Two
hard rock bands, one young and one old, walk into a bar. The bartender
asks to see the older band’s ID. “Welcome,” she says. “I loved your
music when I was a college student in the 90s.” The younger band hands
the bartender its ID. “Sorry,” she says, fiddling with the knob on her
FM radio, “you’re far too young to be in here. Go get a few radio hits
and come back in a decade or two.”
 |
| Ghost BC, a.k.a. Ghost, one of the few metal bands with songs popular at both Pandora and hard rock stations. |
Such
is the dilemma for young hard rock and metal bands. Radio has all but
turned its back on the hard rock and metal stars of tomorrow. It’s a
shame. Radio has remained the most common source of music discovery,
according to numerous surveys over the years. The old-fashioned format
is tied with friends/family at 68 percent, according to Edison Research and Triton Digital.
Where do fans of metal and hard rock go for new music? Not commercial
radio. Metal, and its umbrella genre, hard rock, has become a format for
the middle-aged listener. People wanting to find new, hard music will
find what they’re looking for at Pandora.
But
hard rock and metal do well at Pandora, a democratic platform that
rewards songs for their listeners’ positive reactions, not the decisions
of radio program directors. Metal,
a sub-genre of the more popular rock category, is tied for 13th in
monthly time spent listening and currently gets over 6 million unique
listeners per month. Rock,
which includes hard rock and other types of rock music, has the most
monthly listening hours on Pandora, ranks 2nd in monthly time spent
listening and gets 50 million unique listeners each month.
The
numbers show the severity of hard rock radio’s problem. According to
Nielsen BDS data, only 10.5 percent of hard/active rock stations’
playlists are current tracks while 82.9 percent are legacy/golden tracks
and 6.6 percent are recurrents (“active rock” stations have an emphasis
on hard rock, “recurrents” are former current songs that still get
spins). For comparison, current songs are 85 percent of music played at
both pop and rhythmic (a catchall spanning upbeat rhythmic pop, hip hop
and upbeat R&B) and 68 percent at country.
A side-by-side comparison shows Pandora’s appeal for metal fans. Two thirds of Pandora’s 30 most popular metal songs have no spins at a panel of monitored radio stations that lean heavily toward hard rock and metal. This list of artists includes True Widow, Lesbian, Charred Walls of the Damned, High Spirits, Skeleton Witch, Salem’s Pot and Wode, up and coming bands that are far from household names. The songs with meaningful number of spins — more than 100 or so per week — includes “Square Hammer” by Ghost B.C., a Swedish heavy metal group signed to Loma Vista Recordings, the label founded by A&R exec Tom Whalley that’s part of Concord Music Group. Last week, “Square Hammer” is currently #29 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock National Airplay char and #8 on Pandora’s metal top 30. Veteran groups Anthrax (represented twice) and Meshuggah also make the list. The 26 lesser-known artists popular with Pandora have received zero or near zero spins at commercial hard rock stations.
Few
of the bands in Pandora’s top 30 have ever received regular airplay at
active rock. None of the top 10 songs on Pandora’s “New Rock” station is
currently in the top 25 songs on the Active Rock broadcast chart. On
Pandora’s “New Metal” station, the most popular song that receives
airplay is “I. The Planet” by Norma Jean,” heard almost exclusively at
Christian radio airplay, and “Square Hammer,” which last week was #29 on
Billboard’s Mainstream Rock National Airplay chart.
And
while metal is relatively popular at Pandora, there’s still room for
improvement at Pandora. Metal accounted for 4.0 percent of US album
purchases in the first half of 2016, according to BuzzAngle
(track sales and streams were converted into albums for this metric).
Yes, metal fans are dedicated album buyers but they’re getting into
streaming. Metal’s share of listening hours at Pandora is currently
about 1.5 percent. The 2.5 percentage point spread is indicative of the
opportunity to attract metal fans’ attention that isn’t being satisfied
by radio.
Active
rock radio’s risk aversion has pushed playlists to the safety of music
from the ’90s and ’00s. Well known names like Disturbed, Slipknot, Korn
and Red Hot Chili Peppers dominate playlists and squeeze out the hard
rock and metalcore preferred by today’s young audience. There are a few
theories why that has happened. One issue is the long, difficult slog
faced by active rock songs. A Jacobs Media Strategies survey
found the average active rock song takes months for a new song to gain
get established, requiring radio stations to remain faithful to a song
until it resonates with listeners. In comparison, country, which has a
reputation for lengthy promotional cycles, sees a new song get
established in just a few weeks. But there are “more barriers to making
hits in active rock — and more [portable people] meter punishment for a
bad risk — than in any other format that relies on new music,” according
to Fred Jacobs of Jacobs Media Strategies.
Radio
expert Sean Ross has noticed commercial radio’s inability to graduate
“post-Linkin Park hits to CHR,” or contemporary hit radio, otherwise
known as top 40 or pop radio, he explained in an article last month.
At the same time, the common strategy of starting songs at alternative
radio means an alternative hit “can be tagged with ‘too weird/not rock
enough’ for active rock.” (This helps explain why the Hot 100 is devoid of rock songs.)
“Active
rock programmers have bemoaned a dearth of current product for years,”
he wrote. “Many have responded by becoming more library-based and adding
some surprisingly mainstream classic rock (Queen, Steve Miller, Tom
Petty). Now stations like KVRK Seattle and KFMB-FM San Diego have
emerged that simply eliminate most recent music altogether.”
A
promotional email by the band The Amity Affliction sums up the state of
active rock. The band’s single “All Messed Up,” from an album released
on Roadrunner Records, was having a difficult time getting radio play
even though, as the email proclaimed, it was “outselling and
out-streaming half the records on the active rock chart.” The point was
clear: there’s a disconnect between what people are streaming and what
active rock programmers are spinning. Broadcast radio is too slow to
adapt and incapable of matching streaming’s diversity and depth. But at
Pandora, to borrow a song title from Night Ranger, you can still (hard) rock in America.
Peoples, Glenn. "Shunned By Radio, Hard Rock Is Still Alive And Well In
America." Hypeot.com. Accessed November 1, 2016.
http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2016/10/in-this-piece-glenn-peoples-looks-at-hard-rock-and-metals-roll-in-the-industry-for-although-the-style-of-music-has-little-t-1.html
