. And it’s not always clear, even to the people in radio, that airplay drives more streams.
A 2021 report by the market research company MusicWatch found that streaming and listening on social media accounted for 46% of survey respondents’ weekly listening, while AM/FM radio accounted for 16%. A survey by MIDiA Research last year found that YouTube was the leading source of music discovery. And for the all-important Gen Z, TikTok was in second place.
MusicWatch’s study also indicated that streaming dominated lean-in listening — YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music accounted for 56% of this activity, as compared to 13% for broadcast radio. That’s important because lean-in listeners are likely to be more active fans, who might be inclined to buy tickets or vinyl or sweatshirts from an artist they love.
In this environment, a major-label radio promotion executive complained last year that the cost of airplay may not make economic sense. He recalls needing to spend $3,000 to get a song into rotation in a small city. That airplay would need to drive around a million streams in that area alone “to justify that expense,” he said. The city’s population was less than 150,000 people.
Of course, not everyone in the music industry feels the same. “At the end of the day, radio makes pop stars,” Carvello says. And Midia’s survey found that, outside of Gen Z, radio was the number two source of music discovery after YouTube.
Glassnote — the independent label home to Phoenix and Mumford & Sons — has no plans to change its radio strategy, according to Glass: “Independent promotion has been very important to the growth of Glassnote over the years. We’re not going to change our loyalty.”
It’s telling that one of the most emotional moments during the Country Radio Seminar came when Darius Rucker and Brad Paisley led a large cast of artists in a cover of Prince’s “Purple Rain” at the close of the Universal Music Group Nashville (UMGN) showcase at the Ryman Auditorium on March 14.
Just the day before, Garth Brooks had addressed the divisiveness in modern America and encouraged country broadcasters to use their place at the microphone to bring people together: “Unify. Find common ground. Amplify our similarities instead of our differences.”
In “Purple Rain,” the assemblage demonstrated what that looked like, bridging genres and backgrounds to deliver a song that obliquely embraces connection as the world comes to an end. The arrangement included fiddle and Dobro, a significant cross-format augmentation of a song with anthemic pop/rock qualities. Rucker and Dalton Dover brought Black voices to the performance, notable in a genre that went decades with Charley Pride as its lone African American star. And covering Prince meant that Paisley — who had performed a dark track about opioid addiction less than a half-hour before — was now playing an extended guitar solo on a tune originated by a man who had died of an opioid overdose.
Just as important was the mass of people onstage: Vince Gill, Tyler Hubbard, Parker McCollum, Kassi Ashton, Sam Hunt and Catie Offerman were among those lined up behind the lead voices. And while most of the nation has regained some level of normalcy after the pandemic, every sign of people feeling safe to get together remains heartening.
A year ago, CRS attendees were chided for slow-moving charts and a lack of individuality. The format hasn’t changed significantly since then, though a committee is working to resolve those issues.
Meanwhile, 2023’s three-day conference, based at the Omni Nashville Hotel, found programmers in seemingly better spirits. Some 57% of country listeners believe the music is better than it was just a few years ago, according to a NuVoodoo study. Even 52% of consumers who have been country fans for over 10 years — the kind of listener most likely to complain that current music pales in comparison with the good old days — say the new music is better. Jacobs Media president Fred Jacobs, in a “Fred Talk” titled “The Future Ain’t What It Used To Be,” also noted that 62% of respondents in a 2023 survey cited their appreciation of the on-air talent as a motivating factor for listening to AM/FM. That exceeds the 55% of respondents who cited the music as a contributing factor to their radio consumption.
Stations would be wise, Jacobs suggested, to develop on-air talent that successfully connects with the audience.
As technology becomes ever more dominant in daily life, it appears that interactions with people have greater value. Syndicated Audacy personality Josh “Bru” Brubaker, a Los Angeles-based 26-year-old whose radio background and TikTok skills have built a following in the millions, said in an “Okay Boomer” panel that simply being real goes a long way.
