It’s all about variety. People don’t want to be limited.

At one point in time, music radio was the heartbeat of America. But it hasn’t had that spirit in a long, long time. In an era of iPods, and music blogs, and P2P trading, can music radio survive?

The Ravyns sang on the soundtrack of “Fast Times At Ridgemont High” about being raised on the radio. America was addicted. Transistors were glued to the ears of baby boomers. But that was when there were three bland TV networks and the only way you could feel connected to your brethren was via the radio. Radio was a club, a hangout. If you listened to the radio you not only got music, but news and lifestyle information. The deejay, who was your most trusted friend, presided over a virtual world that delivered all your needs. And then, when music radio went to the FM, there was a reaction against fast-talking jocks. These new best friends were just like you, slow-talking, and they played exactly what they wanted. And what they played, you wanted to hear.

It hasn’t been this way for so long almost nobody can remember.

There became so much money in music radio that it became conservative. The deejays were just voices in between researched music and commercials. And the public tuned out.

Yes, radio listenership has been declining for years. Is it coming back?

I’m not talking about talk. Talk radio has the vibrancy of the music stations of old. It’s alive and unpredictable. But in an era where you can pull up a station’s playlist on the Net, why do you have to actually listen?

The heart of music radio, the village square aspect, was squeezed out twenty five years ago. But music radio survived because it was the place to hear new stuff, to get turned on, to get your fix. Then again, radio took a huge hit upon the advent of MTV. MTV was adventurous in a way radio was not. MTV was edgy, it would break records. But now MTV is calcified, and radio is Wall Street. Are we experiencing a death spiral?

You now hear about music from your friends. Or in chat rooms, blogs or other virtual worlds. Every band known to man has a MySpace site where you can experience its wares. If you’re tuning in to radio to hear new music, you’re surfing the Web with Windows 98. Each station only plays a narrow swath of tunes, and does so over and over again. Your tastes are not that narrow, and you don’t want to endure commercials. So you use your iPod in your car, or you listen to talk. Music radio is for pussies.

This is satellite radio’s problem. The perception. That it’s no different from terrestrial radio, except for the absence of commercials. And, you have to pay for it! Satellite radio, when done right, and it often is on XM, provides a haven of music discovery overseen by deejays as passionate and worldly as those in the heyday of the late sixties and early seventies. You can get turned on to new music there. But people don’t seem to care. The radio listening experience has been degraded to such a point that the youngest generations have never experienced good music radio and aren’t looking for it! It’s hard to sell people what they don’t know they want.

Or maybe we’re just in an era where spoonfeeding is passe. Why have the information dripped out over time when you can get it all instantly online?

You think P2P killed the major labels? What really put them in the dumper was the decline of music radio. That’s where they exposed their wares, a broader spectrum than MTV ever exhibited. But now that people have tuned out, there’s very little traction. And the numbers are going downhill. If you’re depending on music radio to make your numbers, you’re on the road to extinction.

Yes, you have a concentrated small number of bands that are selling *large* product — but if you can step aside the dying major label paradigm for a moment, you’d find a lot of bands who can move anywhere from 20k-100k of a given product, and still manage to make both themselves and their labels some money, and be able to sustain themselves through touring. Maybe not in a gilded mansion fashion, but certainly well enough to keep writing.

The reality is, at least imho, is that as talented as artists such as Nickleback and Daughtry may be — their music is tired. Been there, done that. Aside from MusicChoice, will anyone actually still care about those songs in ten years, or will they just blend into the history of bland, yet very well executed and produced product?

See, if you can get past the few majors (who have suffered the majority of drop in record sales), the smaller acts are doing okay. I’ve got a couple of really artists in mind in my region who are musically and visually compelling, who put on wonderful shows, and who have released very well received records locally (with some CMJ action, as well). But none of them would ever push 200k copies, so I can’t imagine as you’d be interested. And because they’ve all found varying (yet increasing) levels of success without needing a major label sugar daddy — I suspect they would have no interest in suddenly becoming indentured to a recoupable-laced contract, either.

What’s really too bad is that the majors simply can’t find a way to make money by carrying a greater number of bands with non-platinum expectations. That’s not the bands’ problem, and it’s not the problem of lack of songs — it’s the industry’s complete inability to understand how to market music that’s not *designed* to appeal simply to the lowest common denominator, or rather, how to sustain their business in any fashion other a steady diet of multi-platinum releases.

Some friends and I were talking about that at a show the other night, in fact. I think if anyone really did an indepth study, they would find that over the last six years, there has been steady growth in the number of titles that sell 5k, 10k, 20k, maybe even 50k copies. Yet, at the same time, an obvious decrease in the 250k, 500k, 1m+ sales levels.

The small labels *can* find a way to make money at 20k units. Why? Because they’re not carrying bloated A&R staffs who can’t actually sign bands, they’re not carrying corporate jets, they’re not forcing bands to use producers who won’t be finished until $200k is spent, etc. Economies of scale have a place, but in a world where it’s too easy to access too much music, people will now seek out what they want, and not settle for what’s fed to them. In that particular world, the scale becomes smaller, because MOST of what you do will not appeal to MOST people.

That is true. Commercials and Narrow Playlists Drive people away. I mean, when I hear Led Zeppelin or a 90’s grunge song on the radio, i immediately turn it off because I have the songs in my IPOD already. I have most of the classic radio HITS in my IPOD so radio doesn’t excite me or anyone else.

Radio needs to play to NEW music (combined with OLD music), BUT we are facing a SCARCITY of NEW music that resonates with the PUBLIC. Thats the problem…

The General public won’t buy POP Punk, EMO, or Euro Trash UNLESS its really GREAT. But Great bands rarely come out of those GENRES.

JUST look at soundscan..The only artists who are selling are NICKELBACK, CARRIE UNDERWOOD, DAUGHTRY, etc. These artists are ALSO the LESS HYPED. As ODD as it seems, these artists really LET THE MUSIC DO THE TALKING. Funny HEH?

Bottom Line - You give KOAR a LEAD to one of the NEW UNSIGNED ARTISTS and WE WILL GET YOU A RECORD DEAL.