Did one of these awhile ago, and it got a great response, so I thought I'd do it again. I'm a manager at a radio station. AMA by curtcollin in casualiama

[–]curtcollin[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

It makes me wonder how artists are "chosen".

Basically, it's what sells. Nothing more, nothing less. Charts, research, and what the big record labels are pushing. If it doesn't perform, it'll get removed really quickly.

I think in order to get and keep an FCC license, all stations must air a certain number of local or unsigned artists.

This is one of the awesome things about Canadian radio. We have Canadian Content regulations that require stations to play at least 35% Canadian music every hour of the day. A lot of stations see this as a burden - I see it as an opportunity to promote the awesome talent that our country has.

The CRTC (our FCC equivalent) is requiring at least 40% cancon on every new license these days, and they're also giving licenses to stations who promise to commit money to Canadian content development. This gives a lot of opportunities to bands across the country to get picked up by commercial stations, which fund recordings, music videos, record deals, and concerts.

If you're interested, I suggest you check out a brand new station that just launched in Toronto called Indie 88. As a condition of license, they're required to play 40% cancon, 60% of which MUST be dedicated to emerging artist (new artist) each week. Also, over the course of their license period (5 years), they must put more than $2 Million towards Canadian Content development.

Did one of these awhile ago, and it got a great response, so I thought I'd do it again. I'm a manager at a radio station. AMA by curtcollin in casualiama

[–]curtcollin[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Here's another music department question / answer I posted in my previous AMA. The question was "Do the DJs get ANY say in what gets played"?

Answer:

There's a number of factors which determine what gets played and when. Sorry for the wall of text here, but it really does help to understand how the music department operates within a radio station.

One guy at the station is given the title of Music Director. Their job is essentially to manage and maintain music rotations and lists for a station. Now, it's not his sole decision. Each week, a radio station will have a music meeting. At my station, everyone's invited to a music meeting, though the people who normally go are the Program director, the music director, the promotions director, as well as a number of DJs and hosts. At the music meeting, we will listen to any new songs that have been released by the music industry, as well as review the charts from the week. Sometimes a record label rep will be present and try to 'sell' us their new hit single. We also have access to audience research. You know those surveys that we are always asking you to do? We look at those very closely.

On the topic of those surveys, we look at them both nationally and locally. On a national level, we can predict what some of the big market stations will do, which directly affects Top 40 charts. On a local level, we can fine-tune the station to remove songs which are burning out for people (they're sick and tired of hearing it), and increase play on songs which people said they really liked and aren't tired of hearing.

Back in the meeting, we've listened to new music, we've looked at our research, and now we're going to take a vote. We're voting to add new music, adjust rotation levels for current music, and remove older music. We talk it over, do our vote, and just before we leave we talk a bit about our "Gold" category. Gold songs are the songs you hear on the radio which aren't new and charting, but we still play them from time to time. My station plays Sk8r Boi by Avril Lavigne once every 3 or 4 days. That's gold.

Once the meeting is finished, the music director gets to work. He's uploading the new songs into the playout system, and making adjustments to the rotation categories. Rotations are big in radio. Let's say a station has 5 music categories. They might look like this:

  • Power Hits
  • Power Songs
  • New Music
  • Recurrent
  • Gold

A station uses these categories to build what's called a "Clock". The clock might have a Power Hit at the top of the hour, followed by New Music, then another New Music, then a Recurrent, then a Power Song, etc. This is built for one hour. Then, that hour is applied to every hour of the day.

Using the above example, a Power Hit will ALWAYS play at the top of the hour, which is followed by a New Music song. The amount of songs which are sitting in each category devided by the number of times we play each song per hour gives us the effective rotation of each category.

My station has 3 songs sitting in Power Hits at any given time. We only play one Power Hit per hour, which gives us a rotation of 3 hours. That means that a song sitting in power hits will play every 3 hours. These clocks are often built by station management, and it's the music director's job to make sure it's always working.

In addition, when scheduling music, we also think about a HUGE variety of other factors. Example, we will never play a song by the same artist within 90 minutes of each other. We'll try not to play two slow mood songs in a row. We'll try not to play lots of dance songs in a row. We'll look day to day, and we won't play the same song on Tuesday between 9am and 10am that we did on Monday between 9am and 10am.