“Vulnerability and relatability has never been more important to our audiences, especially in Gen Z,” he said. “That’s something that we’ve been doing in radio ever since it’s been around, so play on our strengths. I think we overthink a lot of things. But those core things are what Gen Z is looking for. And we can use that to reinvigorate our audiences.”
That word “reinvigorate” is important, given that time spent listening to radio has dropped since the advent of streaming services. Brubaker recalled meeting a young fan who asked him, “What is radio?”
The medium, once dominant in American entertainment, faces a crowded field that includes audio and video streaming, satellite radio and broadcast and cable TV, plus streaming TV services and online games. The future will only grow more complicated.
Automobiles, where radio once dominated, are undergoing significant change. Jacobs showed images of pillar-to-pillar dashboards that manufacturers are designing with more in-car options than ever. FM radio, he noted, will need to up its visual game — taking advantage of logos and other graphic opportunities — to remain appealing to commuters. But AM radio faces a much bleaker future with the accelerating shift toward electric vehicles. The engines create interference problems, and AM is increasingly being booted from car interiors. Jacobs cited Ford specifically, though news site Axios indicated in a March 13 story that eight automakers — including BMW, Mazda, Tesla and Volkswagen — have dropped AM radio from their electric cars.
“After hanging around with automakers for the past 15 years, I don’t think they give a shit,” said Jacobs. “I think they’re going to make whatever they’re going to make, and AM radio is not a part of the future for them.”
One other change that could create structural issues for broadcasters is the adaptation of subscriptions. Detroit is toying with recurring payments, Jacobs said, that would bill owners monthly for heated seats, map updates or driving assistants. And he believes over-the-air radio could become yet another optional service rather than a standard feature.
Country’s future, as always, was on display at CRS. Mackenzie Carpenter infused ultra-Southern phrasing in the hooky “Don’t Mess With Exes” during the Big Machine showcase. Avery Anna fielded a tuneful kiss-off with “Narcissist” on Warner Music Nashville’s lunchtime stage, and Offerman applied a warm, intimate voice to the confessional “I Killed a Man” at the UMGN show.
Programmers were encouraged repeatedly during CRS panels to take risks and “think outside the box.” Much of the industry, it appears, is of a mind to simply make the box larger. The genre’s widening cultural representation and increasing blend of music styles suggest that country and its real-world stories have the potential to fulfill Brooks’ challenge, to become a unifying voice.
Whether that potential is fully realized is a question that can only be answered in that uncertain future.
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You certainly can’t blame even the most confident of artists for feeling a little nervous when performing before hundreds of radio programmers who can control their fate.
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So it was completely understandable that many of the developing acts playing at the 2023 New Faces show, which closed out Country Radio Seminar in Nashville Wednesday night (March 15), expressed jitters.
“I’ll be honest with y’all, I always get a little nervous before a show, but I’m f—ing trembling tonight,” said Stony Creek/BBR act Jelly Roll, who closed the show. This sentiment came from a man who recently sold out Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena. “It’s not often you get to play for the people that changed your life,” he added, expressing largely the same words as his fellow Class of 2023 members.
Like Jelly Roll, Arista’s Nate Smith has already scored a No. 1 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart, but he admitted to butterflies as well. “I’m shaking… I guess I’m alive,” he said. “Thank you country radio for letting me do this for a job.”
Hosted by Nights With Elaina syndicated radio host Elaina Smith, the evening opened with a tribute to Charlie Monk, co-founder of CRS and a 40-time host of the New Faces show, before Stoney Creek/BBR artist Frank Ray took the stage.
