At Al Gore’s Live Earth concert, John Mayer would take the stage with the Police for a performance of “Message in a Bottle”. I think Mayer’s presence on stage was significant because it was bridging the “new generation” with the old. Mayer is clearly considered a superstar in the making while the Police have solidifed Hall of Fame status. Yet the interesting thing is nobody paid attention. Live Earth’s ratings were down from previous “Live X” concerts and not a big deal was made about this.
I think this story being overlooked is representative of the music industry as a whole. As well-documented, the music industry is in decline. CD sales are down, satellite radio is challenging free radio’s reign, etc. Why is this happening? And what hope does the future hold? In this multi-part series, the L.A. Scene hopes to answer some of these questions and more.
The Heart of Rock and Roll
I think to look at the problem, you have to examine root causes. Popularity of “pop” music (for the purposes of this essay – anything that is Top 40, Classic Rock, Dance, and Adult Contemporary) goes back to radio. Radio stations have traditionally served as “infomericals” for musicians. It is a chance for musicians to get their recordings played. If the public likes it, they go and buy it. The system goes back to the late 1950s and early 1960s (you can be the judge of when exactly).
At the core of any infomercial, you need a knowledgeable host. Someone who can explain the product to you. On the radio that role was filled by the “Disc Jockey”. In the ideal sense, the “Disc Jockey” would be the one to find the product, physically play the record, and talk about the product.
While the system seemed good conceptually, ideally it really wasn’t the case. Economics soon played a role in this system. Record companies saw the radio stations as a mechanism to get their artists played, thus they began to have more of a sphere of influence on what got played. They would release “singles” hoping they would translate into “hits”. Now big business was getting more control of what was being played on the radio.
The role of the Disc Jockey adjusted to this system and there was still the great knowledge presented by the Disc Jockey. The Disc Jockey could serve as a teacher and one who could articulate the product to the general public. Ok, he wasn’t picking the records. Now it was the Record Company releasing records in conjunction with a Program Director who form the station’s playlist and decide how often to play music. In the 1960s, classic Disc Jockeys like Scott Muni and Dan Ingram could fill this mentoring role – and they filled it well.
Pop radio stations continued to be on the rise into the 1970s, but what happened is that they were competing with each other. Each of these radio stations had the knowledgeable host who could be that teacher. However with the Record Companies releasing the singles, the radio stations had the same product being played – over and over again. Repetition of songs soon became the play. Therefore radio stations began to specialize – there were now Rock Stations, Oldies Stations, Disco Stations, and more – in addition to your conventional Pop Stations. This would provide different avenues for the audience. While specialization was good, the competitive factors did not go away. In the larger markets a specialty would compete against another specialty – Rock Station against Rock Station, Pop Station against Pop Station, Disco vs. Pop – it didn’t matter. At the helm, the Disc Jockey still did his job.
The 1970s saw Radio Hosts looking for something extra – to distinguish one from the other. Thus the entertainment factor came into play. Now the DJ didn’t just have to possess the knowledge, but he had to take on a life of his own. The Dan Ingrahams and the Ron Lundy’s had personality and knowledge, but just didn’t have the extra edge. The 1970s saw the rise of hosts like Don Imus – who actually played records in the 1970s, but Imus didn’t have the deep knowledge base of a Muni or Ingram or Lundy.
The 1970s also saw automobile stereo equipment improve. Better speakers and better units. More people were now listening to radio in their cars. Now it became important to reach the audience in the all important morning and drive-time hours – when people were in cars driving to work or school. Thus “Drive Time” radio took off. It now became key to put your best host on these hours. Now the competition took off even more so.
Note: The above picture is of Dan Ingram (L) and Ron Lundy (R) and is courtesy of http://www.musicradio77.com. That is a must check out site for NYC Radio Fans.
