U.S. One Of 4 Countries That Doesn't Pay Artists For Radio Airplay

Radio is still a big part of an artist's success, but did you know that an artist doesn't get paid for radio airplay in the United States? Songwriters get paid from money collected from broadcasters by ASCAP, BMI or SESAC, but there's no mechanism in place for an artist to get paid for the same airplay.

As an example, the Righteous Brothers "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling" is the most played song on the radio ever, with more than 15 million plays since its release in 1964, yet the group never received a dime from all that radio play. The writers (Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil and Phil Spector) got rich, however.

Unbelievably, the U.S. is one of only 4 countries in the world that doesn't pay artists for radio airplay. More unbelievably, the other 3 are North Korea, Iran and China, none of which are exactly known for their artistic freedom or copyright protections.

So what's the problem in the U.S.? Lobbyists, to put it simply. The National Association of Broadcasters is very powerful and contributes to many political campaigns, so they've always managed to quash any legislation that gets introduced to Congress.

The NAB has always threatened that radio and television stations would go bankrupt and be forced to go off the air if legislation was passed mandating them to pay artists for playing their songs, all while the industry was raking in billions of dollars of profits.

Sadly, this situation won't change soon, mostly because radio is in a true downswing (especially AM) with advertisers moving their money away from radio to social media instead (streaming platforms do pay artists for airplay, by the way).

Radio still helps break a song as millions of people continue to listen at work and in their cars, but it's mostly from the top 1% artists or those backed by the major labels. It's irrelevant to young artists and bands since airplay is out of reach.

While the rates seem low, music streaming is an artists friend, since at least you get paid something. Because unless you're the writer, you're not going to see any money from radio airplay. And at least online is a place for a young artist to build an audience, since local radio (once the champion of local music scenes everywhere) barely exists anymore, and many colleges have shed their terrestrial radio stations.

For a deeper look into the subject, check out this article on Medium from CD Baby's CEO Tracy Maddux.

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How Radio Airplay Compares To Streaming

Many people have a difficult time getting their heads around the fact that a million streams or views just isn't that much in our new Music 4.0 age. A minor hit starts at around 50 million and a major hit is in the hundreds of millions.

1 million isn't that much when it comes to radio either, so take at traditional terrestrial radio for a second and see how it stacks up to streaming.

There are 15,730,000 people in New York City, and Artibitron estimates that a station like Z100 (currently the #1 station in the market) reaches at least 0.01% at any given moment (it's probably 5 times that actually). That's 157,000.

If the station plays a song 5 times a day (not uncommon for a song in rotation), that's 157,000 x 5 = 785,000 listens a day.

If the station plays the song for 2 weeks, that's 785,000 x 14 days = 10.99 million listens from just this one station.

There's probably at least one other station in the market playing the song, so that's 10.99 million x 2 = 21.98 million listens.

If the song is playing in New York, it's probably playing in the top 25 markets as well, which means 21.98 million x 25 = 549.5 million listens.

That's the equivalent of almost 550 million streams, but unlike streams, the artist didn't get paid for a single one of the radio listens (the songwriters got paid though).

Keep in mind that the number of plays above aren't even for a big hit (double the number of plays per day at least) and don't include the ratings for the number 1 station (at least by a factor of 5 in New York City).

You can see why our perceptions of a million are a bit skewed. When it comes to sales, yes, a million is a big deal, but it's not the same scale when judging plays, streams or views.

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8 Tips To Getting Played On College Radio

Hypebot recently ran a great article by David Roberts and EricTheReDD about how to get your music played on college. David is the founder of the Sunshine Promotion company while Eric is the former general manager of WJSC-FM of Johnson State College, Vermont. While you can read the entire interview of the Hypebot website, I thought I'd distill the main points here.

1. Make sure that the title track has the ability to "wow." If that track sucks, it's tough to take the rest of the album seriously.

2. Send a pressed CD that's professionally packaged. CDR's don't cut it. In fact, send two; one for the music vault and one for a possible giveaway. Remember, the liner notes will be read, so take care in crafting them.

3. Make sure the songs are registered with Gracenote and have the proper ID3 tags attached so the info doesn't have to be input manually when transferred to the digital library. No Gracenote information may be enough to keep your songs from getting played.

4. Make sure you send a short press kit. Short is the operative word, keeping it to only a page about who you are and what's on the disc.

5. Address your package to the music director. He will assign it to the appropriate DJ. Do not send to the program director, as he's in charge of scheduling and is too busy to deal with music. If you have the DJ's name that deals with your genre, it's okay to send it to him to directly.

6. A short personal note can go a long way. Something like, "Hey WJSC, thanks for the airplay" can get you extra attention.

7. Call the request line or the DJ and ask them to play your song. It really works and might even land you an on-air interview.

8. Don't take the shrink wrap off the package. If the CD gets smashed in transit by the post office, the disc stands a better chance of being playable, and there's less cleanup involved for the station.

Remember that these tips come directly from someone on the front lines of college radio. They're pretty simple, and can make the difference between getting played or not.