The smooth-voiced crooner started with “Country’d Look Good on You,” which the former cop took to No. 17 on Country Airplay in 2022. He multitasked on the next song, the beachy “Tequila Mockingbird,” breaking into Redbone’s 1974 hit “Come and Get Your Love” halfway through, while taking a shot of tequila from the audience. The energetic Ray followed with his new single, out March 20, the kiss-off song “Somebody Else’s Whiskey.” Next came party ode, “Y’all Showed Up,” before he concluded with “Streetlights,” which showed off his Latin roots, as he incorporated salsa dancers on stage and switched from English to Spanish, while adding bits of Luis Fonsi/Justin Bieber’s smash “Despacito” into the lyrics.
Big Machine’s Jackson Dean, who is on the road with Blake Shelton, followed Ray with his own brand of intense, brooding country rock, opening with an extended version of the thumping “Wings,” before segueing into unreleased track “Heavens to Betsy,” which he declared, “this is a damn good one.” His set included current single, “Fearless,” a mid-tempo love ballad (or as close as Dean gets to a love song). “Y’all have changed my life and the life of my band up here,” he said, thanking the radio programmers in the room. “Thank you for changing my life,” he said before he and his tight band broke into his swampy, driving No. 3 Country Airplay hit, “Don’t Come Lookin’”
Mercury/UMG Nashville act Priscilla Block, who is opening for Shania Twain on her spring tour, kicked off her set with “My Bar,” her feisty tune about not letting her ex run her off from her favorite watering hole, which reached No. 26 on the Country Airplay chart. She kept the drinking songs coming with stomping “Off the Deep End.” Discovering her glittery blue guitar was unplugged, she got a big laugh when she told the audience, “If this thing wasn’t a little bit of a shit show, y’all would probably be disappointed.” She found her stride on mid-tempo, twangy “Me Pt. 2,” written after she saw her ex boyfriend with his new girlfriend. She followed with “Just About Over You,” the TikTok viral song that helped her land her major label deal after it soared to No. 1 on iTunes Country Chart in June 2020. “I’ve always believed in myself, I was just waiting for other people to start believing in me,” she said before thanking Mike Dungan, outgoing CEO/chairman of UMG Nashville, for signing her. She finished by shot gunning a beer and throwing the can into the audience.
Smith’s rock leanings showed even before he hit the stage through his opening video that included Guns N’ Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle,” Skrillex’s “Bangarang” and AC/DC’s “Back in Black.” The leather jacket-clad Arista/Sony Nashville artist took the stage with up-tempo track, “Name Stores After,” a tune off his self-titled debut coming April 28. Segueing into an impassioned performance of ballad “Wreckage,” Smith confessed his nerves, but it certainly showed no affect on his vocals, as he launched into the moving “Better Boy,” a recently-released track from the upcoming set before he powered through his recent two-week Country Airplay No. 1 “Whiskey on You,” showing off his considerable vocal power.
The evening ended with Jelly Roll, who took the audience to church with his songs of sin and redemption, storming onto stage screaming, “What’s up, mother f—ers?”
He raised the energy level in the room with the pulsating, “Halfway to Hell,” before moving into his current single, the rocking “Need a Favor,” which includes the trenchant line “I only pray when I ain’t got a prayer.” His January chart-topper “Son of A Sinner,” inspired one of the few singalongs of the night as radio programmers raised their phones in unison to film Jelly Roll, who jumped into the crowd to kiss Tracy Lawrence, who has received the Tom Rivers Humanitarian Award only moments before.
The Stoney Creek artist brought out Brantley Gilbert and Struggle Jennings for the intense-mid tempo propulsive hypnotic “Behind Bars” — as in “most of my friends are behind bars” — one of two songs on his June 2 debut, Whitsett Chapel, with guest features. He closed with “Save Me,” a song that he released a few years ago, but will get a new life on the new album. Singing in his upper register, Jelly Roll, who kicks off a 44-city headlining arena/amphitheater tour in July, pled for someone to save him from himself on the emotional power ballad. His raw authenticity gained him a well-deserved, standing ovation.