Zoo Radio
The rise of pop radio was predicated around “Drive Time Radio” – i.e. the time that people were in their cars. Radio programmers soon discovered this way as the way to reach the most people – in their cars driving to work and school. As the 1970s approached, car stereo equipment began to get better. With the birth of 8-Tracks, people could now have an alternative to listening to the radio. They could now bring their own music into the car – and switch off the radio if they so chose to do so. However, 8-Tracks weren’t the most flexible format and the people who tended to use 8-Tracks on a regular basis as apposed to listening to the radio tended to be the serious music fans.
As the 80s approached, Cassettes replaced 8-Tracks as the format for bringing your own music into the car. Not only was the cassette a more flexible and portable format, but people could become “self disc jockeys” by putting together their own compilations. This allowed more people to bring music into their cars. While it still didn’t replace radio as the primary listening mechanism, it did make more of a dent on things.
The disc jockeys continued to do what they do best. The Scott Munis and Dan Ingrams were the teachers of the music industry. Now the Don Imus’ were on the rise and soon were adding the entertainment value. Entertainment became a form that not only was necessary on the competitive radio landscape, but now was something necessary to combat the new challenge of one being a “self Disc Jockeys” – i.e. listening to one’s own music.
In 1983, the Disc Jockey landscape would change forever out of New York City. A couple of years earlier, WABC radio – a mainstay in New York had shut down its music format and gone to an all-talk station as a result of the competitive landscape. WNBC had surpassed WABC as the number one radio station in New York, but their emphasis had moved away from music and was also going more toward entertainment (Don Imus was at WNBC. By this time Howard Stern had joined WNBC and even he played records). There was a huge void in the New York music landscape. There was a desperate need to fill the void.
We must remember that 1983 was considered a landmark year in the music industry. Don Dempsey, who ran Epic Records was largely responsible for the huge marketing campaign around Michael Jackson. From a bread and butter standpoint, one must remember that the record companies still viewed radio stations as a promotional vehicle for the record companies. New York desperately needed a pop station to fill the format.
With FM providing the better quality of music, FM was where the music would now be heading. There were plenty of FM Stations. WKTU was one of the “specialty” radio stations focusing on Disco and Dance. There were also plenty of small “niche” radio stations. WVNJ 100.3 focused on Easy Listening and Jazz for many years. With declining ratings, WVNJ was sold to new owners who decided on a format change. The idea was to become a “Hit Radio” station and start to fill the void left by WABC. On August 1, 1983, the sale of WVNJ became final. As part of the sale, WVNJ would move to a more powerful transmitter to support the format change. The night following the sale, the format change occurred. WVNJ became WHTZ or Z100.
However, more important than the format change would be the arrival of a new program director – one Michael Scott Shannon – aka Scott Shannon. Shannon would also become the morning Disc Jockey. Shannon’s arrival would mark the beginning of his morning show – the Z-Morning Zoo. Many had considered Shannon the architect of the “Zoo format”. This was a format he had architected while in Cleveland. The idea of this was full-scale morning entertainment while still playing plenty of music (as opposed to WNBC which had moved away from doing that). While they would play music, but also do skits and plenty of gags. It was described as a combination of “The Tonight Show”, “Saturday Night Live”, and “Talk Radio” format. Shannon was known as the “Head Zookeeper”, but it involved so much more. Shannon would utilize a whole team. He would bring in a co-host Ross Brittian (a WABC alumni). He had a traffic reporter, a news anchor, producers, and comedians and would play a role on the show. Characters such as “Mr Leonard”, “Captain Kevin”, “Anita Bonita”, and “Coach Mike” were an integral part of the Zoo’s success. Shannon was hailed as a genius as Z100 instantly catapulted to the top of the ratings. The morning show would also fulfill its role as a springboard for the day’s programming.
