If public museums have been, for several hundred years, the most important real estate in art, then radio has been the public museum of pop music, the great hallway of mass exposure. Airplay was so critical to building popularity for new music in the mid-twentieth century that music labels developed elaborate “payola” schemes to directly pay radio stations to play their songs. Even into this century, omnipresent airplay is critical to make a hit. “Every bit of consumer research we’ve ever done shows only one consistent thing: Radio is the number one driver of sales and the biggest predictor of
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