College/Community Radio - Time to Change?

Blockbuster Video survived the change from VHS to DVD, but when the preferred method to view movies switch from renting DVDs to accessing movies online or through on-demand options, they decided to stick to their guns and continue renting DVDs. That didn’t work out to well for them. Lots of companies and even industries have felt the impact of not changing. Kodac, Blackberry, Nokia, the list goes on. In the communication industry they’re seeing a change in phone preference. Landlines are become a thing of the past as people start solely using their smart phones.

The music industry has always struggled with change. Some of the most impactful changes, the adaptation of the CD, the launching of a channel that showed music videos 24/7, were all initially met with very strong resistance from the music industry. When the industry has begrudgingly aligned with a change, it’s usually after a significant impact on sales or a major switch in end user usage.

Similar to how Blockbuster was impacted by advances in digital options, the music industry has also had its own struggles with adapting, adopting and adjusting away from the traditional way of distributing music. This isn’t just in the physical CD versus downloading department. Music delivery to radio and other outlets has also changed. Radio stations used to receive a countless number of packages on a daily basis filled with CDs, bios, press clipping and classic glossy 8X10s of the artists all vying for consideration for airplay. Now all that stuff can be delivered digitally to stations all around the world with a simple push of a button. Commercial radio has accepted this change with open arms. No more crates of CDs they will never play ending up in the dumpster, no more needing to find space to store the CDs they are playing. But not everyone has moved into the digital delivery era. 

A radio format that has refused to adopt a digital delivery model is College/Community radio. College/Community radio programmers still prefer that artists and labels send them physical copies of the CDs they want considered for airplay. Some stations going as far as posting on their webpage “We do not accept digital versions of your music!” As always, there are some exceptions to this ‘rule’ but for a grand majority of the stations. Physical CDs are still what they want you to submit.

This is something that needs to change.

From the artists/labels perspective the cost of sending out CDs has gotten expensive. Gone are the days of order massive print runs of CDs and most manufactures/duplication companies have removed minimum order requirements and replaced them with a tiered pricing strategy where the price to print increases the view CDs you order. There is next to no cost with a digital copy. Many artists have even started only making their music available digitally. Aside from printing physical copies, other costs have increased for the artists and labels. Canada Post is in the process of revamping their service and included in that are steadily increasing rates. Sending CDs through Canada Post has had other impacts as well. Delivery times seem to have lengthened. What used to take a couple days, now seems to take a couple weeks, if the package gets delivered at all. We’ve sent out 3 releases by three different artists since the beginning of 2015 and to date none of the college or community stations we sent them to have received them. All three packages where sent out on different dates. Sure in the past there have been the occational station that haven’t gotten the packages, but all of them???  For 3 separate releases sent out on different dates!?!?! Sure we could track the packages or courier them to the stations, but those services are extra fees and for the independent artists, which college/community radio are typically very supportive of, don’t make enough money to pay for extra things like that.

For College/Community radio not changing can also have an impact. These stations pride themselves in being different. Their listeners tune in because it’s not the same over played ‘hits’ that you often get inundated with listening to Commercial radio. A lot of this ‘different’ music comes from independent artists or smaller labels operating on very limited budgets. With costs rising to deliver their music and the growing lack of a guarantee of delivery (thanks Canada Post), these artists and labels will start to look for other more cost effective avenues to showcase their music.

Another area in which not changing could have an impact on College/Community radio is simply space. Stations can get up to 40-50 CDs a week. Not all of these CDs will get selected to be included in their library, but those that do you still need the space to store them. Have you ever seen what a music library looks like at the typical College/Community radio station? 

In some situations, the majority of the space being occupied by the station is being used by the music library. Most of these libraries are epic, with 1000s of CDs, LPs, Cassettes and you may even find some 8-Tracks and recordings done on old real-to-real. Most of these stations have a lot of pride in the depth and size of their music library, but the reality is as new music is released, the library will grow bigger and bigger which will lead to a need for more space. More space costs money and for a radio format that relies on community funding, increased costs isn’t always something that can be managed.

Now in the College/Community radio station’s defense, even if they were to start accepting digital versions of music they would still need to store it. Sure a server with the capacity to store that much music won’t take up that much space in their office compared to the ‘music library’, but the cost to upgrade their current system to link into the server they would need to store the library would probably come with a hefty price tag. What if the server crashes? What if there’s a corrupted file or a virus? Digital isn’t 100% secure as a format.

Over the past couple of months while trying to see if the stations we sent these releases to actually received them, so stations have suggested sending them a link to where they can access the music from, but this has also been followed with a disclaimer that digitally submitted music doesn't get as much airplay because they have to pull it off their server quicker to make room for other new music. Other stations have shared that they are trying to get set up to receive music digitally, but I think if it's going to be something sustainable we need to get all of the college/community radio stations to be open to digital deliveries. 

Now along with trying to be fair and share both sides good and bad of changing and not changing, I am also willing to admit that I could be completely off my rocker. There may be more reasoning behind requesting only physical copies be submitted. I'd love to hear from some of my other music industry friends on what they think of this rant. Do we need to make this change? Am I missing something or am I even hitting the nail right on the head?