Other Nationwide Stations, Magic, Heart And The Bigger Commercial Stations Are Supporters Instead Of Leaders When It Comes To Choosing The Music They Play.

Tuesday, September 13th, 2011 at 5:31 pm

So Keith Richards has saved ‘oldies ‘ station Angel Radio from going to the wall. In the meantime, Ronnie Wood is the saviour of Emphatic Radio with his new show that’s raking in record listeners. Bob Dylan’s on Radio 2 – what next, Bizarre Al Yankovich’s all-hit breakfast show on Radio Lollipop? !

Seriously though, it’s great that our elderly legislators of rock are taking to the airwaves – well, I suppose if your new album’s no longer judged worthy of airplay on our traditional stations, why not take over a show, so that you can play whatever you want?

But I would like to see a bit of a reorganization in the way the music we hear on our traditional stations is chosen. I’m especially thinking about Radio 1 here.

Radio two is a brilliant station these days with a varied playlist, whose metamorphosis was masterminded by former controller Lesley Douglas and continues to develop through inventive programming, excellent documentaries and superb live sessions and shows.

Other national radio stations, Sorcery, Heart and the bigger commercial stations are followers instead of leaders when it comes to choosing the music they play.

Radio 1 however seems to have got caught in a self-obsessive spiral in much the same way as it did in the 90s, when its output turned the station into a pirate radio-sounding wind tunnel of repetitive and faceless dance music that was almost unlistenable ( and I say that as fan of the class, having grown up with house music as my teenage soundtrack ).

Radio 1 has once more become too cool for school and ghettoized, caught in a groove where the playlist is controlled by same-sounding dubstep pop, which barring 1 or 2 exceptions such as the glorious Chase & Status and Nero, is back to its mid-nineties low point.

What I suspect we need are way more representative and sundry playlists at radio, where there is a chance for all these genres to polish and share the airwaves. As it stands at Radio 1 – or so I’m informed by the leading radio pluggers in the business – everything must be stood up for by a tastemaker or come from a particular scene ( now dubstep ) to have a chance of airplay support.

Accordingly, daytime output is deluged with one common sound and all the other genres are locked out till a chink in the armour appears wide enough for a band ( or a vocalist or a duo etc ) who’ve mobilized enough support to break through.

For the last 2 years the talk in the industry has been about how things are going to shift back towards guitar bands. But as yet, this has not materialised, because labels can’t get the support from producers because all they would like to play is dubstep because they suspect that’s what the children desire and are listening to.

If they only went out to gigs and festivals as much as I do and saw the range of acts and sorts of music that young 16-24 year olds are really into, then our traditional airwaves would sound significantly different. Younger people out there love people, they adore acoustic singer-songwriters, they love reggae, pop, guitar bands, female singers, duos, boy bands and girl bands and they love them all the time.

What do you suspect happens to all the fans of guitar bands or vocalist composers or soul singers when that class of music isn’t given national airplay, during periods of mono-sonic doldrums? They don’t just cease to exist. They’re still out there, but they do not have any exposure to the acts that satisfy their tastes, which is an enormous missed opportunity for radio stations eager to improve their reach.

You will disagree that this is where six Music shines, but I suspect that all radio stations should have open minds rather than limited focus. BBC’s Introducing is a superb and well-executed passage for music, but in this digital age where it could be easier to make and distribute music, the issue is still exposure.

One ray of light nationally is the amazing Extraordinary Radio, which is cleverly taking the BBC’s Introducing format a step further and featuring music from their amazingtunes.com site. Fans choosing the music effectively, moderated by a bunch of established music business presenters like the effervescent Gill Mills, with her new music show and Jim Gellately up in Scotland, as well as the Guardian’s music man Paul Lester.

Another fantastic platform which has appeared is the British Council’s Selector Radio show. Lately nominated for a BT Digital Music Award for Best Show and fronted by Goldierocks, the show promotes English music worldwide.

The show now goes out on FM in more than 30 countries worldwide to an audience of more than three million. Bands such as Dinosaur Pile Up and artist Jamie Woon, whose music has been played on the non-playlist restricted show, have found new audiences in countries as far apart as Mexico and Kazakhstan.

Dinosaur Pile Up received so much interest in Mexico City that they ended up going out there and playing to a sell out crowd of more than 3,000 people in a country they’d never formerly been to as reported tagza.com.

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