Terrestrial Radio

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From the course by Vanderbilt University

Understanding the Music Business: What is Music Worth?

107 ratings

Vanderbilt University

Understanding the Music Business: What is Music Worth?

107 ratings

This course will examine the music industry in the United States, with the unique perspective gained by Vanderbilt University’s location in Nashville, TN. Nashville is a major center of music in the United States, and the music created here has a global reach, particularly in the country, rock, pop, singer-songwriter, and Americana genres. However, students will learn that the basic principles of recording, marketing, copyright, licensing, and live performance are the same, regardless of musical style or genre. The music business is one of the most rapidly changing industries in the US today. It is also an industry filled with contradiction, and media headlines and anecdotal stories often add to the confusion. Here are just a few statements paraphrased from recent news stories: * The music business has collapsed * Demand for music is expanding at the greatest rate in history * Historic recording studios are closing at an alarming rate * More people are making recordings than ever before * Musicians usually lose money touring * Musicians usually make money touring * Major artist pulls songs off streaming services because they don’t pay fairly * Major artist makes a fortune from streaming services * People won’t buy records anymore * Vinyl record sales are soaring This course will attempt to make sense of these seemingly contradictory trends and data, outline the basic structure and mechanisms of today’s music industry, and encourage students to think critically and entrepreneurially about the future of music. Leaders from various areas of the music business will lend their perspectives through in-depth interviews, and footage from a recording session will give learners a behind the scenes look at how a song goes from the spark of an idea hummed into a cell phone to a finished recording. Participants will grapple with questions about art and commerce which are both timeless and crucially important today, and will emerge from this course with tools allowing them to make more informed decisions as creators, promoters, and consumers of music. Course launches February 19, 2016.

From the lesson

Media

The subjects in this segment – PR, publicity, marketing, social media, radio, and streaming services – could all come under the heading “Getting The Word Out”, or “Cutting Through The Noise.” You will learn how innovations in technology are changing the means by which audiences connect with music, and you will consider the ways that innovation causes controversy within the music industry, as old boundaries are challenged. You will hear about jobs and roles related to media and music. Interviews with a radio station owner and a communications school dean will highlight the important issues and shifts happening in this field.

Introduction1:34

PR & Publicists2:41

Social Media3:19

Terrestrial Radio7:47

Interview: Tony Richards47:39

Streaming & Internet Radio7:05

Interview: Ken Paulson25:49

Conclusion: Cutting Through the Noise2:02

Meet the Instructors

Jen Gunderman
Assistant Professor of Musicology
Blair School of Music

[MUSIC]

Radio is another area of the business that's been changing rapidly

in the digital era.

I'll be telling you a little bit about different types of radio, but

we'll begin with traditional broadcast radio.

These are the terrestrial AM/FM stations that your parents grew up with.

Perhaps surprisingly, over 90% of listening in the United States

still happens on AM/FM broadcast radio.

This number has stayed basically the same for

15 years despite repeated predictions of its demise.

There is likely to be a tipping point when more people are listening to Internet

radio or Internet based listening platforms than terrestrial radio.

And a lot of people believe that it will happen when a majority of Americans have

cars that are equipped with on board Internet access.

But for now, AM/ FM is still a very powerful part of the music industry.

AM radio developed in the 1870s and is short for Amplitude Modulated Radio Band.

It occupies 535 to 1605 kilohertz on the bandwave.

It can be transmitted over very long distances.

It's where the word clear channel comes from, where there might have been,

in the past, an AM radio station that occupies a particular wavelength and

has exclusive access to that.

And there are stories, for example, in Nashville,

of an R&B radio station that was able to be picked up as far away as the Caribbean.

And so you can hear even country music influence on musicians back and

forth from distances that far away.

There's also a strong history of pop music and

Top 40 in AM radio until it was usurped,

or sort of overshadowed by FM radio, starting in the 1960s and 70s.

Today AM radio is mostly associated with talk radio and

then sort of great little local stations that do really idiosyncratic

programing that are worth checking out.

