Back in my radio days, we had these things called music meetings.
I’ve been out of the game for a minute so I don’t know if people still do this or just plug TikTok straight into the board and go home.
Tuesday mornings were epic for me though, because on Tuesday mornings, no matter what market I was in, it was time to tell listeners what they wanted to hear.
In Active Rock Radio the time to tell the music trades what you’re playing and how often you are playing it is 12 noon. There are reasons we do this, some involving actually playing the music.
What used to happen for me is I would take a stack of CDs to some person who thought they knew more about music than I did and play the songs. I’d have to explain each and every artist to that person and why this song would or wouldn’t be a good fit for our station. I would have to explain to this person which stations were or were not playing this record. I sometimes would have additional ammo.. like this artist was coming through town or would be willing to do XYZ for our station…
If I believed in a record I would go hard for it. Anything I could do to get “the man” to say go for it. If I hated a record, well….
My dream at one point was to work at a record label.
I hear music differently than other people. I hear how long a song is. I hear how long the intro is. I hear how fast an audience is going to tune out if they’re not passionate about the artist.
So part of the music meeting is telling the artist’s story to the other person who has to agree this is a good song. If you hook this one person into the artist’s narrative, they become fans. You make them believe in it. You paint the picture of success.
You get to pluck bands out of nowhere and get them out there.
You also get to make yourself famous.
(Yeah, hi… that was me. I still believe in this record.)
There are “lazy” Tuesdays when you have all established artists. Like, Metallica dropped a record, you have to play it, even if it’s awful. This is what we call an event record. You make a big deal about revealing it on the air, because the fans are already built in. It could be the worst song that ever happened but Yo, Nickelback has fans.
The days when you get to pick new music are the best, though.
Every new add is a victory. Every new add is changing someone’s life.
Even for a few minutes.
Is it the band? Is it the audience? Who knows?
I still get up once a week and listen to new music. I have no one to influence and no agenda for any of this. I just do it, out of habit. I listen to multiple formats now since I’m not programming but I do it, like people reading newspapers, even if the paper is just advertisements.