Indie Music Not Hear on Radio

The Future of Music Coalition released the results of an analysis they completed to determine what radio is playing.

The results:

Using playlist data licensed from Mediaguide, FMC examined four years of airplay – 2005-2008 – from national playlists and from seven specific music formats: AC, Urban AC, Active Rock, Country, CHR Pop, Triple A Commercial and Triple A Noncommercial. FMC calculated the "airplay share" for five different categories of record labels to determine whether the major labels’ ratio of airplay share has changed at all in the past four years.

The data indicate almost no change in station playlist composition in this period. Specifically, the national playlist data indicated very little measurable change in airplay share from 2005-2008, with major label songs consistently securing 78 to 82 percent of airplay. The format data showed some modest increases in airplay for indies on some formats (Country and AAA Non-Commercial, in particular) but otherwise the data from year to year changed very little. An examination of airplay by release date showed that many formats leave only small portions of their playlist for new material, with current songs sprinkled in among well-worn hits.

Not surprisingly, there is only 18% dedicated to non-major label musicians. I guess the flip side to this is that most people are not learning about new music from terrestrial radio. It's YouTube, friends and social networks leading the way to discovering new artists. Does this make it easier for news artist to get heard? It certainly is more accessible for them.