With all the research and web marketing flying into our email boxes every day, it’s no wonder we sometimes get confused. Oftentimes, these news alerts seem to contradict one another. It’s as bad as finding out that red wine is good for your heart one day, and will kill you the next.
A case in point was two emails that showed up the other day, within an hour of each another:
The first: "Radio still main music driver" – quotes a new JupiterResearch study that finds that despite all the other music discovery media and methods, radio is still #1. Overall, nearly six in ten online music users rely on the radio – and many of these groups are quite tech savvy. Radio was top dog among paying downloaders and also performed very well even among music aficionados. As analyst Sonal Gandhi notes, "For the general population as well as music influencers, you can see that radio is the most important way of discovering new music – and it has been the most important way of discovering new music in the last few years that we’ve surveyed."
(Did you read that musicFIRST?)
So much for the good news about red wine.
The second: The next email trumpets the fact that the "new" single from the long-awaited "new" CD, Chinese Democracy by Guns ‘N Roses – "Shackler’s Revenge" – will NOT be released to radio first.
Instead, Anthem Records and Universal Music Enterprises say that it will show up in September in a video game, Rock Band 2. As Mike Davis of Universal tells the New York Times, "These games absolutely have an impact because the opportunity to hear these songs on radio is dwindling."
Really. I know of several hundred radio stations that would be (or perhaps "would have been") pretty jazzed about the chance to (finally) break this new single. In fact, if you look at the checkered history of this band, radio has been in the forefront of exposing America to their music, through all of Axl Rose’s trials and tribulations. Not to mention all those free promos for concert tours and all the other attendant "marketing" that the record industry has taken for granted from radio all these years.
I think I’m going to have a glass of red wine and stop worrying about it.
Jacobs Media has consistently walked the walk in the digital space, providing insights and guidance through its well-read national Techsurveys.
In 2008, jacapps was launched - a mobile apps company that has designed and built more than 1,300 apps for both the Apple and Android platforms. In 2013, the DASH Conference was created - a mashup of radio and automotive, designed to foster better understanding of the "connected car" and its impact.
Along with providing the creative and intellectual direction for the company, Fred consults many of Jacobs Media's commercial and public radio clients, in addition to media brands looking to thrive in the rapidly changing tech environment.
Fred was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2018.
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A smart radio station will be all over the Rock Band release, if its any good.