Radio Success Theory

The radio was the first grand scale broadcasting device created by man and its invention will forever remain one of the brightest moments in his history. Throughout the years, the content broadcast over radio stations all around the world has evolved from basic news to complex talk shows and in-depth political discussions to specializations in some of the most esoteric styles of music ever played. Your average and most tuned into radio stations (for reasons to be explained later in this text) are ones that focus on music, more specifically, pop music, hip-hop and RnB and your sporadic couple of minute chit-chats that go into the mix. I know this to be for a fact in Germany because I've heard them myself, it's largely true in the US and it is a cold hard truth in this veritably bewildering country of mine.

Let's spend some time with this brief description, shall we?

It's obvious that when a radio station has a wider broadcasting range, its content and opinions are available to a wider portion of the population. But what exactly is the effect of that? The effect of that, my hopefully growing number of readers, is that these radio stations are consistently transmitting through the air waves their common views to their listeners. These views aren't fully manifested in the brief chit-chat sessions between songs. They do, of course, have a share in this sonic transmission but the bulk of it is vicariously transmitted through the selection of songs.

These largely popular radio stations play a major role in forming the general public's opinion regarding music and what it 'should' sound like. Now if you've ever had a personal conversation with me, you'll know how sarcastic I am about these quotations I used with the word should. Music, like any form of art, is never true unless it’s a real expression of the artist; an aural transmission of feelings and perceptions. So when hundreds of musical products come out every year following the same weak, repetitive and over-worked pattern, you'll have a large number of your population believing it to be 'normal' music and over time affirming it as what they like.

There's a grave danger to this and it is the mass flattening of the public taste; presenting to it a consistent dose of mundane, lyrically recycled, verse-chorus abominations in the form of three-to-four minute silver pills that do the exact job they were cheaply design for (thank you Mr. Wilson for your poetic description). The further implication to this flattening is its end result, a public that is largely unwelcoming to any new forms other than that which it was spoon-fed by these radio stations. Any slight variation in the music being played, any extended musical section without any words, any song that exceeds the five minute mark are all instantly frowned upon and deemed unfit for public inartistic-consumption.

As local comedian George Azmy once mentioned, the vast majority of Egyptian pop songs works around a certain set of keywords, a proverbial list-of-essentials that all writers refer to when blurting their numerous one hit wonders, even if most of them don't actually 'hit'. This list he was talking about puts the majority of songs into two sub-categories of the same category: love songs. They're either talking about the good part of it when all goes well or about the bad part of it when things slip off the rails. So as the years pass by and these bland trends become more embedded into the public's mind, the chasm separating them from real music that has any sense of drama or urgency grows ever wider.

My late grandfather used to tune into a certain radio station every night at 10 pm because they used to play Om Kulthoum songs at that time. Om Kulthoum was and remains the best selling artist in the Middle East and North Africa, selling more records than the MTV Music Award winning Amr Diab and the deplorable, self-proclaimed 'king of generation' Tamer Hosny. Om Kulthoum had a voice like no other in the business. Her vocal capabilities were astounding and the public at that time (the 50s and 60s) appreciated that and respected it enough that they showed up in suits and soiree dresses at her concerts. Watching a recording of such concerts in 2010, I can't help but look from a bleak angle and realize that such events look almost irrelevant now when you compare them to the average local pop concert.

The lack of creativity in the music that came after her death was the first clue to the general decline of public taste. The approach became more commercial; the music started shifting towards repetitive concrete structures and the lyrics evolved in a rather unpleasant manner that eventually led it to that aforementioned list-of-essentials. This was aided by many internal factors, like the state of war the country was in during the early 70s, the hardly rising economy and the early sights of the spread of modern age technology.

The wide spread of the radio in Egyptian homes during that time exposed more people to the same thing, thus grinding the proverbial surface of their music receptors to a near flat finish. As time passed and the singers started to increase in number, they had to present something that grabs the attention of the radio stations that were broadcasting to that increasing percentage of the population. This put the stations in a position of power because they became the main channel through which many people listen to music. The lack of diversity in the content they were broadcasting made it easier for them to choose what will be broadcast and made it easier to them to put the majority of their listeners in one frame of mind.

This new found radio power forced many music labels to produce records that will get air time so their investments can pay off. Money forced the labels which consequently forced the singers to sing that radio-accepted kind of songs. This way, the singer gets the record deal, the record company gets air time and therefore better record sales and the radio station can twist the arms of advertisers for more money because it has the huge listener base and of course, the products advertised will become more expensive to cover the advertising expenditure. So the average Joe (or average Ahmed if you want to be culturally accurate) will listen to more mass produced, radio-friendly music, pay more for the records that he's not sure are really worth it and pay more for random radio-advertised products for reasons he can't yet explain.

How's that for a music business?