Support for Radio

“Radio is the conduit to the people, the voice of the format and the lifestyle’s soundtrack.”

— Sony BMG Nashville VP of Marketing Tom Baldrica, 2011

“We feel like it was just yesterday when we heard our first single on the radio for the first time,” Hillary Scott said. “Here we are four years later with so much gratitude and love in our hearts for our friends at Country radio. With our Own The Night Tour going on this spring, we thought what better time to play Nashville than during CRS…We want this to be a huge party to celebrate our relationship with Country radio, our hometown, and OWNING THE NIGHT!”

— Lady Antebellum, 2011

“Radio remains the best way to get new music into the listeners’ lives.”

— Sony BMG Executive VP Butch Waugh as quoted in Radio & Records, 2011

Country radio is the reason I stand here today!”

— Brad Paisley, Country Music Awards Entertainer of the Year 2010

“Radio sells the bulk of our music.”

— Capitol Records vice president of pop promotion and marketing Joe Rainey, 2010

Radio is “the most consistent, most quantifiable music sales driver.”

— RCA Music Group senior vice president of pop promotion Peter Gray, 2010

“You can text, Twitter and website your ass off and it’s not going to have one-tenth the impact radio has.”

— Country music artist Kix Brooks, 2010

“I think when you look at the audience impressions of some of the biggest pop songs, you’re talking about, you know, over 140 million people are exposed to a song in a week. It’s hard for an artist to even go on tour and sell seats if they don’t have a big radio hit. So, radio in some ways drives these artists’ careers.”

— Lukasz Gottwald, a.k.a. Dr. Luke, pop music producer behind hits from top-selling artists including Ke$ha, Katy Perry, Pink and Kelly Clarkson, when asked, “Do you think radio is still important?” in an interview broadcast on NPR’s ‘Morning Edition,’ 2010

“It’s worth remembering that U2, you know we broke in the United States through Boston and through radio stations like BCN and stuff like that. We depend on radio.”

— Bono, referring to Boston radio station WBCN, in an interview with a WHDH-TV Boston news reporter, 2009

“It’s instructive that a music mogul like Edgar Bronfman is acknowledging local radio’s unmatched promotional value to both musicians and the record labels. Purely and simply, free radio airplay is the primary driver of music sales in America, and local radio stations build a foundation of fans who buy music, attend concerts, and pay $60 for T-shirts. Instead of lobbying Congress for legislation that threatens the viability of its No. 1 promotional platform, Edgar Bronfman and the RIAA should be saluting radio for helping their companies stay in business.”

— NAB Executive Vice President Dennis Wharton, 2009

“Radio is still the leading force of determining what songs and artists break through.”

— Clive Davis, Sony Music’s chief creative officer, in 2009 interview published in USA Today. Davis is a legendary music executive who has signed recording artists like Janis Joplin, Bruce Springsteen, Aerosmith, and Alicia Keys.

“Thank You Radio!! 4 Grammy Awards Last Night!!!”

— Lil Wayne in an email sent to radio stations across the country the day after he received four Grammy Awards, 2009

“I was homeless for about a year and I went back to singing, ’cause that’s what I grew up doing with my dad as a child. We made our money by bar-singing. So I was looking for a place to sing, and it was my own material. And after about a year of being homeless and doing that, a radio station played one of my songs on the air — a bootleg. I didn’t have any demos. I wasn’t trying to get signed. But a record label heard it, and all the sudden it was like being Cinderella. Limousines started showing up.”

— Jewel, Grammy-nominated recording artist, NBC’s ‘Today,’ 2008

“Country radio, thank you so much for being our mouthpiece. You know what we do means nothing if it never gets played, and no one gets to hear it.”

— ’Rascal Flatts,’ Vocal Group of the Year, Country Music Awards, 2007

“I have yet to see the big reaction you want to see to a hit until it goes on the radio. I’m a big, big fan of radio.”

— Richard Palmese, Executive Vice President of Promotion, RCA, 2007

“It is clearly the number one way that we’re getting our music exposed. Nothing else affects retail sales the way terrestrial radio does.”
— Tom Biery, Senior Vice President for Promotion, Warner Bros. Records, 2005

“Radio has proven itself time and time again to be the biggest vehicle to expose new music.”
— Ken Lane, Senior Vice President for Promotion, Island Def Jam Music Group, 2005

“The recording industry is a dirty business – always has been, probably always will be. I don’t think you could find a recording artist who has made more than two albums that would say anything good about his or her record company.”
— Don Henley, The Eagles, July 4, 2002

“If a song’s not on the radio, it’ll never sell.”
— Mark Wright, Senior Vice President, MCA Records, 2001

“Young people…need to be educated about how the record companies have exploited artists and abused their rights for so long and about the fact that online distribution is turning into a new medium which might enable artists to put an end to this exploitation.”
— Prince, 2000

“Air play is king. They play the record, it sells. If they don’t, it’s dead in the water.”
— Jim Mazza, President, Dreamcatcher Entertainment, 1999

“…the longstanding business and contractual relationships among record producers and performers, music composers and publishers, and broadcasters that have served all of these industries well for decades.”
— 1995 Senate Judiciary Committee Report (at A712)

“[i]t is the Committee’s intent to provide copyright holders of sound recordings with the ability to control the distribution of their product…without imposing new and unreasonable burdens on radio and television broadcasters, which often promote, and appear to pose no threat to, the distribution of sound recordings.”
— 1995 Senate Judiciary Committee Report (at A714)