Indie Promotion Should Be Shot!

Have you ever wondered how songs get to the radio stations? Maybe you've wondered how is it that radio stations make their money. It's fairly simple; nothing is free in this world, especially not radios. Just because you ain't paying for it doesn't mean its free. Music stations make a bunch of money and it is money that is paid by record labels to keep their music playing.

http://archive.salon.com/ent/feature/2001/03/14/payola/index2.html

However, there is a middle man that not many people know is there and that middle man is called the "indie promoter". The indie promoter is the person who is the liaison between the record label and the radio station. The indie promoter is usually associated with radio stations who they pay "promotional payments" to which are usually six figures........ tough to say "no, thank you".

Back in the day, around the 1950's, record labels used to slide money under the table or in the record itself so that the DJ would play the record............yea, that was illegal and often referred to as payolas. Today, they are not illegal, the FCC changed the regulations and the record label is allowed to directly give money to the station. However, by law, if cash is exchanged then the audience must hear about it. For example, a song by Sony BMG singer, Chrissette Michelle would be played and after wards the DJ would say "that song was payed for by Sony Records." Yeah, thats pretty lame and stations don't want to deal with that.

The issue here is that everyone hates the indie promotion. They are an unneccesary step in music marketing. Why cant the station and the label just come up with agreements on playing the music. Record labels spend so much money... better yet, waste so much money on that middleman.

There used to be a time when the DJ had the gut, ability, freedom and instinct to choose music. Not anymore. Now it is all decided by the indies. A label will pay between $100,000 and $200,000 for ONE SONG. This money does not go to the station but to the promoter who ends up with most of the money for the "hard labor".

All this goes back to the stupid rules set by the FCC. Another one of the stupidest decisions that the government has made.

In the end................ its all about money.




IKE

Privately Owned Media delivers only for their target audience,

Privately owned media companies still run as businesses. Therefore, they must know who to target in their delivery of whatever their service is. If a newspaper or news station is liberal or conservative in their reports and their take on news than they are aiming there service to the people who are conservative or liberal. It seems impossible that one newspaper and one news channel can get to all people and service all people.

There are people who like FOX better than CNN and there are people who prefer the New York Times over the Boston Globe. Because of this it is not possible to say that privately owned media represents the people. It would be more correct to say that privately owned media takes care of their own target audience.

Live free or die......governed!

I would first like to start by saying, blah, blah, blah. I feel like this article went in to so many different directions that I constantly focus and had to keep taking breaks to finish the reading.

That being said i can now say that there was one part, and only one part that caught my attention and I said "damn, that's deep".
"for the purpose of government is to compel people to do what they would not do of their own volition. In short, government is a process by which some people exercise compulsion on others."

DEEP! I, subconsciously, have always had a problem with governments in general, and ultimately with any type of authority. However, I pretend to be obedient and love being an American so I go along with the government and the rules. I never stopped to think about how government is just kinda giving up your freedom. However, is it possible to live without government?

Let's go back a couple of weeks to when the good Lord flooded the earth and left only a couple alive and the reason was because there were no rules and people were just "governing" themselves. That is the last example that we know about people living without rules. So, if you think about it, we vote for people to take our freedom.

We vote for the people who raise our property taxes and who push business owners to raise prices so that "we" can all benefit from a growing economy. At the end of the day we still cannot say "no I refuse to pay that tax because it is a free country and I do what i want". Yeah, OK, you'd find yourself in jail so fast and not even that would be free.

This country was founded on the basis of FREEDOM and there are only basic freedoms, but they are all limited in a way. For example, it is illegal to pray in a public school and mention the name Jesus or God. When the pastor, who gave the inaugural prayer this year for Obama, accepted the invitation to participate in the ceremony there was an uproar about what he would say at the end of his prayer. When I was listening to him I was waiting to hear what he would do as a pastor and what he would say. The bible that he reads says that at the end of a prayer you need to send it up in the name of his son "Jesus" and he had to go in so many different circles just to end the prayer when he, with all his rights could have just said "in Jesus' name we pray, Amen"



IKE