The New Faces acts, who are voted on by full-time employees involved in the programming, promotion and distribution of country music, must meet eligibility requirements, which include charting one, but no more than five, top 25 singles on any Mediabase or Luminate country chart.
Past New Faces artists include George Strait, Kathy Mattea, Travis Tritt, LeAnn Rimes, Brad Paisley, Zac Brown Band, Miranda Lambert, Florida Georgia Line, Sam Hunt, Kelsea Ballerini, Luke Combs, Brothers Osborne, Jimmie Allen and Lainey Wilson.
Lady Gaga originally released “Bloody Mary” way back in 2011, but it only cracked the Hot 100 for the first time this January. The revival was due in part to a sped-up remix that careened around TikTok, soundtracking videos of users pairing up the track with an eccentric dance sequence from Wednesday, Netflix’s hit Addams Family update.
The surprise success of “Bloody Mary” in altered form presented Matt Kelly, operations manager and on-air personality for WVAQ in Morgantown, West Virginia, with a dilemma. “What version do we play?” he asks.
“The original is 100 beats per minute — so slow, relative to the new version that people are more familiar with,” he explains. “The sped-up is 130 bpm, but I hated that it sounded like Alvin and the Chipmunks.”
So Kelly split the difference by making his own 120-bpm edit to play on the air. “It appeases the ear like it’s the sped-up version,” he says, “but I kept the pitch correction — so it sounds like Gaga, not Alvin.”
Homemade remixes, often sped-up or slowed-down, have been a hallmark of the TikTok era. In recent months, they’ve helped rejuvenate years-old songs from Lady Gaga and Miguel and driven swarms of listeners to newer releases from Lizzy McAlpine and Raye. In some ways, the music industry has adapted — it’s become common to see artists release official tempo-shifted versions of songs that have started to bubble back up, for example. Streaming platforms, including Spotify and Apple Music, have playlists dedicated to these releases; SiriusXM launched TikTok Radio, which program director Marie Steinbock envisions as “completely reflective of exactly what is trending on TikTok.”
But much remains the same: Even if a sped-up remix is ubiquitous on TikTok, the original version of the track tends to get most of the exposure. There are no sped-up remixes in Today’s Top Hits, the most followed playlist on Spotify, for example. And even when labels decide to promote revived songs to radio, they push the original, so that’s usually what saturates the airwaves. The Weeknd’s “Die For You” topped Billboard’s Radio Songs chart in February, more than six years after its release, with the normal-speed version earned the overwhelming majority of its plays.
Can sped-up renditions thrive in the wild, or do they function primarily within the confines of TikTok? Homemade remixes will only become more prevalent in years to come, thanks to platforms that make it so easy to futz with audio. (Meng Ru Kuok, CEO of music technology company BandLab, is fond of saying that they “think everyone is a creator, including fans.”) In this environment, will the industry continue to prioritize originals?
Right now, the dominant school of thought in the music industry is that the sped-up versions are effective… as a conduit to drive listeners back to the version the artist released. “The sped-up versions are more attached to the medium in which people are consuming them than they are the actual song itself,” one senior label executive says. Listeners “are discovering a song through the sped-up version, but they’re consuming the original.”
And even as more acts put out sped-up and slowed-down reworks, there’s still a sense that the original version remains the truest reflection of artists’ intentions. “That’s their art and their creativity — that’s what they want the world to hear,” says Rich McLaughlin, program director at WFUV and a former executive at Amazon Music. “I’m focused on what the artists want to release to the world. That’s what interests me.”
That said, McLaughlin continues, “From a radio programming perspective, I want to be open to playing songs that our listeners want to hear. If there’s a version of a song that comes out that adds a dimension to the original that’s unique and something that I think our listeners are going to like, of course I would be open to playing that.”
