Artist advocacy group The Future Of Music Coalition latest report "Same Old Songs" shows major radio conglomerates continue to thumb their noses at an April 2007 FCC ruling designed to increase airtime on major outlets for indie music.
After finding widespread examples of payola in April 2007, the FCC ordered the four largest U.S. radio groups (Clear Channel, CBS, Citadel and Entercom) to pay $12.5 million in fines and work with the American Association of Independent Music (A2IM) to draft “Rules of Engagement” and an “indie set-aside” including 4,200 hours of unsigned and indie label music.
The new survey of Mediaguide airplay data shows little has changed in the 2 years since the FCC decree. Slight gains on AAA Non-commercial and Country radio were offset by flat share on all other dominant radio formats (AC, Urban AC, Active Rock, CHR Pop, and Triple A Commercial).
The study looked at seven years of national radio play. FMC looked at each playlist and calculated the "airplay share" for five different categories of record labels to determine whether the ratio of major label to non-major label airplay has changed over the past four years.
Not surprisingly, the FMC also found that there were very few slots for any new music .There too, new major label songs typically receive more spins than indies. Finally, FMC looked at the indie labels themselves and found that only a handful of indies have the resources and clout to garner airplay consistently. For the remaining indies, airplay is infrequent and modest, if it happens at all.
The report underscores how radio’s long-standing relationships with major labels, its status quo programming practices and the permissive regulatory structure create an environment in which songs from major label artists continue to dominate.
The report claims the major labels’ built-in advantage, in large part bought by years of payola to commercial radio, combined with radio’s risk-averse programming practices, means there are very few spaces left on any playlist for new entrants.
Independent labels,s comprising 30 percent of the domestic music market, are left to vie for mere slivers of airtime, despite negotiated attempts to address this programming imbalance.
Read the complete report
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