You And Your Apathy
Why is it that you prefer sitting on your butt, passively observing – and never taking action? Even if whatever it is happens to be very important to you?
You bitch about crap radio. You – and everybody else. Do you know anyone who doesn’t? Yeah, there’s Joe. But Joe doesn’t listen to radio. He just bitches about politics. OK. But YOU bitch about radio, right? You hate the cookie-cutter formats, the homogenized music, the robotic presenters, the unimaginative formats. And you moan at anyone who’ll listen: “radio sucks!”
But then, the next moment you’re talking about getting YOUR music on the radio. That’s right. Radio. Internet revolution and all that, but you know that terrestrial radio is still the place to be. “Hey everyone, how do I get those bastards to play my music?”
And when the bastards don’t play your music, what do you do?
You bitch about them, naturally.
And…?
Well. And that’s it!
In the past, we used to send the occasional email to our artists urging them to contact their local stations and request that they carry our show. Their show. YOUR show. We knew that if enough people would request that their local stations carry this beautifully-formatted program, featuring great NEW music… radio would – eventually – listen. They may be bastards, but they’re not totally brain-dead bastards.
The result? Here are some stats (carefully tracked with available tracking tools):
- 30,000-ish emails sent to registered and allegedly willing members
- Around 2,000 opened the email, the rest, presumably, didn’t even read it
- Some 30 responses with “don’t spam me you $%&@! bastards!”
- 10 responses saying something like “why should I do your job for you?”
- 20 comments along the lines of “you didn’t like my song, why should I help you now?”
- 1 response “I will do what I can”
- And the rest? Nothing.
Recently the radio music show/format SAM (“Simply About Music”) decided that in order to boost their PR profile, they’d name each day’s show after a random fan they pick up on Facebook. So it might be called “Tina Smith FM” on Friday. Wow! That’s cute, I hear you say. It is? Is it cute enough for you to get involved and actually let radio know what you want? Or you’re not going to – unless they name it after you?
This is not limited to radio. Duh…! You knew that already. You’re already ignoring all those other things too!
So why are you so darned apathetic? Is it just information overload? Been let down one too many times? Too dumb to tell the difference between scams and real causes? Hard-knocks life robbed you of initiative? Balls? Brains? You try and try and nothing ever happens? So now you’re just fed up? What?
This reminds me of when Herbie asked God to let him win the lottery. He prayed and prayed every day. When nothing happened, he prayed every hour. When still nothing happened, he just prayed all the time, non-stop. Eventually God peered out from his cloud and spoke to Herbie: “Dude, meet me half-way, ok? Buy the @$&?#&! ticket!”
It’s not a conspiracy. It’s not CFR, not the Bilderbergers, not the Trilateral Commission and it’s not the Majors. It’s not “them.”
It’s you.
You’ve been letting it slide for too long. Next time you want change – don’t bitch. DEMAND IT. DO SOMETHING. You don’t have your own initiative to spot worthy causes? Look around you. There are others who do.
Visit Fair Play For Music and take action.
I’m not bitching, I’m just revealing my experience. Radio hasn’t earned me anything except royalties, no sales, no gigs. ‘Aw I’m in it for the music’ well good luck, I need to eat. I’ve had plenty of radio time and I’m grateful. Truth is I don’t know where it’s at, but I don’t believe it’s terrestrial radio. But this article is quite correct, apathy takes over. I haven’t been able to sell myself and have just recorded and written and gigged until someone sees fit that I can make THEM money. Someone with a business mind.
I’d be happy to sign 20% away to anyone with the balls to sell me.
Until then I’m a barman.
PS I have my own weekly radio show, and I play only new music from Ireland.
That’s where I would put the link to your show, Junior!
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It’s true. My father has told me since I was a kid that if you want anything done, you have to do it yourself. While I do my best to follow that module, and I am never one to bitch at the system because I know damn well, anything is obtainable with the right amount of effort and determination, I still fall short from being the hungry go getter that I’d like to be all the time.
Great read and another reminder to fight harder for what I want in life!
Thanks Paul.
It goes both ways, there is musician apathy as well.
The Beatles had to work in German brothels to get any good, Neil Young moved to California, Dylan to New York, Hendrix to London.
Nothing has ever come easy, nor should it. Get out there and gig in the right places to improve and be seen. It still does the trick nowadays, if you’re good enough. Making music from your bedroom wont do it! Nor will strumming guitars in a garage in hicksville.
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