Some radio stations are already experimenting with playing alternate versions. Josh “Bru” Brubaker, a TikToker (4.5 million followers) and radio personality for Audacy, often plays a mix stitching together songs that are trending on TikTok after his Today’s Top 10 countdown. The in-house DJs adjust the tempos to nod to the version that’s being incorporated into short video clips.
Kelly has been evaluating songs for WVAQ on a case-by-case basis. While he sped up “Bloody Mary,” he prefers to play the original version of Raye’s “Escapism,” not the faster rendition popular on TikTok. “I think that one loses some of what makes it a great song when it’s the sped-up version,” he says.
What about Miguel’s “Sure Thing”? Originally a hit for the R&B singer in 2011, it returned to the Hot 100 earlier this year after a sped-up remix took off on TikTok and has now climbed to a new peak of No. 28. “That’s one where I might gravitate towards the sped-up version if we needed it, because listeners are going to recognize that from TikTok,” Kelly says. “I could see making an edit where we can keep the timbre of his voice, what makes Miguel Miguel, but speed it up.”
It’s likely that no one is playing more sped-up remixes on the air than SiriusXM’s TikTok Radio, which launched in 2021. Steinbock currently has around a dozen uptempo reworks in rotation. “This has been my life lately: A song will trend on TikTok, and it’s sped-up,” she says. “And then I have to wait and see if the label is going to put out an official version or not.”
In some situations — she points to Justine Skye’s “Collide” and SZA’s “Kill Bill” — “people are consuming both [versions] at kind of the same rate,” so she can play the original without fear of alienating listeners. But when it came to The Weeknd’s “Die For You” and Mariah Carey’s “It’s a Wrap,” she waited until the artists released official sped-up remixes. “It’s kind of a dance,” she says. “Is the audience going to recognize it when it’s not that TikTok remix?”
The current iteration of remixes — the sped-up and slowed-down versions that can serve as rocket fuel for TikTok trends — is unlikely to be the last one. Ebonie Smith, in-house engineer at Atlantic Records, thinks fan-made remixing is only going to become more sophisticated and widespread in the years to come. Young listeners are “already changing expectations around what is normal to hear,” she says, pointing to the popularity of sped-up songs. But “once young people are able to parse out each element of a song, and that becomes somewhat gamified, we’re going to see remixing like we’ve never seen before.”
Jessica Powell, CEO and co-founder of AudioShake, an A.I. music software company, expresses a similar sentiment. “We’re going to see the same shifts in audio that have happened in video and image,” she explains. “There will continue to be really professional uses of tools like Photoshop, but you also have the other end of it — me turning myself into a fish on Snapchat. That’s all coming to audio.”
If this proves to be the case, it’s likely that streaming services and radio stations will have to change their relationship with tempo-shifted remixes, or whatever else young listeners decide sounds good a few years from now. Steinbock will be ready. She recently made room in her rotation for McAlpine’s “Ceilings,” a love-drunk acoustic ballad. It came out roughly a year ago but exploded recently on TikTok thanks to a high-speed rework.
“We’re playing the normal one just because it’s so big,” she says. But “I’m just waiting for an official sped-up version.”
Garth Brooks put forth a call for unity to radio programmers at Country Radio Seminar during a Monday (March 13) session, asking them to use their platform for good.
“How divided is this nation right now and who on the planet has a single voice to cover this entire nation? You do,” he said, in a session moderated by CRS executive director RJ Curtis. “Think about what you say when you open your mouth on those airwaves. Think about the music you play. Do the people listening to your station feel better about the future than they did [before]?”
He continued with a dire warning if cooler, more unified heads don’t prevail. “You’ve got a big voice. This country needs a big voice spreading the most important thing and that’s love. People, I’m telling you, with the Internet, people, if it keeps going the way it is civil war is waiting for this country again. It will be here before your children grow up,” he said. “Those are real voices behind those real microphones talking to those real people [at radio]. Unify them. Find that common ground. Amplify our similarities instead of our differences.”
He also gave programmers a tough love pep talk as terrestrial radio finds itself competing streaming.