While there were variations of the zoo format, none had ever had the scale or marketing as Z100’s Z-Morning Zoo. The amazing thing is that it worked. Z100 – combined with a big year in music proved to be a successful format. Targeting morning radio, now people had something else to listen to besides either bringing one’s own music or listening to the same old stuff. It wasn’t long before other “Zoo format” radio stations would evolve. In fact Ross Brittain would leave Z100 to go form his own “Zoo” in Philadelphia.
The zoo format put less dependency on the Disc Jockey fulfilling the role as teacher of the music and more dependency on the entertainment portion. Shannon was very successful because he was able to pull off both sides of the equation. However, it soon became clear that for one to be successful pulling off this format, one had to be the entertainer. This was not a role that could be filled by a teacher like Scott Muni or Dan Ingram. In the meantime, actors soon discovered this could be a way to find work. Jay Thomas was a “B List” actor who had found a home at WKTU in New York. He would flourish under this new format in radio and be one example of someone who would find great success.
While in the mid-1980s, the rise of the zoo format would have great success and initially help the music industry, there would be long term effects of this that would ultimately contribute to the music industry’s decline. In Part 3, we will examine that.
In the Air Tonight
Meanwhile, the Singles industry has played a key role in the Music Industry. Artists released albums, but the way to promote the album was to release “singles” of the album. The record companies would decide what singles from an album would be released. These singles would then be played on the radio. In turn, this could generate sales of a “45 single” on record, or better yet serve as a springboard to buy the whole album.
The key to the Record industry was to “generate the hit”. The more “hits”, the more sales. Therefore it became important for radio stations to play the music. In the 1960s and 1970s, “45 singles” sold well – however this declined in the 1980s with the mediums of Cassette and eventually CD. Having more portable mediums such as Cassette and CD made sense to the consumers to purchase the album on these formats. Record companies became more dependent on the album format, which ultimately was good for the music industry.
Record companies looked to a barometer to determine success of a single that was released. This gave rise to the “Music Charts” as a methodology to determine what was the most successful single – a.k.a, the number one single. Several publications would release charts to determine this rating, but ultimately it was “Billboard Magazine” that became the industry standard. Now Record companies had another promotional medium. By achieving success on the Billboard Charts, this could serve as a way to further promote the Single that was released.
In the early days, Billboard used a system that combined Sales and Airplay for Singles. Airplay meant how much the song was played over the Radio airwaves. Billboard would collect samplings from the radio stations to determine those statistics. Although from Billboard’s standpoint they were equally important components, the Record Companies could look at it a different way – get more Airplay and that will in turn generate sales.
There was another important catch – originally (until the late 1990s) Billboard only charted singles that were officially “released” by the record companies.
Now the goal of the Record Companies would be to work with radio station Program Directors to help them make sure songs were played on the radio. Obviously the more the song was played, the more it would generate a rating. As radio entered the 1980s, the transformation into “Entertainment” was happening. But the “Hit Radio Stations” such as Z100 had not abandoned playing music. They were working with the Record Companies who wanted to see records promoted on these ratings giants. They would support the stations by offering up promotions (tickets, in-studio appearances, etc). In return the stations would hopefully play more.
The Disc Jockeys and Program Directors now had a challenge to find a way to play more music in less time. After all, drive-time radio was now being consumed by more skits and entertainment. In the past, radio stations had always frowned on longer tracks (4+ minutes), because it meant they would play less music per hour. Soon the radio stations came up with “Music Marathons” – playing more interrupted music over a single point of time without commercial interruption. The idea was then to bunch the commercials up at a single point of time.
Now with mediums such as Cassette and CD, they allowed more music to be stored on a single medium. As a result artists were creating longer tracks. This presented a challenge to the record companies would wanted to make sure the radio stations would give them the necessary airplay. Therefore the concept of “Radio Edits” soon emerged. This would involve cutting parts of a song out – thus shortening the song. A prime example was Dire Straits, 1985 hit “Money For Nothing” that was an 8+ minute track. In order to get radio stations to play it, the record company released an edited version that clocked in at just over 4 minutes.
