SOUL/BLUES AND RADIO

A SIGNIFICANT UNREALIZED OPPORTUNITY

An article about the state of radio programming in the 21^st Century  by N.P. Thompson, Jr. , Program Manager of Smokestack Lightnin’

Radio programmers in the 1980’s and 1990's almost programmed Soul/Blues music out of existence, whereas the space devoted to Soul/Blues music in record stores and the sales of Soul/Blues CD's increased dramatically in the same time period. An inquisitive person might ask, how is this possible? After all, the conventional wisdom says that sales of recordings are very much dependent on airplay. The more airplay (essentially free advertising) the more sales. If there is no airplay of a recording , a consumer's knowledge of the product is typically limited to word of mouth, which is a far less efficient means of advertising. Then how can Soul/Blues sales be increasing dramatically with no air play? Radio Programmers and others in the radio industry have failed to catch wind of a major revolution in the listening habits of adults. In order to understand what is happening in the music industry, it is necessary to understand what led us to this point.

A LITTLE HISTORY

In the 50's and 60's there were Top 40 stations and classical stations. Virtually all forms of popular music ( R&B, Rock, Country and Pop ) could be heard on the Top 40 stations. It was not unusual to hear George Jones, Sam Cooke, Little Richard, the McGuire Sisters and Elvis, all in the same half hour. There were a few R&B stations and Country stations, but most of the USA heard all "new music" on Top 40. In the 60's Country became a stand-alone format and disappeared from Top 40. Rock, R&B and Pop continued as predominately Top 40, but in the early 70's Rock began to fragment. Album Rock (playing album cuts rather than just singles) became a factor, pulling away more serious Rock listeners, but for the most part, Top 40, which was starting to be called Contemporary Hits Radio (CHR) , was still the home for most Rock fans as well as R&B fans. In fact, for the vast majority of the Rock Era, Rock and R&B fans were essentially the same people, and every year the audience became larger and larger as new listeners came to CHR while older listeners stayed on. At the end of this "era" in radio, which came in the late 80's, the age demographic of the audience was an extremely broad 12 to 49. The only other radio format with that broad an age demographic was Country. More about Country later.

In the late 80's the audience for Rock & Roll music, Soul music (R & B) and Pop music began to fragment. The "Punk" ,"Grunge", "Acid", and "Heavy Metal" factions, which had formerly been strictly an underground movement in Rock, took control of the majority of new listeners in the 12-24 age group. In the R&B field, "Rap" and "Hip Hop" did the same, siphoning off the younger listeners. No longer were youngsters and their parents listening to the same music. Even new Pop music was so strongly influenced by Grunge and Rap that it no longer was attractive to adults. Those over 24 generally detested most of the new forms of Rock and R&B music and therefore would not listen to a station that featured new music. Radio programmers then began scrambling for the adult rock audience which incidentally is much larger and more economically powerful than the pre-adult rock audience.

THE REDISTRIBUTION OF THE AUDIENCE

The fragmentation of the Rock/R&B/Pop music format has taken many twists and turns. One of the first new formats to become successful was Rock/R&B Oldies. This is a totally retrospective format featuring music from the 50's and 60's. Essentially it is like turning on the radio thirty years ago. There are now Oldies stations featuring the 70's, which is the same idea 10 years later. Another angle revolves around the premise that a large portion of the adult audience which was formerly into Top 40/CHR likes only "soft" music. There are also Classic Rock stations , Album Rock stations and stations that feature a mixture of established hits from the past with the new music that is most palatable to adults.

The various treatments are numerous, and confusing, but the essential point to remember is that all these formats are subdividing the former Rock/R&B audience that left CHR in the late 80's. They are not designed primarily to capture new (young) listeners and most do not showcase new music as a rule. The words "established hits" are heard frequently. Adult stations in the 90's (once again, other than Country ) are leery of new music until it is well established and generally considered a hit.

