Vol. 19: Inside The Music Machine - Part 2

I don’t remember ever meeting a Music Director face to face.

In fact, radio always felt strangely inaccessible.

I spent a lot of time calling Music Directors across Canada when I worked at Rock-it Promotions. I knew many of their names. I recognized some of their voices. I left messages with receptionists, sent follow-up emails and called back week after week.

But I don’t remember ever sitting across from one.

Television was different.

During that same period, I was pitching artists to shows like Off the Record on TSN, Open Mike with Mike Bullard and MuchMusic. I can’t remember the exact job titles of everyone I dealt with, but the people responsible for booking guests generally seemed easier to reach.

Radio had more barriers.

At the time, I accepted that as part of the job.

Now, after looking more closely at how commercial radio programming works, I understand those barriers a little better.

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The Art of Gaining Attention

If there is one thing I took away from my experience working at Rock-it Promotions, it’s that whether I was pitching Music Directors, Talent Bookers or newspaper editors, entertainment-industry gatekeepers needed a story.

Something that grabbed their attention.

Every day they went to work, there were hundreds of people like me competing for that attention.

It became painfully obvious that getting someone to notice your artist was often harder than convincing them the music was good.

To have any level of success in my job, I was going to have to get good at gaining attention.

From a PR perspective, that meant using any angle, fact or little piece of information that the gatekeeper’s audience might find interesting.

This way of thinking has probably always caused a certain amount of discomfort between artists and the publicists representing them.

The artist wants the focus placed on the music.

The publicist is trying to find something that might convince a busy stranger to listen to it.

I remember one particular debate I had with a band called Boyce’s Road.

They were an unsigned band who had just been named as an opening act for Barenaked Ladies at their Barenaked Circus event in Toronto.

My job was to use that gig as a springboard to get them some media attention.

I wanted to get them onto MuchMusic and Open Mike with Mike Bullard.

I knew it was going to take more than simply mentioning that they were opening for Barenaked Ladies.

Boyce’s Road was largely unknown to the media.

Why would their audience care?

This is where my training kicked in.

There was one little piece of information that had not been publicly communicated yet, and I had a feeling that mentioning it in the press release would give my clients a much better chance of performing on television.

The drummer for Boyce’s Road was named Matt Page.

He was the brother of Steven Page, one of the founding members of Barenaked Ladies.

That was intriguing.

So instead of leading with something like:

I wanted to use a headline closer to:

I’m not going to lie.

It caused some serious debate between the band and me.

They didn’t want the attention focused on Matt’s connection to Steven Page. They wanted to be recognized for their own music and for earning the opportunity themselves.

I understood their position.

It was actually quite commendable.

But I also had a job to do.

Eventually, the band agreed.

They appeared on both MuchMusic and Open Mike with Mike Bullard before the concert.

Unfortunately, my decision led to a fairly awkward moment during the Mike Bullard appearance.

Bullard brought up the Barenaked Ladies connection and asked how they had managed to get the opening slot.

It was precisely the line of questioning the band had hoped to avoid.

I felt bad because I knew this was exactly what they had been concerned about.

But I still have to ask myself whether I would have secured those television appearances without using the Steven Page connection as bait.

Honestly, I don’t think so.

I do know that thousands more people were exposed to the band’s talent because of those appearances.

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A Lesson Learned

That same lesson helped me every time I picked up the phone to call a Music Director.

I started to anticipate the questions I would be asked.

Quite often, they had something to do with who I represented or how established the artist was.

Were their listeners already familiar with the artist?

Was there a recognized label involved?

Was the song already receiving attention somewhere else?

I didn’t represent major-label superstars. Most of the artists I was promoting were Canadian musicians trying to build an audience.

If the artist was completely unknown, it was going to be an uphill battle just to get the Music Director to listen.

That forced me to become more creative.

What could I say that might give this person an invested interest in considering the song?

I knew that Canadian commercial radio stations were required to devote a percentage of their popular-music programming to Canadian selections, so I made a point of learning more about those requirements.

Where it made sense, I brought up Canadian Content during my calls.

At the time, I learned that whether a song qualified as Canadian generally depended on something called the MAPL system—a CRTC framework that looked at the music, artist, performance and lyrics.

The rules didn’t guarantee that anyone would play one of our records.

They occasionally gave me another reason to keep the conversation going.

College radio was more fun.

I felt like I was talking to actual music lovers.

They seemed genuinely interested in discovering something new, and it was obvious that they were not being handcuffed by the same corporate red tape that commercial stations were.

So I focused more of my attention there, with the goal of eventually being able to tell the commercial stations:

Occasionally, that opened a door.

Some commercial stations had listener-driven segments with names like “Hot or Not” or “Make It or Break It.” They would play a new record, invite the audience to react and use that response to help decide whether it deserved another spin.

If a song was already performing well on college radio, I could sometimes convince a larger station to test it in one of those segments.

If the reaction was positive, we might get lucky and earn light rotation.

Going through that process opened my eyes to the fact that commercial radio wasn’t simply looking to add good songs.

It wanted reasons to believe those songs could succeed.

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The Question I Never Asked

Back then, the Music Director was the only decision-maker I knew about.

But while researching this series, I started asking a different question.

Who was influencing the Music Director?

That question sent me down a rabbit hole and ultimately changed how I look at commercial radio today.

I had pictured Music Directors and Program Directors listening to new releases and deciding what belonged on their stations.

They still do that.

What I hadn’t considered was how many other people, systems and pieces of information could shape those decisions.

At some stations, the Program Director and Music Director are separate people. At others, one person may perform both jobs.