Radio Stations loved it. However the Record companies were alienating the core music fans. First the Disc Jockeys were not providing the perspective on the music industry they once were, now the actual radio stations were overplaying the same songs and cutting out parts.
Did Video Kill the Radio Star? Or was it one Artist?
On August 1, 1981 a network was launched that would have a major effect on the music industry – MTV. MTV has always been littered with controversy – and even in the early days, it was no exception.
MTV’s sole purpose was to broadcast music videos. MTV didn’t invent the music video. Music Videos had been around for many years. They served as another promotional mechanism for artists to publicize their songs. Most of the pre-MTV videos were lip sync’d pseudo performances and pretty simple in nature. The advent of MTV provided a new outlet for the Record Companies to promote their artists. With the changing trends of radio we had discussed, this was a welcome outlet. With this new mechanism, now their suddenly was another way for having the infomercials. They even had VJs instead of DJs. The emphasis immediately was on entertainment so many VJs like Martha Quinn were also in the acting business.
MTV historically targeted a younger audience and the early days were no exception. As the videos hit the airwaves, they caught on. The competition soon got fierce for music videos. Suddenly videos got more conceptual and more creative. When singles were released, it was almost mandatory for a video to be produced. Now performers suddenly found themselves having to become quasi-actors. Directors were now needed to conceptualize a vision. Controversy would soon brew. Many die-hard music fans felt the video spoiled the imagination aspects of the song. Others saw it as a welcome change.
Don Dempsey of Epic Records believed in the music video. As part of his mass marketing campaign for Michael Jackson, he made use of it. Jackson’s “Thriller” video was even considered a short film.
With MTV targeting the younger audience, it soon was discovered there was an older audience for music videos as well. Therefore, VH1 was born. VH1 would cater to the adult audience. Now the video network was specializing much like radio had done. Local networks such as NBC had Friday Night Videos on late night Fridays – but it didn’t provide the outlet like MTV.
Video and Radio did work well together. A video for a song would help the airplay of a song – and vice versa. As the 1980s came to a close, something would soon change. The MTV giant would move away from music videos with VH1 soon following close behind. What would cause this?
Two words – Milli Vanilli. The music industry doesn’t talk about it, but Milli Vanilli was the scandal to the music industry what steroids are to Baseball and what doping is in cycling. These guys really affected the public’s trust in the music industry. In 1989, Milli Vanilli became international superstars. This was a prime example of music videos helping promote radio airplay. Their highly entertaining videos and dance moves had a lot of people dancing in their shoes. Who can forget those classic moves on “Baby Don’t Forget My Number”. Soon, these guys ascended to the Grammy for Best New Artist – this was a very high honor in the music industry.
However it soon became unraveled when it was revealed that “Rob and Fab”, the guys in those videos weren’t doing the singing. They were impostors or actors. The end result was these guys came crumbling down and gave it up their Grammy. Public trust was shattered forever. How could this have happened? The public rule of thumb was you should lip sync your own music.
The public’s trust in the music industry was particularly shattered and while I can’t make a scientific correlation,it does seem odd that videos went into decline following this scandal.
Meanwhile, the die-hard music fans had quickly gone tired of MTV and VH1’s childish antics. They didn’t need to video because they didn’t enjoy lip syncing, the quasi-actors, or the cheesy storylines of a video. Following Milli Vanilli, now the general public questioned music and the video to a great deal. The ripple effect is that MTV and VH1 moved away from music videos. Now the music videos were diminishing in importance. The outlet to play these videos soon started to fade. The record companies were now losing that all important outlet to infomercial their artists. It was an outlet that was highly dependent by the music industry. It provided a way to “show the artist’s face”,
Changes
You can Click Here for the whole essay in progress.
So far we have been looking at the media surrounding the music industry. Let’s take a look at the music itself.