FM radio was first developed in the 1930s.

It stands for Frequency Modulated Radio Bands.

It operates at 88 to 108 megahertz on your dial.

And as I said, before, there's a better sound quality than there is on AM radio

because of the higher bandwidth.

But as is true in just about every other aspect of the music business,

there are definitely people who love the sound of AM radio.

Just because it reminds them of growing up,

with their little transistors in the 1960s or 70s.

There is a charm about the sound of AM radio.

But FM and the,

I guess, superior sound quality has incredible reaching power still today.

Major record labels have long established relationships with

large commercial FM radio stations.

And the playlists at these radio stations are mostly closed

to artists outside the major record label system.

There are some exceptions to this rule but in general it's a game for the big dogs.

One of the things that has been a sort of increasing trend in FM radio recently is

a data-driven approach to programming.

We're going to talk more about music analytics in module five.

But FM radio stations these days use a lot of analytics to tell which

songs are going to be popular with listeners very quickly.

It's a sort of change in the way that programming has historically been done,

that is something to watch on FM radio front.

Corporate stations preprogram most of the music that you hear on the dial.

They prerecord the bumpers, this is Beyonce with her latest such and such,

you're listening to such and such.

And so typically on the large commercial stations nobody is actually at the helm,

at the microphone, sticking in a CD or the vinyl or whatever.

And for some people who grew up listening to FM radio, older music fans remember

this golden age where DJ personalities picked out the songs that they liked.

They might say outrageous things and/or unpredictable things on the air.

There was a sense of danger because you never knew what was going to happen, or

what song might appear next.

During this golden age, I guess we're talking about the 60s and

70s especially, DJs might talk about local business, or traffic, or weather.

Or local characters in town that everybody was sort of aware of.

FM radio's a very colorful place historically too.

There was a bit of corruption including,

payola scandals that would come up every once in awhile.

Payola is commercial bribery and is illegal.

It's also known as pay for play, I give you some money or some drugs or

other favors and you play my song on the radio.

This is part of the colorful history of FM radio in the states.

And it's not always been a level playing field for artists.

It's a sort of free wheeling kind of place and

it's just sort of the way it's always been.

There are independent radio stations that are still run with a more sort of

personality and local-driven kind of flavor that are around today.

In general, they do no have the same kind of broadcast reach as the larger stations.

They do not have the wattage, basically,

to push their sound out beyond a local audience.

These independent radio stations have freeform programming.

It's one of the things that music lovers like about this.

You never know what you're going to hear.

Examples of these kinds of freeform freeform independent stations include

college radio stations, stations that focus on a specific genre or

stations that are semi-pirate,

just sort of spring up out of nowhere and start broadcasting.

These stations,

once again, have lower license fees that are based on audience reach.

It's one of the things to be aware of as you're growing a radio station.

The more people that you reach,

the higher your fees will be, in order to pay for the music that you're playing.

Public broadcasting works differently.

Public broadcasting's primary mission is public service.

They don't rely on advertising so there's no pressure, necessarily,

to program to a mass market in a case of public broadcasting.

The most well known example,

probably, in the United States is National Public Radio, NPR.

And that is supported by a mix of government funds,

corporate sponsors, and private donations as well.

On both AM and FM airwaves, as I've mentioned a couple times already,

there are local low watt stations with really unique programming.

And I do encourage you to seek out these stations particularly when you're on

road trips.

Scan the dial every so often for some local flavor,

particularly in rural areas where the airwaves are not quite so crowded.

You can often times really, really either wonderful music programming or

interesting talk radio shows.

And it can be a wonderful part of the trip through the states.

Here in Nashville we got all kinds of little low-watt gems.

There's one that plays country music all week except for

on Saturday nights, where they'll go into this super cool R&B programming.

There are several sort smaller watt ones

that are dedicated to either hippie music or local indie music.

There's a couple of stations connected with colleges,

affiliated with other universities in the area.

And they can be a really wonderful way to discover new music and

hear something sort of outside the pop mainstream.

[MUSIC]

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