Tv Is The Ticket For Today's Musicians

[DudeAsInCool]

The Pop Life: Forget Radio, Musical Path to Success Is TV, TV, TV

January 22, 2004

By NEIL STRAUSS

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 21 - Let's compare two artists who have

little in common.

Kelis, the R&B singer produced by the Neptunes, has a song

that's all over the radio, "Milkshake." It has been on the

Billboard singles chart for months, currently residing at

the No. 3 spot. But while the single continues to climb the

chart, Kelis's full-length CD, "Tasty" (Arista), is not

doing nearly as well. This week it is at No. 37 on the

Billboard chart, with sales slipping to 25,000 from 36,000.

Josh Groban, on the other hand, does not have a song on the

singles chart. But this week in Billboard his CD of

operatic pop, "Closer" (Reprise/Warner Brothers), beat

releases by Outkast and Alicia Keys for the No. 1 spot. In

eight weeks, his label said, he has sold some two million

CD's.

So how did Josh Groban become so popular without exposure

on the radio? The answer is that other medium, television.

"Every single time he goes on television, you can bank on

the fact that the next day his album is No. 1 on Amazon,"

said Diarmuid Quinn, the executive vice president of Warner

Bros.

As the Internet changes the distribution of music, it is

also changing the way fans respond to marketing. As Kelis's

chart position shows, a smash hit single is no longer

enough to guarantee strong CD sales. After all, it is easy

for a music fan to hear almost any single on demand online

free and legally or even to see the video at sites like

mtv.com and launch.com. In today's Top 10, the recordings

are either by artists with previous successes, like No

Doubt; acts with several hot singles across different radio

formats, like Outkast; or singers who made their name on

television, like Ruben Studdard.

Perhaps the greatest pop franchise of the moment, usurping

the role of Trans Continental, the company that started the

careers of the Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync in the 1990's,

is the television show "American Idol." (The premiere of

its third season drew more than 28 million viewers on

Monday night.) It has created artificial pop stars, and

then put their influence to the test by releasing their

music on real-world record labels. This has produced three

No. 1 albums. (Interestingly, the phenomenon didn't

translate to film, as the flop "From Justin to Kelly"

showed.) Add to this a recent No. 1 CD by Hilary Duff, the

star of Disney's "Lizzie McGuire" show, and it may seem as

if television exposure is more of a sure thing than radio

these days.

Mr. Groban is just as much of a television-created

celebrity as the singers on "American Idol," except his

popularity came about in a more subtle, grass-roots way.

Every milestone of his career has occurred on TV.

Before Mr. Groban had even made an album, the writer and

producer David E. Kelly heard his music and cast him on

"Ally McBeal" in a singing and acting role. When Mr.

Groban's first CD, "Josh Groban," was released, it was

ushered in by another "Ally McBeal" appearance. After that

came "Larry King Live," the "Today" show, the N.F.L.

Thanksgiving Day game (he sang the national anthem) and

even "The View."

Then, six months after the CD was released, "20/20" did a

profile of Mr. Groban, and his sales increased tenfold: his

CD leapt to No. 12 from No. 108. And the promotional

campaign still wasn't over.

"From there, he did more TV," Mr. Quinn said. "He went on

`Oprah' and boom, there was another explosion. It kept

building, so we created a PBS special and the record went

huge - to two million. So for the new record the clear path

was to put him on TV to launch the release."

With radio formats closed to many types of popular music,

labels have only two options for promoting many releases.

One is to force radio to widen its scope, an unlikely

possibility in the wake of widespread consolidation, and

the other is to find other promotional outlets for the

music. Thus for recent successes by older acts like

Fleetwood Mac, Rod Stewart and the Eagles, the promotional

campaigns centered on television advertising and television

appearances. For newer artists who sing pop or opera, the

same has been true. For them "Good Morning America,"

"Today" and public television have been the equivalent of

MTV.

Many labels now hire so-called TV pitchers, whose job is to

find ways to get their artists on television shows. Lori

Feldman, who fills that role at Warner Brothers, for

example, has been promoting R.E.M.'s greatest hits CD by

putting the band on "Boston Public" and putting the

premiere of its video not on MTV but on CNN.

"I think there's so much media and sensory overload that

you have to get a combination of things to sell a record,"

Mr. Quinn said. "50 Cent was so huge because his music was

multiple formats on the radio. Hilary Duff has a movie, a

video and a TV show. `American Idol' gets huge TV ratings

every week. Other artists can't compete with that very

easily."

To many in the music industry the question is whether the

new breed of television-bred pop stars will have lasting

careers, considering the nature of their exposure. But

perhaps there is a more serious matter at hand. It is

fortunate, for example, that a forthcoming vote-in reality

show, "American Candidate," in which would-be presidential

candidates will battle to be No. 1, will be on Showtime and

not on a major network. If the ratings are as good as those

for "American Idol" or "Survivor," there's a chance that

the candidate could actually end up in office. And that's

potentially a much scarier prospect than seeing Paris

Hilton (who's recording a CD) at the top of the pop charts.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/22/arts/mus...33bed1c9f21d558

[spraymonkey]

But I already listen to the radio like 10hrs a day.(I gotta get a CD player at the shop)