TARGET PROGRAMMING

The art of radio programming ( and it is truly an art ) has gotten very scientific in the 90's as highly focused "target" marketing has gained popularity in the business world. On some formats, the music is focused to very specific demographic targets like" 30-35 year old females in the middle to upper income brackets". The music is occasionally so minutely defined that only "romantic ballads from 1975 to 1985 " or some similar class are included. Market research is done on these target groups in an effort to isolate only those songs that get the very largest number of ultra positive responses in research studies. The goal is never to play a song that does not have the maximum appeal to the maximum number if target listeners. This narrows down the playlists substantially which means on some stations you are very likely to hear Neil Diamond's "Love on the Rocks" when you turn on the radio. This type of programming has met with acceptance based on the assumption that it is not possible to program to a wide age demographic effectively, and that many advertisers want to focus only on the "targets". It is true that some advertisers like specific target groups, but it is not true that a single radio format is unable to reach a wide age demographic effectively.

THE COUNTRY MUSIC PHENOMENON

The most successful radio format by far over the past two decades has been Country music, which has a strong age demographic that ranges from 12 to 64! Country underwent some changes in the 60's to make it more palatable to a wider audience, but since then the format has been relatively unchanged. It is primarily a new music format, but the "oldies" are still played. Many of the new Country listeners are converts from CHR, namely, Rock fans who had no place left to go when CHR no longer featured new music they wanted to hear, and the fragmented Rock formats went primarily to retrospective formats. Why is Country so successful in appealing essentially to listeners of all ages? The answer is simply that Country music is a fundamental and foundational type of music. It sounds much the same today as it did in 1960. From time to time Country has ventured onto new ground musically, but listener backlash has always brought it back to the main stream. The sound of the music is dictated by the fans more than the artists themselves. Artistic self indulgence is generally not well accepted in Country music circles. The allure of new artists and new songs has been enough to keep the fans happy, old and young alike. There has been no need to change the basic nature of the music because it works so well. Any Country fan from 6 to 60 will think a new Randy Travis ballad is just right because he is doing Country as well as it can be done!

If it is true that Country music does ,in fact, effectively reach a wide age demographic, then why is this so? We believe it is because Country is a fundamental type of music that has a universal appeal. Country, when done in the fundamental style so familiar to us all, is recognized and respected everywhere. Everyone may not like it, but Country, done well, is widely respected. Radio programmers are ,of course, well aware of the Country music phenomenon, but have generally assumed that Country is unique and that the programming approach to Country would not work with any other genre of music.

SOUL/BLUES-SIMILAR TO COUNTRY IN MANY WAYS

There is another type of uniquely American music that has the same fundamental appeal as Country. The music is Soul/Blues. All through the Top 40 radio era, R&B and Soul music was as much a part of the format as Rock. Most fans saw no discernible distinction between Rock and R&B. In fact , the term "Rock & Soul" was widely used to describe what was being heard on Top 40. The reason Rock and R&B were so closely aligned during the Top 40 era is because Rock & Roll was essentially just a version ( some say a white version ) of R&B. All Rock historians agree that the Blues and R&B led as directly to Rock & Roll as grapes lead to wine. There is some Country influence in conventional Rock & Roll, but it is essentially R&B. Returning to our original line of thought, the reason that Grunge Rock and Rap does not appeal to adult listeners is because the music has ventured too far from the essential Blues/R&B/Soul sound that has roots that reach back over one hundred years. Contemporary Urban stations program almost exclusively Rap, Hip Hop and other variations of R&B that adults universally dislike. They dislike the messages the songs bring even more than the offensive sound of the music. Once again, the music appearing on most Urban stations has ventured too far from the root sound to appeal to adults. CHR and AAA (Adult Alternative ) program primarily alternative forms of Rock which do not appeal to adults. So if an adult wants to listen to a music station and is tired of "Love on the Rocks" they currently can either go Country or News/Talk, which they have done in droves.