Going 1975, the rise of Disco led to an influx of synthesizers. As Disco faded, the synthesizer made its way into the Pop Music scene – and gave rise to Synth-Pop. Synth-Pop was a heavy synthesizer-laden influence in music. The music industry rode its synthesizers into the 1980s and Synth-Pop became a dominant force on the charts. It played very nicely on the videos. Synth Pop was successful with groups such as “The Cars”, one hit wonders like “A Flock of Seagulls” and even progressive Rock groups like “Rush” incorporated the use of synthesizers.
In the interim, the early 1980s saw the rise of two genres – Rap and Heavy Metal music. These genres soon began to build niche followings. While Rap centered around the urban communities, Heavy Metal caught on with the teenage generation in the early 80s. As a result, as these teenagers became music purchasers – but they didn’t have the ecomonic power of a more mature audience. Still the influence of Heavy Metal soon began to translate into radio airplay and to some extent – purchases. Now what was “Top 40″ began to see Heavy Metal emerge. Rap still a little slower to catch on was gaining momentum.
Meanwhile while Top 40 was facing an infiltration by Heavy Metal, Top 40 itself was undergoing changes. The Synthesizers that had dominated the first half of the decade soon began to be replaced by a more guitar-laden sound. Guitar-laden sounds soon took on a more “natural” sound. These really was seen in 1986 when artists like John Cougar Mellencamp and John Fogerty were finding chart success.
By 1987, Rap had finally began to make its way into the Top 40 landscape as well. Run DMC had a hit with Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way” and now the Beastie Boys were taking over the charts with their album, “License to Ill”. Rap was no longer just for the Urban community, but now was a part of the fabric of the Top 40 landscape.
The point being – Top 40 was changing – and changing fast.
The one group that probably took the biggest hit was the Classic Rock genre. For all practical purposes, the Classic Rock genre was the economic force in the music industry. In the 1970s, they sold the most records and sold the most concert tickets – just look at Led Zeppelin, the Eagles, and Pink Floyd as examples. But the late 1980s, seeing the infiltration and changes in Top 40 were not keeping the classic Rock audience happy. Classic Rock artists soon needed a new home.
Meanwhile artists like Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel, and Steve Nicks – from Classic Rock roots could still sell and chart records and albums. They could still get airplay. However, the airplay was slowing disappearing from the Top 40 stations. It was getting harder and harder for these artists to get the airplay on Top 40 radio stations – and that airplay was for all practical purposes, the infomercial that was needed to springboard promotion of the album. “Adult Contemporary” stations soon surfaced as a place for these artists to be played. Economically, the “Adult Contemporary” stations could suffice for the time being. These tended to attract a more casual audience.
At the same time, “Classic Rock” radio stations emerged as havens for the old Classic Rock artists’ old material. However for all practical purposes, this was an oldies station, while it can get ratings – did not help with promoting new music. The more serious music fans flocked to the “Classic Rock” stations while the casual fans tended to go to the “Adult Contemporary” stations.
The Oldies Stations or “Classic Rock” stations did serve another purpose – and this would go on for the next two decades. By playing the older music, when these older bands would tour, they would serve as promotional launchpads for the tours. This would result in Classic Rock taking on the biggest tours in the 1990s and 2000s.
But as the music industry chugged into the year 1990, the picture looked like this.
Top 40: Guitar laden sounds replacing the Synth-Pop. A larger influx of Heavy Metal (now morphing into Arena Rock) and Rap. Audience much younger than it was 10 years ago. Economically, a younger audience cannot compete with an older audience.
“Adult Contemporary”/”Classic Rock Oldies”: Much of the 1980 “Top 40″ generation had moved into these categories. Casual fans flocked to “Adult Contemporary” and serious fans to “Classic Rock”. Economically, these audiences had the purchasing power. However for “Adult Contemporary”, the less serious fan is going to spend less on music. The more serious fans at “Classic Rock” bought less because they owned less.
Fragmentation would continue well into the 1990s as another genre would soon emerge – Alternative Rock.