“You guys have convinced yourselves for some reason you are the victim of streaming. You have convinced yourself that your time is coming to an end,” he said. “People, I am promising you radio’s time is not coming to an end. What radio has that streaming will never have is discovery. I can’t ask for anything new on Alexa. Alexa doesn’t know how to play anything new. You guys get to play it all and we get to hear if first through you.”
He then went on to tell an anecdote that flies in the face of the popularity of on-demand listening about turning to terrestrial radio while working on his truck and, as the hours go by, hearing a new song repeatedly that he grows fonder of each time he hears it until it becomes his favorite song. “If I had the option of going ‘next,’ I would never have heard the song. That’s a gift you have. Do not take it lightly,” he said. “You guys will forever be discovery. That’s the coolest part of this business.”
The purpose for Brooks’ appearance was to tout the Garth Brooks “No Fences” Award, which was announced in November and will be handed out at CRS starting in 2024. The award will honor someone in the country music community who has “defied traditional standards and practices, positively changed the face of the industry, and established higher standards for measuring success,” as well as raised country music’s profile on a national level for a sustained duration.
Curtis and Brooks looked back to the superstar’s first visit to CRS in February 1989, when his first single, “Much Too Young (to Feel This Damn Old),” was struggling at radio. Brooks and his team, including managers Bob Doyle and Pam Lewis, roamed the halls greeting programmers and handing out buttons, now collector’s items, with the song title on them.
By the time he returned to CRS a year later in 1990 to debut “Friends in Low Places” at a luncheon, he’d scored four top 10s, including No. 1s with “If Tomorrow Never Comes” and “The Dance.”
While much of the conversation was looking back on those early days, Brooks also gave hints at what is coming up for him, including his new Las Vegas residency at Caesars Palace that begins in May.
While he didn’t give a timetable for when his long awaited bar/entertainment space, Friends in Low Places, would open in Nashville, he said he “owed” Nashville the bar for all the town has given him. He also added, “If there was ever a song that described Lower Broadway…,” to strong audience laughter.
He also alluded to another attraction—“it’s not a museum because I’m not dead”—that will house his archives and will feature interactive exhibits, spanning his entire career. “We’re very fortunate that we own every bit of music that we’ve ever played. We own every frame of footage… we own everything we’ve ever done,” he said. In addition to static displays, he brought up that fans will be able to take photos with his record-breaking seven CMA entertainer of the year awards and with his nine diamond RIAA awards, the most of any artist, for sales of 10 million or more for an album or song. “It’s coming, that’s where the archives live,” he said.
A year ago, Country Radio Seminar (CRS) gave broadcasters a wakeup call.
With the 2023 edition of the conference, it should become clearer if the industry is facing a new day head on or if it simply hit the Snooze button.
Panelists in 2022 lamented a four-year decline in listenership, a drop that overlaps with a system in which singles often take over 40 weeks — sometimes as much as 60 weeks — to run their course. By contrast, labels are increasingly gearing their marketing plans to streaming platforms that expose wider arrays of music and target individuals’ playlists with greater specificity. On the final day last year, Country’s Radio Coach owner/CEO John Shomby gave a TED Talk-style presentation that chided broadcasters for a nagging sameness and called for a committee of radio and music business executives to figure out a reboot.
As Country Radio Broadcasters revs up CRS again March 13-15, that chat continues to echo in the agenda at the Omni Nashville Hotel. Shomby’s CRS Music Committee — which generated 60-70 respondents in its first hour, according to CRB executive director R.J. Curtis — has been segmented into four overlapping subcommittees that will likely make their first reports in an upcoming CRS360 webinar. Meanwhile, the CRS presentations include several topics that address the issues that have brought the format to a crossroads — “Radio & Records: Redefining the Relationship,” “Just Effing Do It: The Rewards of Taking Risks” and “Fred Jacobs’ Fred Talk: The Future Ain’t What It Used To Be.”
