Longing for the day ...

The power of radio

Anyone who doubts the importance of radio airplay in establishing your value as a musical performer needs to take a long, hard look at the APRA awards. The nominees for Song of the Year are all big radio hits, as are most of the nominees in other categories. Accordingly, the acts and songs that get the publicity are ... the ones who don't need it. Indies and underground acts get no encouragement at all.

Now, you can't tell me that these are all of the best songs written in that year but the reality is that the voting is conducted by members from a list of titles and artists - you can't sample the songs even if you want to. So the people voting simply have no idea what they're voting for (or rather, what they're NOT voting for) because the only eligible songs they know anything about are the ones they've heard on the radio. That only acts to entrench the status quo and give the impression that the acts we all hear about are the only acts who matter.

Nothing could be further from the truth but it underscores the importance of hawking recordings to radio stations and other broadcast media. Online alone is not gonna do it for you.

At least APRA recognises problems in its own domain and tries to deal with them:

Back this campaign all the way. Pity members weren't more widely informed about it BEFORE the Song Summit ...