Radioplay Speculation & Analysis

I've been thinking about Clay Aiken's radioplay prospects for the new album lately. Two very important things have happened since Clay's last mainstream album cycle, one of them being the increasing impact of legal digital single downloads on radiostation playlists, and the second being the Eliot-Spitzer radio payola investigation that will supposedly stop or at least reduce record labels' buying airplay for their artists. Actually, the two go hand-in-hand, because with dimished "independent promotion" from the label, radio programmers don't know what to play and decide instead to look at what the people are buying independent of airplay, as well as the name recognition of the artists in question.

For songs yet to be released downloads, HYPE has everything to do with instant impact in the last calendar year. Obviously if you're a radio darling like Beyonce or Justin Timberlake they play you more than 1000 times a week coming out of the gate just based on name recognition. But even if you've had mixed degrees of success on radio like Jessica Simpson, or no history in the field of music like Paris Hilton but have large amounts of hype for being quite famous, you still have a good shot at good initial airplay. Of course, established artists with past hits under their belt like Madonna and Pink have had their struggles on the pop format lately still had pretty decent receptions for their lead singles, making the top 20 on chr/pop, although they dropped pretty fast after the hype died. That may well happen with the other artists named as well, but we won't find out until their albums actually hit the stores.

Looking at the iTunes vs. airplay chart, there are a few artists of note:

Jessica Simpson actually hasn't been as big a download darling as one might have expected, with "Public Affair" not yet making the top 15 on the overall iTunes chart, whereas JSimpsons' airplay, while high enough to have generated 1400+ bullets initially, has slowed down to about +500, perhaps corresponding to the lower than expected downloads, though I fully expect the release of her much ballyhooed music video to impact both sets of numbers positively.

Paris Hilton's airplay has been holding steady at about +500 almost the entire way through her chart run, as it has been getting pretty decent download numbers, making it to the top 10 at iTunes for quite a few weeks, though the numbers are now dropping and may impact whether "Stars are Blind" makes the Top 10.

The new Christina Aguilera and Gnarls Barkley singles have held up remarkably well in the last month or so on downloads (Top 5 on iTunes). Gnarls Barkley's airplay has been on fire pretty much on every format nonstop for weeks, and while airplay for Aguilera stalled for a while by the July 4th holidays, it has picked up again with a vengence, with spin increases bypassing some of the newer, also highly hyped songs on the chart like Beyonce and Jessica Simpson.

Based on digital sales, I'd also predict that John Mayer, whose single "Waiting for the World to Change," was released to retail just this Tuesday, has already hit the Top 10, even though his primary airplay source is Adult Top 40, a format that hasn't been extremely conducive to generating sales (see the Goo Goo Dolls), is about to get a pretty good push on the pop format (should his record label decide to do so) because radio will see that he is selling based on AT40 play and will then be receptive, even though his hit singles on AT40 in the past have been somewhat hit and miss on pop.

I also found this post from a radio station intern posting at Pulse Music Board that gave some insight to how playlists are generated:
I'm just an intern and from what It seems like... if you make it big then u'll obivously get played... but how to make it big? Well, radio has got to love you... a strong fan base that request the song every hour (Not to mention that radio stations...don't always pick up the phone... and they can care less <--- I'm talking about stations that follow others which is like the majority of the stations in the US because all it takes is to play one song that someone might like that much to switch to the next station... remember "RADIO" is a bizness... most top 40 stations are going to play something that is familiar to ppl ... a lot of stations don't want to be that "GROUND BREAKING MUSIC STATION" b/c it's too risky...you could lose listeners by playing music that's just too 'TRENDY / NEW' and when you loose listeners u start loosing clients, sponsors, etc.... and there goes the biz for that station... Now... how to get those songs played on the station and how to make it become a hit... my guess would be keep on requesting it to those huge stations that compete with each other to get the latest thing out... example KISS FM <- that's one I'm familiar with in the Chicago Land Area....if all the bigstations pick it up... and downloads push the single to the hot 100... and if it breaks into "AT LEAST" top 20-30 the song will be added to every station...My station that I Intern will "ABSOLUTELY NOT" add a song or play a song that is at number 41 + .... that's pretty much the rule I guess for many smaller stations... well my station at least... Believe it or not they wouldn't play X-Tina's new song until it broke into the top 20... :D Huh~ The radio world is so complicated and also so unfair... but that's just how it is .... it's a BIZ~

So what exactly does all of this have to with Clay Aiken? While Clay isn't an established radio darling like some, he has a high name recognition factor and people are curious about him, so I think that alone (assuming all the promotion is in place from the label) can drive a radio single into the Top 20 in the span of two months. The fact that he's well known to have an excellent voice (even some haters and don't likers will acknowledge the voice) will give him a "safe" factor against payola investigations since if someone like Clay gets airplay, the radio programmers can point to his known talent and established following and say there is a demand for his music. As for downloads, there's been discussion/debate of whether one should download the new single instantly when it's made available or wait until an optimal time to help the song peak as high as possible on the Hot 100. I would have to say the case is definitely in favor of the former because that initial download burst of getting the track into the top ten digital songs is what will get the song noticed by consumers and programmers alike, and after that the song has hype (in addition to that generated by Clay's name recognition alone). So I think all the lynchpins are in place for a good showing out of the gate for a new Clay Aiken single, and whether airplay holds up long term for him or any currently hyped artist will then depend largely on the material. Now if only the new music would actually arrive...

Tags: new music, Jessica Simpson, Christina Aguilera, Pink, Gnarls Barkley, Justin Timberlake,Clay Aiken, John Mayer, Paris Hilton, Madonna, Beyonce, radio airplay, digital singles, pop radio