Country music icon Lee Greenwood, best known for his amazing hit song “God Bless the USA” and for twice being named CMA Male Vocalist of the Year, visited the Tate Publishing and Tate Music Group offices recently to discuss his future book and music projects. Mr. Greenwood performed “God Bless the USA” to honor local veterans during his visit. We are honored to have hosted him and look forward to future developments as they continue to unfold.

EVEN LESS SHELF SPACE AHEAD

If you've been around or talked to anyone in the music industry you've heard over and over that digital distribution is what matters 100% to 99.99% of the artists out there with a product. It allows artists to distribute their music to the masses 24/7. As an example Tate Music Group provides artists with over 170 different digital retail outlets through our partnership with E1 Entertainment. If asked right now I couldn't name you 17 physical retailers that sell music in today's economy and it looks like another Major Retail Chain is redirecting its focus.

Billboard reported today that "BEST BUYS LOOKS TOWARD GAMING"

-- "As Billboard already reported, Best Buy shares dropped 6% on weaker-than-expected quarterly profits. The company did not reveal much about music sales, but it did make clear the category was among the losers last quarter."

What that means in the long run. As expected retail chains have dramatically reduced their shelf space for music, and it looks like the trend will continue. The majority of CD sales come from live events. With the ability to download singles and albums over the internet, physical CD distribution is becoming extinct.

Radio Airplay

Rick Lee Promotions – Radio Promoter Q&A


1. What stations do you concentrate your efforts on for your clients?

I have phone conversations bi-weekly with all R&R (Billboard) Reporters and CRW Reporters. These are the stations that drive the charts and will influence most other stations in what they decide to spin. It is hard to imagine that there are around 150 music programmers that decide what most all of the country will hear on Christian Radio. Getting airplay on non reporting stations might help with booking in those areas but will do nothing to advance your results at radio.

2. What percentage of a chance does a new artist have in receiving a radio spin on a reporting station?

Bottom line is only “great” songs make it to radio. Now there are a number of opinions as to what constitutes a “great” song. One good way to gauge that is simply to ask yourself, or more importantly a non-biased party, is my song as good as the ones you hear on the radio? Understand that most of the songs that make the top 20 have had thousands of dollars put into production. Most of those songs have been written or co-written by writers who consistently have hit songs on the radio. A radio song must be great in lyric, performance and production.

Most stations have a short list of songs in their rotation. They have their top 20 and then a recurrent list that is usually made up of songs that are past top 20. There may be 5 songs in heavy rotation (30 spins) and the medium (20) and light may go down to 10 per week.

Stations are very hesitant to play new artists. Picture yourself driving down the road listening to your favorite station and you hear 5 songs in a row from famous artists that you love and then a song comes on from a person you have never heard of. Unless you are blown away by the first 5 seconds of the song you will be tempted to turn the dial. That thought scares a programmer to death. Radio needs listeners, that is how they either sell commercials or raise funds from listeners. Content is the key and they are trying to appeal to a broad spectrum of likes and dislikes. It is not easy.

3. Why do artists hire radio promoters? What is the average fee a radio promoter will charge for a single, what results should an artist expect?

Music programmers are inundated with requests to play music. A radio promoter is a voice that separates you from the hundreds of other appeals. A radio programmer adds credibility and will increase the chances of your song being heard. A good radio promoter should be able to assure you that your song has been heard by the key decision maker at the radio station. Once the promoter gets it to that point the song must stand on its own merit.

I would venture to say that if there is not a promoter out there working on your behalf your song will not be heard by 90% of the programmers. The only exception to this scenario is that there would be some sort of heightened awareness about the song through publicity, movie theme, great story etc.

A successful Christian AC radio promoter will charge $1500 per month, $6,000 over the life of the song.

4. What is the correct way an artist can promote their single to radio? Should they send physical CD’s?

Sending CD’s to radio stations is a thing of the past. A song will be better received at radio by sending the single through digital delivery services like PLAY MPE. This is an industry standard and is user friendly for programmers. Additionally using digital distribution will add credibility to the song and the artist as well as separating from the sea of songs they are going through. I would say the best way to get a “NO” from any significant radio station would be to take a CD to the station and/or call the station yourself. Another no-no is to get a mass number of people to call the station and try to convince them to spin your song. Once a song is getting spins then that is appropriate for people to call and say “I like that song…..”

5. Is it common place to see a label and a radio promoter to be one in the same?

It is expected that record labels like the music on their label. It is quite another thing for a promoter to believe and push the song along with other valid artists. Independent artists usually hire outside promoters.

Creating BUZZ

Whenever an artists arrives in marketing her at Tate Music Group one of their questions is "How do I create a buzz"? The simple answer is to network your butt off. TMG always emphasizes the importance of social networking...blogs, twitter, myspace, facebook etc...

Tate Music Group understands how important these networks are for artists that our production team goes as far as building and designing these sites for all of our guys so that they have a professional page to direct family, friends and fans too.

In a recent article in Billboard it looks like MTV understands the importance and power of social networking and wants to create an outlet where fans can follow artists and keep up with all of their network sites.

"MTV Networks wants to establish its Web properties as the go-to outlets for fans to track all of their favorite artists’ social media activities.

MTV executives said the initiative is aimed at "super-serving" music enthusiasts that expect back-and-forth relationships with their favorite performers, while enabling fans to foster those relationships in a single locale."

Regie Hamm's Release Party

Tate Music Group Director of Development and Music Operations Bryan Norris and Associate Director of TMG Marketing Chris Rutherford were in Nashville this past week for TMG Artist Regie Hamm’s official release party for both his new CD “Set it on Fire” and book “Angels and Idols”.

Regie’s release was held at the Nashville office of SESAC, where Regie has been a SESAC writer for over 16 years and awarded SESAC writer of the year 4 times. The turn out was really impressive with about 15 different media representatives in attendance close family and friends and a ton of industry pros. The place was packed!