The life cycle of a US radio hit

Pro Songwriting Masterclass | J.R. Schumann (SiriusXM Radio | Unearthing Talent | Music Executive & Artist Manager)

The first thing I would say is  truly define for where you are in your career.  What is a hit? And that’s going to change. It should change. It should always, it should be constantly evolving  up and back. Depending on where you’re at in your career,  your  benchmarks of a hit will be different. And so, again, as we talk about, you know, what is the lifecycle of a hit, the most important thing you can do is  have a clear definition and vision of what a hit is.

and benchmark it accordingly. You know, the,  the old days, it’s hard for me to, those words come outta my mouth right now. but, the, like the old days radio  was the first introduction, often of a song to potential fans. It’s where you discovered new artists and new music and the release day, the, of a, of a new song.

The first single from a new record. You’d be listening to the radio all day trying to, trying to catch it, hoping to hear it, this music that you’d heard about and read about and, anticipated.  And then that hopefully leads to demand. And then demand leads to, shipped albums and singles into record stores, and then, which leads to placement in the store,  and then sales  and hit records, right?

that was the,  the old method, and that’s  obviously paraphrasing it, but that’s the old way  today. radio is not always,  or often even, the first way, the first method for fans to hear new music. record stores exist, few and far between.  the idea of, you know, going to your local record store to get your record put into a put into on an end cap or something next to the hottest selling album and hoping, hopefully selling albums by proxy, are gone.

Those days are over. And, you know, on the very rare occasions as it happened anymore, and, you know, record stores are now become, have become sort of, you know, novelty  and, whereas before it was a way of life.

And so, you know, we’re talking about the life cycle of a hit. It’s like, okay, well, so how do we survive in that world? nobody,  when the digital music stuff started to come up, everybody thought, ah, people love going with the, the experience of going to a record store and thumbing through the albums and potentially finding something new and all of that that’ll never go away. It’s just same with video stores and Blockbuster and all that fun fact. not to get too sidetracked here, Netflix, blockbuster had the ability, an opportunity to purchase Netflix  at a fraction, pennies on the dollar for what it would be worth today and  passed on it so that that was a fad never going to work.

People loved too much of the experience of going into the video store for streaming videos and all that to ever become a thing passed on it. Now, Netflix  is the standard of blockbusters out of business.

so I believe there, actually, I believe there is one remaining blockbuster. I think it’s in Oregon. I saw somebody in or, on here from Band Oregon. I think that that, if I remember that last remaining blockbuster is somewhere around there. But, and it too has just become sort of a novelty thing. But, but again, so, you know, it’s, so what do we, we’re looking at this stuff today, so it’s like, okay, the records changed, the industry’s changed the, you know, to use the cliche, the cheese, proverbial cheese has been moved.

Nothing is the same. How do we, what do we do now? and I  would say that  with  this comes more opportunity now, certainly more competition, but more opportunity than ever before. And, you now have the ability to do a  lot of the things that you would never be able to do or  would’ve never been able to do before  you, with just the, the ability to  have your music  readily available.

 Maybe not, strategically placed right away, but available on a national, global  platform at an instant. That is the moment somebody hears your name, they’re able to find your music. is  it would’ve been absolutely unheard of 15 years ago.

Like you, I mean, it, imagine going through a,  imagine having the idea of like, 20 years ago and, you know, or maybe 25, let’s go in the back before, let’s go in the nineties, you know, when CDs were still hot and, and if your CD didn’t sell a million copies in the first week, you didn’t have a successful record, and  tell ’em that you wanted to start releasing single releasing singles. And, but you want it to be available on a platform that, when you upload it to this network of invisible computers, it becomes instantly available worldwide.

 They would’ve thought you were from Mars, right? But here we are today, and I only say that to stay in that short amount of time  that this happened, who knows what the next is going to bring, and I’ll get, and I want to talk about that in a minute, but, so let’s talk about this. So it’s like, okay,  you have the ability now, you don’t have to rely on the systems that were in place before.

You don’t have to,  have tremendous amounts of money to  reach an audience. You don’t have to have, you don’t have to have any money to reach an audience. You have to, if you know, if you have the ability, if you know how to work the algorithms and things, you well, with pennies truly versus what some of these other people spend, have a, a record that goes viral overnight and  suddenly you  have a hit, right?

