As I clicked on a popular music business forum, I was greeted with a question. “Why won’t commercial radio play music by Indie Artists?”
My reply to this person was as follows:
“As a former Operations Manager and Music Director on both the Comm and Non-Comm sides, Let me break the reason down for you.
Commercial Radio needs ratings to get paid from advertisers. Most advertiser’s, on radio, are ad agencies. Ad agencies base their “buys” (sponsorships) on a Cost per point (“CPP”) basis. CPP is based on how many thousands of listeners a radio station can capture in a 15 minute period (or cume).
Many commercial radio [Program and Music] don’t want to put thier ratings at risk, by airing an ‘untested song’ on the air. So what these commercial radio directors do, is, air music based on the national charts provided by Radio and Records, Broadcast Data Systems (BDS) and Billboard.
These charts are mainly influenced by the major labels via promotions and strategic alliances.
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