“CRS should be a reality-check moment,” Curtis says. “I don’t believe our purpose is to just shake each other’s hands and high-five and congratulate each other on another great year because not every year is great. We’re facing a lot of different challenges, and I think it’s important for us to own them and figure out how to solve them.”
Country music has a long history with radio. March 2022 marked 100 years since Fiddlin’ John Carson became the first hillbilly act to perform on-air, on WSB Atlanta, and Jan. 4 represented a century since country was introduced on the medium west of the Mississippi River, via The Radio Barn Dance on WBAP Dallas-Fort Worth. Still, the genre never had a full-time station until KDAV Lubbock, Texas, debuted in 1953.
Radio ultimately became the primary method of exposing the genre’s new music. It went largely unchallenged in that position until streaming took hold this century. The new medium operates differently — pressing a Skip button allows a streaming listener to skirt individual titles while still listening to the playlist, whereas skipping a song on the radio requires changing stations. To preserve listenership in this era, programmers generally relied on safe measures that had worked previously, cutting the size of playlists and/or hanging on to proven titles for longer periods of time. Those solutions tend to pay off in the short run, but over the long haul, they can discourage extended listening among the most passionate music fans.
“They’re just afraid of making a mistake,” says Shomby of programmers’ dilemma. “It’s like a football team that just hands the ball off to one guy and he runs up the middle, and then you hope that somebody opens up a hole. There’s no [taking chances] — there’s no throwing any long passes, you’re not doing any double reverses or anything like that. You just run left. And that’s kind of the way I feel like our industry is at this point.”
Actionable Insights Group head of research Billy Ray McKim was among the attendees who signed up for the CRS Music Committee last year after Shomby’s presentation.
“Plenty of people talked about it for days and weeks, and I continue to hear people refer back to it,” McKim says. “He managed to tie a bow on it.”
McKim is now overseeing the subcommittee studying the life cycle of songs, generally aiming to speed the march of singles through national radio charts and energize the format. The issue is complex.
“There was this idea that we would spend a year and find a finite solution and move on,” says McKim. “What’s become even more clear through this process is there isn’t a simple solution. So I think that this committee will continue to live and evolve.”
Changing aspects of the industry will get center stage through much of CRS. Digital streaming, for example, has a full day of convention programming. CRS also offers a panel on “expansive inclusion” and an examination of evolving demographics in “Okay Boomer! A Conversation With Gen Z.”
CRS will continue to offer some familiar elements. Garth Brooks and Kenny Chesney will be the focus of keynote artist Q&As, the annual research panel presents insights from a 700-song auditorium test, and the closing New Faces of Country Music dinner will feature Jackson Dean, Priscilla Block, Jelly Roll, Nate Smith and Frank Ray.
That latter event will include recognition of a new wrinkle in the convention. The last of CRS’ founders, Charlie Monk, died Dec. 19, and this will be the first year he is not at the seminar in some form or fashion. New Faces is expected to honor his influence, which is particularly fitting this year. Monk’s ability to process the past and anticipate the future should provide some inspiration for the industry as it moves forward: the “Mayor of Music Row” counted classic singer Frank Sinatra as his favorite artist, but often said his favorite single was whatever was No. 1 that particular week.
“He didn’t get stuck in one particular era, and that’s very evident by the amount of people much, much younger than him that called him a mentor and a friend,” Curtis says. “He sought out younger leaders in our format. He benefited from their knowledge and their way of doing business, and I think it was really impressive.”
Country music’s relationship with radio predates even Monk’s arrival. Programmers’ goal during CRS will be to create some forward movement for a platform that is still regarded as a key means of exposure for even the newest generation of talent.
“I come across a lot of young artists, and they still have that dream to be heard on the radio,” says Shomby. “I mean, it doesn’t get them as excited to have a song playlisted on Spotify as it does to hear their song on their local radio station. So there’s still something there that creates a passion for the format.”
