Starting in September 2022, Ron Poore and Atlantic Records' radio promotion team emailed and called alternative rock program managers for months to convince them to add Paramore's new single, “This Is Why,” to their playlists. Their efforts paid off: The song hit No. 1 on the Alternative Airplay chart in February 2023. “You work on this record for weeks and weeks and weeks and all of a sudden it starts showing up in the survey,” says Poore. Atlantic's senior VP of promotion, alternative and rock and 21-year veteran of Death Cab radio hits for Cutie, Coldplay, Portugal. The Man and others.
“This Is Why” is an example of a classic label promo story: experienced major label personnel working radio connections to achieve chart success. But it didn't end well for Poore. In February, Atlantic fired Poore as part of an industry-wide downsizing that particularly hit the promotion teams.
“Five years ago, 10 years ago, it's radio, radio, radio,” says Poore. “And now it's the last thing we do on those labels.”
Layoffs at two of the top companies, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group, began in February, affecting dozens of employees, many in traditional media positions such as publicity, marketing and radio. (Sources say similar cuts affected Sony Music Entertainment.) The layoffs had nothing to do with the companies' financial health: Universal earned $12 billion in revenue and $1.3 billion in net income last year, and Warner said that the best quarter ever is coming off. But top executives from both companies said they were adapting to a long-running industry shift toward new technology.
In a statement in late February announcing the layoffs of about a dozen employees, Julie Greenwald, President/CEO of Warner-owned Atlantic Music Group, said, “The changes we're making today are happening primarily in the radio and video groups.” And Lucian GraingeUniversal's president/CEO, told staff in January, before the latest layoffs, that the label “will not just expand geographically and leverage new technologies,” but “further evolve our organizational structure to create efficiencies in other areas of business”.
From a practical point of view, according to Diane Monk Harrison, head of radio at Warner-owned distribution company WEA, who lost her job in mid-March, which meant layoffs in the industry were “disproportionately affecting the promotion of radio.” Broadcast business shrinks: The largest radio company, iHeartMedia, has cut staff following the pandemic, including a recent wave in recent weeks. This means there are fewer programmers for major labels to lobby for additional playlist additions. “Radio is still hugely important,” he says Skip Bishop, a former longtime promotion executive at Sony and other companies who has been a consultant for more than a decade. “But it's just an evolution. You don't need six regionals, three nationals, two vps and one svp [at a label] when 20 to 45 people make the decisions that 200 people used to make on the radio.”
Adds a major-label source: “In the old world, you might have radio advertisers making the same, or more, as heads of A&R. This is not going to happen in the new world, for obvious reasons. What happens is that the record companies keep the best radio people.''
As listeners have moved away from legacy radio stations in favor of on-demand streaming, radio activity has declined: According to Nielsen Media Research data, weekly audience has declined during the pandemic, from 89% of American adults in 2019 to 82% in 2022. The medium's most resilient advertising area is digital sales, a recent study by the Radio Advertising Bureau and Borrell Associates shows, and no on AM-FM airplay. “The only segment of radio that's growing is not dependent on music,” he says Gordon Borrell, CEO of Borrell Associates, an analyst group focused on media advertising and marketing. “I don't think the record companies are stupid about what's happened in the industry in terms of listeners and they're well aware of the aging nature of terrestrial radio programming.”
iHeartMedia is more than $5.2 billion in debt and has laid off staff in recent years, including a wave of layoffs reported as early as 2024. (Audacy, another broadcast giant, filed for bankruptcy in January, with $2 billion in debt. ) As the number of radio workers dwindles, the major label personnel trying to influence them have made corresponding changes. “It makes sense that your radio exposure shrinks when there are fewer people on the radio to deal with,” he says. Don Christie, a veteran radio programmer who was recently fired as iHeartMedia's senior vice president of programming in Tulsa and Oklahoma City. “I've dealt with a lot more 'nationals' in recent years [from labels] from what used to be called your local type'.
And many independent artists are releasing entirely on both labels and radio, having “already done the heavy lifting” to overcome TikTok and other social media, according to an indie R&B and hip-hop music executive. “Nothing will ever go back to the way it was just five years ago,” says this person. “A record label can shift from field executives to mobile digital executives, just as radio now relies on its digital real estate to generate additional revenue.”
But the radio business has shown resilience: 82% of US listeners is no small number, and a recent Chartmetric study shows that radio retains a strong ability to break out hits. Stations aired 7.4 million songs about 102.4 times each, for a total of 755 million spins, in 2023, and the top 10 radio songs earned significant streaming boosts. And while rock, pop and hip-hop artists have become less dependent on radio in recent years, some genres, including Latin and country, remain connected to radio. “Music companies are still very important strategic partners with the entire radio industry and there are no signs of that letting up,” he says. Wendy Goldberg, an iHeartMedia spokesman, in a statement. “Record labels rely on broadcast radio to break out new artists, because to introduce new music to the masses, you need radio and its unparalleled appeal.”
At many record labels and artist management companies, the radio and streaming teams work in tandem, befitting the striking relevance of the two mediums. “As of right now, they're both very valuable,” he says Bob McLean of Crush Music, which manages Miley Cyrus, Green Day, Fall Out Boy, Sia and others and employs radio and record label veterans on its promotion staff. “You could argue [radio] it's not what it was 15 years ago. When you had radio success, that was it. Sometimes you used to drive with the radio and now the radio comes later.”
Strong radio promotion departments were expensive for labels to maintain: It costs money to send employees from New York, Los Angeles or Nashville to build relationships with developers across the US. Monk Harrison calls them: employees who understand how fans in Omaha or Detroit discover artists, attend shows and watch local entertainment from concerts to sports. “Relationships are still key and no algorithm can replace that,” he says David Lyndona former executive at Capitol, Island and Arista who is program director at jazz station WCLK in Atlanta.
Ed Brennan, who was Atlantic's vice president of alternative promotion until he lost his job in late February, plans to use those kinds of relationships to start his own company, White Leather Projects, potentially focusing on artist management, tour marketing and radio promotion. In the meantime, focus on more important issues. “The first thing I did when I got the call that my position was going to be eliminated, I volunteered to chaperone my son's field trip. It's 8,” says Brennan. “I'm excited for the unknown future.”
Additional reporting by Gail Mitchell.
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/pro/record-label-layoffs-radio-promotions-staffs-why/
