But How Relevant Is Radio Music?

“On the radio, I love the music, on the radio,” Midwest rockers Cheap Trick sang on their seminal 1978 album “Heaven Tonight.” But in 2007 could the same sentiment be expressed? “On the computer, I love the music, on the computer,” doesn’t have the same ring but reflects the realities of how music is discovered and consumed in the 21st Century. For decades commercial stations held a monopoly on breaking in new artists and songs and then the Internet came along and brought about changes the music industry still hasn’t recovered from. Radio professionals, performers and industry experts can’t agree on the degree to which radio still matters for introducing new artists and new music to an audience. In the pro column is Power 106 music director and assistant program director Eman Coquia who points to his Burbank-based station as behind the national hits of Sean Kingston (“Beautiful Girls”) and Yung Berg (“Sexy Lady”) Valley area musician Willie Wisely plants himself in the con column. Referrals are his preferred way to spread the word about new music. “A buzz is still much better than radio play,” Wisely said. Los Angeles has a great history of music stations: KMET and its pioneering progressive rock format; KHJ and its “Boss” radio Top 40 format of the 1960s; deejay Rodney Bingenheimer and his single handedly bringing punk and New Wave to the West Coast. As FM stations came to dominance with superior sound, the AM stations dropped music and switched to primarily talk and news formats. Today, the FM dial is predominantly music, with the noted exception of KLSX and its Free FM talk format. As formats came and went and station call letters were switched around, listener tastes splintered, and then splintered again. As formerly independent stations were consolidated into large media corporations playlists lost a local flavor and the tastes of the on-air talent became less of a factor. The advent of the Internet was a serious blow to formidable power that radio had in breaking new music. “When you look at what it was 10, 15, 20 years ago it’s like a lot of other media in that it’s taking a hit from new media,” said Mark Nardone, senior editor of Music Connection magazine, based in Encino. Special place While there are now multiple ways to access music, radio still has a special place in the heart of the music fan. In 2006, with the exception of oldies and rock formats, all music formats showed ad revenue growth on a national basis. Adult contemporary and contemporary hit radio went up 3 percent. The urban format went up 9 percent. The two fastest growing music formats were Spanish adult contemporary (33 percent) and Spanish contemporary (18 percent). “What appeals to people is the immediacy of it,” said George Nadel Rivin, an accountant with Miller Kaplan & Arase who has made a specialty of tracking data for the broadcasting industry. “When I have the same several songs on an iPod I am always looking for new music and something I can get excited about that is fresh and new.” iPods. MP3 players. Laptops. Satellite radio. All cut into the listening time of commercial radio. In the 1996 film “That Thing You Do” the members of the fictional band The Wonders jump about with youthful enthusiasm with the first radio airplay of their song. If director Tom Hanks set that scene in 2007, the band members would more likely jump with joy at their 1000th download or 100th friend at their MySpace page. “Anyone with a computer is not favoring terrestrial radio these days,” Wisely said. Doing both Except those in terrestrial radio are also those on the computer. Power 106’s Coquia tracks popular songs at iTunes, YouTube, MySpace and Big Champagne, a site that measures music downloads at peer-to-peer sites. But in the case of Yung Berg and “Sexy Lady” none of the technology was necessary. Berg got his record to two Power 106 deejays who in turn passed it to Coquia. “The radio station got behind it and the next thing you know that became a Top Ten record across the country,” Coquia said. “We are still influential in regards to the music that we play and break.” Even though placing sixth out of the Top Ten in the most recent Arbitron ratings, Power 106 is a niche station. Fragmented musical tastes that stations program for bar a return of the general mass audience stations of a generation or two ago. But singer Wisely likes what he called the “nichification” of music. So does Music Connection’s Nardone. And both see radio as being just one way among many to get new music heard. “Radio is going through bumpy roads and they are going to have to navigate a little better to maintain their clout as a breaker of music,” Nardone said.