Black Music Month 2010

Part IV

In this, the final chapter in our current series for Black Music Month 2010, we want to look at how radio has adjusted to challenges from other media forms as well as to those artists which we once owned, but are now being shared by other formats.

In 2010, Urban radio is still letting go of some songs that they thought were no longer relevant or hip with the listeners for whom they are the preferred station or P1s. This is something that happens a lot once they cross over and start listening to format-similar stations like Top 40/Rhythmics or even Mainstream Top 40s. Once listeners who are P1s to the format start hearing those songs on "their little sister's or brother's station," they often change their opinions of it. This is especially true of certain rap artists.

Just because an artist gets picked up by multiple formats doesn't mean that Urban stations should stop playing them in drive time. After all, isn't that what we want? As a business we are way over-thinking this issue because of the complaints of a very vocal few in the audience that our limited sample callout research base has found. Not that we don't care about those vocal few. We do, but we're in a mainstream business, which means we want 51% of the vote.

If it's an act you consider still important to your audience and the format, you should support it. But it's also important that the artist(s), their management, and labels know that imaging the artist with the station will be necessary for the station to consider treating them as core artists instead of song-to-song.

As we have now reached the halfway point in 2010 and look back, we realize that it was 2006 when we saw Jack radio proliferating in all size markets, "playing what we want." So far in 2010 we have witnessed another ripple effect caused by the demise of another format. This year saw many Smooth Jazz stations being switched to other formats. Regardless of how you may feel about this format and these stations, they provided exposure for many artists who they felt fit the lifestyle of the adult audience they were trying to reach. These are artists who will suffer because most Urban AC stations will not pick them up.

Many are now asking, “Have our Urban formats come to a crossroads? And what is their future?” The answer is that smart programmers will take advantage of the demise of Smooth Jazz and make some adjustments to pick up these disenfranchised listeners by offering them a new place to dwell.

Consumer Marketing & Spending

Despite the changes and challenges for Urban and Urban AC stations, what is also emerging in 2010 are statistics that show the tremendous buying power that exists in the estimated $300-billion consumer market created by African-Americans. The total minority population has increased at twice the rate of the majority population in the last decade. Projections for population growth with the new census for this past decade show increases to at least 35 million consumers. Despite the sagging economy, spendable income should grow at the same pace to exceed the $300 billion now available to advertisers, including record and CD purchasers.

The size of the African-American population, coupled with the propensity of blacks to spend a disproportionate share of their disposable income on music, continue to make marketing to African-Americans essential to the record industry, the fashion industry, the movie industry and others.

Now what we have to do going forward is combine all these elements and then leverage what the audience remembers best. Artists are remembered for their hits. A hit is remembered for its hook and a station is remembered for its "audio snapshots." Most of those audio snapshots are musical ones.

Many things affect the state of our music industry in general and Urban formats in particular. Some say today's audience isn't listening at all, that it's merely practicing. Indeed, “audience” is almost as antiquated a term as the word “record.” One is archaically passive. The other archaically physical. The record, not the re-mix, is the anomaly today. The re-mix is the very nature of the digital.

In 2010, an endless recombinant and fundamentally social process generates countless hours of creative product. To say that this poses a threat to the record industry is simply untrue. The music industry, though it may not know it yet, needs to be careful that it doesn't end up going the way of the record. Instead the recombinant has become the characteristic pivot of the turn of our two centuries.

Forward Spin

As we spin forward, we find that new technologies continue to redefine us, as surely and perhaps as often as we've been redefined. So we end our series like we began, by asking the question, "Why?" We attempted to define, re-define and finally wrap up this series on Black Music 2010 with some answers to that question. We wanted to answer the question by sharing some stories and in the process, develop new interest in our music, its contributors and its roots. We hope you learned something.

No matter how we spin it, the history of racism in the music business has been documented in many ways, including changing the name from rhythm and blues to rock and roll. History has shown how after the British invasion, the careers of black artists who had been "crossover" artists, meaning popular with both blacks and whites, took a sharp downward turn. History has also proven that record companies cheated incredibly talented artists, writers and producers. Many have lived and will die in obscurity after (or without) even brief moments of fame. This includes many whose music is still loved and played on the radio and continues to enrich our lives.

Black Music Month 2010 is another growth year in which there are still seemingly more questions than answers. The framework for continued exclusion is still in place for many in the music industry. Let us not forget that.

Black music is after all, a business … a growing business. Some say it’s growing smaller. We tend to agree with that notion. The entire music business is shrinking and will never be the same. But regardless of which direction it’s growing, the music business still comes in all different shapes and sizes. So should its solutions and results.

Naturally, the results we seek in the music industry and in our lives don’t just measure how far we’ve come. They also tell us how far we have to go. Because when it comes to opportunity, there can never be too much equality.

Word.