Soul/Blues is a music format as fundamentally pure and powerful as Country, capable of holding fans for life. It just doesn't appear on the radio. Remember we said in the beginning of this article that Soul/Blues music was successful in music stores, but not on the radio. The two fundamental music types that made up Rock & Roll are Country and R&B. Country has been more successful than ever since conventional Rock became fragmented but for the most part, Adult R&B (Soul/Blues) got lost. Bits and pieces of Soul/Blues appear on Oldies formats, and Soft Rock formats, but programmers treat Soul/Blues as though it were just part of something else, which is the complete opposite of reality. In fact, Soul/Blues music is literally the foundation of most forms of popular music as we know it. The record stores are bursting with it. If you take all forms of Blues, R&B, Soul, Funky Soul, Soul Dance, and Blues Rock music as a whole from say the 50's to the present, it makes up 30 to 40% of the display space in most record stores! In terms of record sales, this is very big business. Although radio has failed to recognize the enormity of its appeal, Soul/Blues music has the potential to become as formidable and versatile a format as Country. It appeals to adult listeners up to around age 60 universally. Each year the age group expands by a year. As with Country, when young people in High School and College get "into" music they often become Soul/Blues fans. Once hooked, they remain Soul/Blues fans for life. There is a wide variety of new Soul/Blues music. Typically, five or six new Soul/Blues CDs arrive in stores each week and sell well with no radio exposure whatsoever. With radio exposure the phenomenon would be much more pronounced.

The reason a Soul/Blues format would succeed in attracting such a large and wide demographic audience is the fact that Soul/Blues, like Country remains close to the roots that were laid down over seventy years ago by its pioneers. Listeners, both young and old, revere the sound and reject attempts to change it radically for change's sake. Even young fans of Rap and Hip Hop typically become tired of their strident sounds and shift their preference toward Soul/Blues when they mature. In fact, in the past few years there has been a pronounced shift toward more mellow and traditional sounding R&B on most Urban stations, because their audience is maturing.

IT’S NOT A BLACK-WHITE THING

There might be a tendency at this juncture to ask the question," isn't Adult Soul/Blues really targeting Black Americans and therefore a very narrowly defined format?" If the assumption were that the target market is African Americans that would be the case, but the fact is that since the 1950's Blues, R&B, and Soul music have enjoyed about the same level of acceptance amongst whites as amongst blacks. The focus is entirely on the sound of the music, not the color of anyone's skin. The target market for Soul/Blues is not racially skewed in the slightest.

As popular as it is in record stores, Soul/Blues literally got lost in the radio programming shuffle when the adult Rock audience began to fragment on the 70's and 80's. The only reason Soul/Blues is not currently programmed as a stand-alone format is the failure of programmers to recognize that Soul/Blues music has universal appeal similar to that of Country. The potential market for Adult Soul/Blues is that large segment of the adult populace from the ages of 25 to 54 that no longer listens to CHR and is uncomfortable with the other "fragmented" formats currently available. Considering its massive appeal to adult music lovers, its impressive sales in record stores, and its historical significance as the foundation of most forms of currently popular music, Soul/Blues is badly underrepresented on the radio. Eventually, a programmer will "rediscover" Adult Soul/Blues music and history will be made. Ilakanickel Productions plans to be that programmer! Ilakanickel has a comprehensive CD collection including virtually every recording of any consequence in the history of the Blues, R&B, Soul, and Funk from the early 20^th Century to the present. From this collection, a play list of around 3500-5000 songs would represent the “cream of the crop”, ie, the best sounding hits of the genre. For maximum appeal it would likely be the hits from the late 1950’s to the present that would strike a cord with the most listeners. Ilakanickel already has compiled this play list and is ready to begin programming! Ilakanickel has a series of three CDs that demonstrate the format musically. Interested radio stations should contact N.P. Thompson, Jr. at 407-644-0522 or send an e-mail to blues@smokestacklightnin.com to receive copies of these CDs. 

Revision 4/13/02