MusicFirst calls a Wall Street Journal report on how often radio songs are repeated “shocking.”
The report basically says programmers find listeners tune in longer if they hear a song they’re familiar with and hit the “next” button more quickly if they hear a new song. Hence, concludes the article, new songs are slower to reach the airwaves. It chalks up the change to the deployment of the Portable People Meter, which gives programmers more and faster listening data than paper diaries.
MusicFirst says the article exposes “NAB’s biggest lie — that Big Radio promotes new music and helps new bands breakthrough.”
The record label-backed group wants terrestrial radio to pay a performance royalty and says some bands whose songs are played on the airwaves “earn nothing” from repeated airplay. MusicFirst says “empty promises of phantom ‘promotion’ won’t do.”
NAB EVP Communications Dennis Wharton tells RW “If the charge is that local radio plays popular music that listeners enjoy, we plead guilty.” Local radio remains the number one source for exposing new music, he says, citing Nielsen’s Music 360 Report and USA Today.
“Bottom line: Hometown radio stations that are free to the listener will continue to cater our programming to a growing audience of more than 240 million people who tune in every week,” says Wharton.