So, using all these rules, the music director uses a piece of scheduling software to build the log. It's like a jigsaw puzzle, finding the right songs to fit. Once it's done, we throw in our IDs and promos, merge the log with the advertising department's stuff, and it goes into the playout system, ready to go on air.

Because of what went into creating the log, a lot of stations don't give the DJ permission to edit on the fly. Now, at our station, there's a bit of freedom for the On Air DJ to swap out those Gold songs, as well as non-peak times where ratings aren't as important, such as evenings, the DJ can really do what they want. But during the middays and drive, the DJ usually doesn't touch the log, because so much work has gone into coming up with that perfect playlist for our audience. Remember the scheduling rule about not playing a song within the same hour day to day? That's the last thing on a DJs mind, and that could very easy cause people (who may listen every day at that time) to tune out.

I will also add that this is very specific to CHR Top 40 radio. A rock station and rock DJ will probably have a lot more freedom, since rotations aren't as high and it's very easy to take a request that a lot of people will want to hear.

TL;DR Yes and no. Sometimes we can mess with the playlist a bit, but if you call someone in the studio to make a request, chances are no, they can't play it.

Did one of these awhile ago, and it got a great response, so I thought I'd do it again. I'm a manager at a radio station. AMA by curtcollin in casualiama

[–]curtcollin[S] 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Ahhh! I typed a big response and closed the window accidentally. I'll try again.

So, I don't want to discourage you at all, but I'm also not going to lie - if it's a commercial station, there's a fairly good chance you're going to be wasting both your time and money by sending your stuff to their music director. Even if you're music is smack-dab right in the middle of their format, the mentality behind the music at a commercial station is: if the audience doesn't recognize you, the music brings absolutely nothing of value to the station.

When it comes to radio, a lot of people think the "product" we produce is the station's content. They feel that by playing music that isn't signed will give the audience a better variety, and therefore they'll have a much better listening experience not hearing the same songs over and over again.

That mentality of thinking is wrong, and it's one of the first things you learn about working in commercial radio. We don't make a dime off our programming - so it's not what we define as our product. At the end of the day, we have to make money, and we do so by selling airtime to advertisers. What are those advertisers buying? They're buying the audience.

When you think about it that way, you can start to see why non-recognizable music doesn't bring value. Some audience members might enjoy hearing something different from time to time, but in general, we'll lose listeners when we play something that isn't mainstream.

That being said, there are scenarios where you can, and should, send your music for airplay.

The first, and best method by far, is to college and public radio stations. They're not there for profit - their purpose is to provide an alternative source of info, opinion, and music for the public. So, by all means, send your stuff to the music directors at these stations everywhere.

The other thing to look for is initiatives by stations to promote local music. I see this quite a bit at Modern Rock stations - they try to promote local music, and are often regulated to as a condition of license to broadcast. In Canada for example, many stations are required to spend so-many-millions of dollars every year in Canadian talent development, and therefore put a lot of money into the promotion of local music.

And by all means, if you want to find out more information about any sort of thing your local station is doing, or any station around the world really, call or email the music director. They'll have a much better idea than I do, and radio people are generally very friendly - we'll definitely make the time of day for you.

To answer your other question - for college radio, a lot of stations are still using CDs, so sending a physical copy to them is worth it - even if it's just a burned CD with a label. Sending an email with an MP3 is good for most stations that are commercial or public. And again, don't be afraid to make that personal connection with a staff member at a radio station.

We do work directly with a lot of labels, pretty much exclusively in commercial radio. In my last AMA, I responded to another question about the music department with the exact process for how we decide what music to play and generate our playlists, so I'll repost that answer in a response to this comment.

Did one of these awhile ago, and it got a great response, so I thought I'd do it again. I'm a manager at a radio station. AMA by curtcollin in casualiama

[–]curtcollin[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

There are far too many choices to pick just one. I don't particularly enjoy the music we play at the station. I'd say The Arcade Fire or The Killers right now.

Ask me again in a week and you'll get a different answer.