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Polito Vega, the larger-than-life radio personality and longtime programming director of New York City’s WSKQ (Mega 97.9 FM) — the top-rated Spanish-language station in the country — who for decades reigned as the most powerful man in that corner of radio, has died, the station confirmed on Thursday. He was 84.
Vega spent more than 50 years on the air in NYC, earning the moniker “El Rey de la radio” (The King of Radio). He was known as much for his deep booming bass, which anchored numerous popular shows through the years, as for his trademark starched white outfits and baseball cap.
Vega was so well-known in the city that there was an oft-told joke that went like this: Two friends are standing on Fifth Avenue in New York as Polito Vega and the Pope stroll by, talking together. One of them asks, “Who’s that?” The other replies, “I don’t know who the old guy with the white robe is, but he must be important if he’s that friendly with Polito!”
Vega’s importance to Latin music cannot be overstated. He was the most influential tastemaker in the country’s top market dating back to when tropical music first became popular in the city in the 1960s and 1970s and stretching all the way to the 21st century.
“The architect of Hispanic radio at a global level,” wrote DJ Alex Sensation on his Instagram feed.
In 2009, Vega celebrated 50 years on the air with two shows at Madison Square Garden featuring performances by a group of A-list talents – Enrique Iglesias, Laura Pausini and Luis Fonsi, among many others. The shows were meant to signal his imminent retirement.
Three years later, in 2012, he celebrated 53 years on the air with “El Megatón Mundial de Polito Vega” (The Polito Vega World Megathon), a show at Citi Field in Queens featuring performances by Gloria Estefan, Don Omar, Alejandro Sanz, Juanes, Ricardo Arjona, Daddy Yankee, Paulina Rubio and Tito “El Bambino,” among others.
“I’ve only done radio in New York; I belong to the city,” he told Billboard at the time. “I go out on the street and people go crazy saying ‘Polito, Polito, Polito.’ I still have the same enthusiasm I had at the beginning; the same positive attitude in front of a microphone.”
Born in Hipólito Vega Torres, Puerto Rico, Vega came to the Big Apple harboring more artistic ambitions. He wanted to become a singer, but instead found his calling behind the microphone inside a radio booth rather than on stage. It was the early 1960s, and in NYC and around the country, Spanish-language radio was a fledgling business where broadcasts mostly lived part-time on AM stations. Vega’s first job was as a DJ on a half-hour show called “Fiesta Time,” which aired on the now-defunct WEVD-AM.
“The radio station was part time, but they decided to program 24 hours and they gave me a shift that went from midnight to 6 a.m. I felt I was in heaven,” he said. “The show was so successful and I felt that liberty to express myself that I’ve maintained to this day.”
Vega eventually landed at WBNX, where he met the senior program director Raúl Alarcón. It was the beginning of what would be a life-changing relationship. Alarcón, who’d had radio stations in Cuba before fleeing after the revolution and had big ambitions of his own, would soon acquire his first station in the U.S., launching what would become SBS. Forty years ago, he hired Vega, who never left.
As for Vega, he developed his signature voice and a reputation for defending the music he was passionate about. Vega was the first to play a record by a Fania artist on the radio, the first to play bachata, the first to play reggaetón.
“I grew up listening to Polito,” Prince Royce told Billboard a decade ago. “He was one of the first to support my music, and the first time I heard one of my songs on the air it was on his show.”
“He has that rare and unique combination of personal assets and experiences that make him a veritable expert where Latin music is concerned,” remarked SBS president and CEO Raúl Alarcón, who took over the business his father founded. “He has seen – and heard – it all, and he retains an uncanny ability to judge what’s good and what’s lacking, despite the constant change in musical trends and the whims of an extremely fickle public. He has a golden ear that can’t be fooled and he is as unfailingly relevant today as he was 50 years ago.”