The Program Director is generally responsible for the station’s overall sound, format and programming strategy.

The Music Director often works more directly with new releases, label representatives, the music library and the station’s playlist.

But at many large commercial stations, neither person is making decisions entirely on their own.

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The Corporate Playlist

Large radio companies own stations across many different cities and formats.

A local station may have its own call letters, personalities and community identity while still receiving programming direction from regional or national format leaders.

Those corporate teams may identify a core group of priority songs for their Pop, Country, Rock, Hip-Hop or Adult Contemporary stations.

Local Program Directors can still make adjustments based on their market, but the freedom to build an entire playlist from scratch may be limited.

That helped explain why stations in different cities often seemed to be playing the same relatively small group of records.

The playlist sounding local did not necessarily mean every song had been selected locally.

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What Happens After Someone Presses Play?

Once a song is being considered, programmers have far more to look at than I realized when I was making those calls.

Commercial radio depends on keeping an audience long enough to sell that audience to advertisers.

That makes an unfamiliar song a business decision as well as a musical one.

Stations have traditionally used listener research to measure whether people recognize a song, enjoy it or have grown tired of hearing it.

Today, programmers may also look at streaming activity, Shazam searches, social-media momentum and the song’s performance in comparable markets.

If people in a particular city are repeatedly searching for a track or identifying it through Shazam, that may suggest an appetite for it.

If the song is performing well at stations in similar markets, that gives the programmer another piece of evidence.

This is where my experience with college radio makes more sense.

When I told a commercial Music Director that a record was already in heavy rotation at college stations, I was offering some proof that the song had connected somewhere.

Another programmer had already taken the first chance.

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The Song Still Has to Fit

Even after a station agrees to add a record, it has to be placed into a tightly managed schedule.

A new song might begin with only a few spins each week, often outside the busiest listening periods.

An established hit may play several times a day.

Scheduling software helps stations manage repetition, tempo, artist separation and the overall flow from one song into the next.

The programmer may avoid playing the same artist twice within a short period.

They may not want several slow songs in a row.

They may reserve the station’s biggest and most familiar records for morning or afternoon drive.

The Music Director I was trying to reach wasn’t only deciding whether the song sounded good.

They also had to figure out whether it belonged inside that particular station’s system.

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Where The Labels Come In

Radio stations are only one side of the conversation.

Major record labels have promotion departments whose job is to make their priority releases difficult for programmers to ignore.

A promotions representative may present streaming numbers, social-media growth, Shazam activity, touring plans and the label’s wider marketing campaign.

They are trying to show that the song is gaining momentum and that the station may not want to be late.

That also helped explain why I was so often asked who I represented.

The label name could tell the Music Director something about the campaign likely to be standing behind the record.

Was this an isolated phone call from a young publicist in Toronto?

Or was it one small piece of a coordinated push involving a national promotion team, a marketing budget, artist appearances and relationships built over many years?

The song mattered.

So did everything surrounding it.

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So Who Actually Decides?

The answer is more complicated than the job title printed on someone’s business card.

A Music Director may screen the record and manage its addition to the station’s library.

A Program Director may decide whether it fits the station’s overall direction.

A corporate format leader may identify it as a priority across several markets.

Audience research may influence how often it plays.

Streaming and Shazam activity may provide evidence that listeners are already interested.

A label promotion team may spend weeks building the case.

Once the song is added, the audience can still determine whether it moves into heavier rotation or disappears after a few weeks.

One person may ultimately approve the add.

By then, a lot of other people may have already helped shape the decision.

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Applying Music-Business Logic Beyond the Industry

Even outside of the music business, the art of gaining attention has become more important than ever.

Social-media influencers have built entire careers largely by mastering that skill.

The first time I realized that what I had learned at Rock-it Promotions could be useful in a different field was when I applied for a Marketing Manager position at a small technology company shortly after leaving.

Still feeling every bit like a publicist, I wrote the cover letter accompanying my résumé in the form of an official press release.

The headline read:

I quoted myself as being “really excited to join such a talented team.”

I even wrote a quote from CaptureNet’s owner, Roger Sholanki, welcoming me aboard.

I was soon asked to come in for an interview.

When I arrived, the first thing Roger said was:

“I loved your cover letter.”

I got the job.

The experience reinforced something I had already learned while pitching musicians.

Before you can convince someone of anything, you first have to give them a reason to pay attention.

For Boyce’s Road, that reason was a family connection to Steven Page.

For an unknown artist trying to reach commercial radio, it might be Canadian Content, college-radio momentum, streaming data, a label relationship or anything else that makes the song feel worthy of consideration.

For my job application, it was a headline announcing that I had already been hired.

Decades later, when Roger and I met for lunch, he brought up the cover letter again.

He told me it was the reason he had selected me to be interviewed in the first place.

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Next Week: Who Is Working the Record?

We now know that radio airplay is influenced by far more than one Music Director deciding whether they like a song.

But that still leaves another side of the machine to investigate.

How do record labels decide which songs deserve a major push?

What does it cost to move a single through commercial radio?

Why would a label with its own promotion department also hire independent promoters?

And where is the line between selling a record, building a relationship and paying for influence?

Those questions become especially interesting when two of the biggest artists in music are competing at the same time.

During the Drake and Kendrick Lamar battle, fans compared streaming totals, radio airplay, Billboard positions, sales, awards and cultural impact as if all of those measurements were interchangeable.

They aren’t.

In Part 3, the final chapter of Inside the Music Machine, I want to look at the people and money behind a major promotional campaign—and then return to Drake and Kendrick to see what those competing measurements can actually tell us.

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