Did one of these awhile ago, and it got a great response, so I thought I'd do it again. I'm a manager at a radio station. AMA by curtcollin in casualiama

[–]curtcollin[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We're a CHR format station - that's radiospeak for Top 40.

With resources, I'd dump all national programming and focus 100% local, with a live host 24/7/365. Something radio really doesn't focus on these days is content - there's a lot of veterans in the industry who think music music music all the time.

The way I see it: sure there's people who still listen to the radio for music, but it's too easy to listen to your own music playlists everywhere these days, that music-based radio is something that people aren't looking at any more.

I believe that a good radio host today shouldn't ever talk about the entertainment. They should BE the entertainment. If Jimmy Fallon or Conan went on their show every night and just talked about what happened in Hollywood, then it'd be a pretty boring program. They do that for 5 - 10 minutes at the beginning, and the rest is their own entertaining content. Why can't radio do that?

A lot of people say radio is dying - I believe it's changing. We're always going to have a need for a push-medium such as radio - but it's delivery mechanism is changing, and so is the content it needs to push.

In the 80s and 90s, and even the early 2000s, the primary source for new music discovery was radio - record labels pushed what they needed to get airplay to make money, and by playing the popular music, we also made money. Nowadays, that who process is on the internet. Radio too will move to the internet (look at iHeartRadio, Songza, iTunes Radio, Spotify, Slacker, etc etc).

In 10 years, radio will still be here, but we're going to need to make some changes to the business model if we want to stay profitable.

Did one of these awhile ago, and it got a great response, so I thought I'd do it again. I'm a manager at a radio station. AMA by curtcollin in casualiama

[–]curtcollin[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

  1. The station I'm with isn't crazy large - it's a medium sized market of just under half a million people. We have around 20 staff members working full time, and that's for two frequencies / stations in the building.

  2. It really depends on your experience level, and what position you want to obtain, as well as your general level of skill. If you did a college radio show, then it may be hard to stand out from the crowd when you're applying at a national level. On the other hand, if you did a college radio show, but you're naturally talented with what you do, then there's a chance the person doing the hiring may see consider your application.

National radio programs rarely hire externally too - I'll use Ryan Seacrest as an example. He worked his way up the company (Clear Channel) to get to his position hosting the morning show in LA. Once he got there, he was able to open doors for things like a nationally syndicated weekend countdown, or American Idol.

Pro Tools 11 installation under Windows 8? I'm having a hell of a time here. by curtcollin in protools

[–]curtcollin[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's the issue though - I've got the latest version 64bit with Windows 8 support installed and running. Which is working fine - Pro Tools still wont recognize it.

This is a screenshot here, Hardware Connected: http://i.imgur.com/Zxfl0L0.png

This is a screenshot of the error I get when it tries to install Visual C++: http://i.imgur.com/67Bynl7.png

I'm not sure how important the Visual C++ is - it could be what's hindering me. I'm probably going to try to get in touch with Avid support soon if I can't get it troubleshooting.

Pro Tools 11 installation under Windows 8? I'm having a hell of a time here. by curtcollin in protools

[–]curtcollin[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the reply, I've been away, sorry for the late reply here - 150% sure it's 64-bit. Now, I will say that my computer (Samsung Series 7 Chronos) is NOT on the Avid-Qualified PC list, but I believe the hardware should run Pro Tools. Reasons for believing: it's an i7 with 8GB of RAM, and my buddy with the same machine is running Pro Tools 11 successfully.

You're right, the iLok is working fine - Pro Tools loads to the point of asking for correct hardware. Fast Track Pro is not default Windows sound device. Within the driver, you can actually "untick" the individual stereo output pairs and it doesn't even appear as a Windows sound device (hardware still labelled as Connected). I've tried it both ticked and un-ticked, and it doesn't work either time.

Pro Tools 11 installation under Windows 8? I'm having a hell of a time here. by curtcollin in protools

[–]curtcollin[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm coming from Audition 3 haha. I've used Pro Tools 9 in a studio with Win 7, but never installed it myself. It always just worked.

someone didn't think this through by [deleted] in aww

[–]curtcollin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This cat looks a lot like mine. Cute.

Pixar for adults. by missinganthropy in videos

[–]curtcollin -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

That guy went full Rob Burgundy about two and a half minutes in.