 So, but let’s say, so the lifecycle of a hit, for me  is,  and what I would say, what I would challenge for you is obviously it starts at birth with the songwriter, right? And the, and the writing of the song, the song is written and everybody agrees, and they, it’s good to get the demo produced. We get the demo and then everybody agrees, oh, this is, this is the song. It’s going to be the single, then the single goes into production and it gets, mastered  and released.

 Now we’re off and running. The clock has begun. So now what? now it’s about getting that record exposed. And so  traditionally, if you’re assigned to a record label, the record label releases the song,  fits it to radio sets a a date that the radio is officially,  they’re targeting airplay, then they map out the time, that it’s going to take that song to  peak on the chart, hopefully number one,  and then onto the next track.

 That is a lifecycle of a hit. You know, and at Country radio, that could be anywhere from 18 weeks to 65 weeks  and or more, similar in pop, like you can have a record that goes up, up the chart radio  and you have a hit, you have a number one single in 12 weeks, 10 weeks.  But  is that the lifecycle of the hit?

Because what if that song was released three years ago?  Now,  what, when, when does the clock start? So what I would say, and I would, I would challenge you with this,  so you, if we’ve redefined the hit, what the idea of a hit is, so we’ve redefined that. We know exactly what we’re looking for, and so we’re off and running. So we release the song.  I would challenge you to, to recognize that there are actually multiple  lifecycles of a hit.

 You have the lifecycle of the hit of, with your hardcore fans that consume everything. The moment you put it out,  there’s a lifecycle of that song.  You have a cycle of, of a hit of your song with the people that are discovering your music for the very first time, and this is the very first song that they hear,  and you have a lifecycle with them.  Then if you’re signed to a rec a, a record label  or a distribution company, you’ll say you’re a distribution company and they’re gonna put an album out, okay?

Then  from the release state, from that point, now there’s a lifecycle connected to that music associated with that project through the distribution company and how long the record’s been up. Then you have the record label life lifecycle when you release the song and they send it to radio  and  set an ad date and going for airplay, and then the lifecycle of the song as it exists on the radio and however long that is  where I think today, one of the things that’s wildly missed, a couple of things, I think, and again, this is, you know, take this just  my observations.

This isn’t the gospel. I hope this maybe just adds a different perspective or gives you a, a different vantage point of something that, you know, you might have been, you might not, you might not have seen before or thought about. I  think the couple of things that are missed right now with new, especially with new artists, is there’s the idea that  you come to na, especially come to Nashville or New York or LA or London or wherever, right?

And  I’m going to write these songs. I’m gonna pitch them. I’m gonna get pitched to a record label. The record label’s gonna assign me, and then they’ll take care of the rest.  Then life is easy at that point, they’ll, it, it’s, we’re off and running, money’s pouring in,  and, and that, that  is the case for a very, very small fraction of a percent of a percent of people that happens  the norm.

That’s not how it happens, anymore. and so like  the, there’s this,  the idea that, everybody is consuming music in the same way that everybody’s con everybody’s on the same page. And that’s why was talking about you’ve gotta understand the different life cycles connected to all the different ways that your music is being consumed. So,  and be, and be and, and, and adjust and respond to it accordingly.

Your hardcore fans, which that’s one of the things that, that’s your, that’s your bread and butter,  your, your fan base. Like when I talk about what’s a hit music, A hit is a song that builds a fan base. That’s your objective, to continue to grow that fan base and engage with them. Turn fans into super fans, turn one into 10, 10 into a hundred  hundreds into thousands. Thousands into millions, right?

But again, we’ll talk about that in a second. But, so you’ve got, that’s your bread and butter. And today, like music is consumed fast there. And there’s a belief system that people want, the newest car, the newest phone, the newest computer, the newest clothes, the newest house, the newest everything except new music. And on the radio, they only want to hear The familiar stuff. We’ll slowly introduce them, or they only will, they’ll, it can only people can only consume one hit song and a one song from an artist at a time.

And the, the lifecycle of that song, you know,  if you put an album out, it’s single one, single two, single three, single four, if you’re lucky, new album.  Well,  with today, once  your album’s out, that music is consumed immediately.

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