The good news is that in August of this year we can all start sleeping in late on Saturdays. There will no longer be a concern about rising early to collect your mail. Congratulations to the City of San Francisco for losing the Super Bowl. Collecting the garbage after the parade is just a pain in the neck. Death is never a pleasant topic but think of the labor savings by “Digging Two” at the same time. It all depends on how you look at life. You can spin anything in your favor if you take a minute and think it through.
The businesses we make our living in today are not the businesses we got into years ago. In those days the record companies were flush with money (apparently by the way they spent money on getaways, salaries and contracts). Radio was never really flush with money. Even in the old days many stations barely got by and often did so with trade relationships with local sponsors. Salaries were never high in my end of the radio business. I was making less than $1000 a month when I worked in Denver years ago. The other side to that figure? According to the Department of Labor, my salary back then is equal to $53,000 a year today. Isn’t inflation fun? If only I knew I was doing so well back then. If there are any small market disc jockeys reading this, believe me they are asking where that $53K a year job is.
I am fortunate to have a job. I know that. I love my job(s) and I talk to folks every week that are looking for work. Most often it is not to move up in market size or to make more money. It is because they are out of work. Consolidation took and continues to take a toll on broadcasters. I am not against consolidation. I am not even against voice tracking if done correctly. I am in favor of efficiency. Consolidation and voice tracking are both efficient.
I look at labels and it seems there are less people working music today. It seems the hits came from the upper reaches of labels and folks just moved up without really being replaced below. Of course there are less labels today and thus fewer positions. There are certainly less sales today than 5-10 years ago but that appears to be coming back along with downloads, which is a new pipeline to the consumer.
The businesses we got into years ago are never going to reach the employment levels of the past years. Even if the music business sees resurgence and first week sales for the No. 1 CD jumps from 130,000 to 600,000, the business model is never going to allow for re-staffing. Radio is NEVER going to do away with voice-tracking. It is never going to break up clusters and sell to local broadcasters again.
My company, West Virginia Radio Corporation, owns 32 stations in eight markets with the corporate headquarters in Morgantown, but I can be at any of the clusters in less than three hours. We think of the company as being locally operated, even if there is a corporate structure in place. I can tell you if the radio business could get back to smaller chunks or at least operated like smaller chunks, they could still deal with efficiencies but expand opportunities going forward.
I know very little about the inner workings of the record business, but it seems from the outside there is still a lot of money spent on things that are not core to the direct success of selling music. It also appears too much is thrown against the wall with a hope it sticks. That just leaves stains on the wall.
But it is good for the janitorial business and think of all of the paint that Sherwin Williams sells. See, with some thought, everything has a silver lining.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of MusicRow.)
