Random Friday morning realization: there's great music being produced which is not getting radio play - makes me wonder why one of the standards of success is based on what producers pick for their audiences to hear.
If it makes you feel any better, radio is becoming less and less important, and streaming media is becoming far more important. So the historic control that radio executives (primarily Program Directors) have had in deciding on what music is heard, is really not so important anymore. Plus, radio programming is heavily influenced by digital sales and streaming media trends.
The shifts in the music industry -- primarily the rise of streaming media and the shift from controlled retailing with physical media to digital music sale/subscription -- has resulted in fragmentation and very few new big stars. Many of the most successful new artists have risen to fame because of TV or other efforts rather than radio.
>> In the US, I think the only genre where radio remains essential is Country.
Just looking at the new artists that were on Google Top 10 Searches for Musicians in 2017.... (Aaron Carter and Lincon Park are the only Pop or Rock artists on the list, all the rest are Rap/Hip-Hop or Country. Aaron and Pink are on the searches list for things others than music.) Here are the four new artist on that Top 10 list -- all Rap/Hip-Hop artists.
Lil Pump rose to fame with indie music on SoundCloud. He recently was signed to Warners, and then left and renegotiated his contract with the label after a bidding war. He's responsible for the much derided hit, "Gucci Gang."
Cardi B became famous because of VH1's " "Love & Hip-Hop."
Joyner Lucas has a viral YouTube hit. He's been around for a long time but was signed to a major label in 2016.
Danielle Bregoli because a celebrity and got a recording contract after her appearance on "The Dr. Phil Show" which became a meme.
Post Malone became famous as an indie SoundCloud artist, then got signed and then became friends with Justin Bieber and opened for him on his world tour. His first #1 hit, "rockstar," reached #1 on record streaming numbers -- and debuted at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100
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Even looking at the big radio songs, they are bigger on streaming media...for example:
"Despacito" has Luis Fonsi - Despacito ft. Daddy Yankee has 5,189,860,658 views on YouTube. And that is just this version of the song. This song was the biggest song of the year by most measures, but radio followed on this one -- it was the #6 radio song in 2017 in the US.
Ed Sheeran's "Shape of You" got a lot of radio airplay (#1 radio song for 2017 in US) but it was also the most streamed song of the year on Spotify, with over 1.4 billion streams, the most Shazamed song of the year, and the most liked track on Pandora.
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Adam's biggest barrier to getting radio airplay right now could be genre -- pop/rock, dance pop, electro, rock, etc. do not dominate Mainstream Top 40 radio airplay in the US and Canada -- the variety of music being in the Top 40 right now is very diverse. "Ghost Town" showed that Adam could shift to more contemporary music (house), so I am very interested to hear where he heads with A4. I am not expecting a pop-rock album based on what he has said, I am expecting another "candy box" with a variety of genres and sonic explorations -- building on what he did with Trespassing and Original High.
NOTE: I wrote this really quickly, if I f'ed up a detail in the examples, please forgive me.