By, Wendy Day from Rap Coalition
A few years ago, I suddenly began getting these weekly emails
out of the blue from DigitalRadioTracker. I was excited because they
offer valuable chart information for internet radio spins, a growth area I was
closely watching. Some of my friends in the music industry have started
their own internet radio stations and many others have launched internet radio
shows. Additionally, I receive many interview requests and spins for my
artists at internet radio. My concern with internet radio has always been
that it’s next to impossible to know how many listeners are reached or how many
times a song is played.
DigitalRadioTracker tracks 5,000+ radio stations worldwide, 24
hours a day, 7 days a week. Although most are internet radio stations,
they've also included some terrestrial, college, commercial and non-commercial
stations. This gives access to a good balance of radio beyond the
traditional terrestrial FM stations that BDS or Mediabase offer. I can
affordably purchase reports for projects (mine or the competition’s) to see the
number of spins they are getting or have gotten historically, in what areas, on
what stations, and how much total audience was reached.
DigitalRadioTracker has proven extremely effective for use in
planning tours, promotional campaigns, soliciting performances, and directly
targeting a specific marketplace. Breaking new artists or gaining
awareness for new projects for any artist is extremely challenging and without
feedback and data, it becomes nearly impossible. I’m able to purchase
individual reports about my artist or similar artists to see which cities and
areas have the biggest supporters.
Since internet radio is less encumbered by “pay for play” than
traditional radio, it signals that these markets contain an organic and authentic
following of fans who have discovered the music on their own. For more
established artists, it confirms where and when the spins are occurring.
This information can be used to plan both domestic and international tours or
to book shows in the area where there is increased activity. DRT Reports
from similar sounding artists shows which areas can be easily penetrated to
expand the artist’s fan-base because there are obviously potential fans there.
The DRT Reports, which are sold individually or in bundles at a
discounted price, break out the station, its location, the day the song was
played, the time of day it was played, which version of the song was played and
the total audience that the song reached that week. There is also a choice of
reports from the past going back 8 weeks for my artist or any artist or song I
choose to analyze.
After doing some research on this radio tracking company
headquartered in Houston, TX, I realized DigitalRadioTracker has the ability to
track all songs, even alternate versions of songs such as remixes, live
versions and versions with or without featured artists. This is unique to
radio tracking. Each report breaks down each version of the song and
where it was played. Upon signing up for free at DigitalRadioTracker.com,
I was able to purchase three different types of reports for each song I wanted:
·
Weekly Overview DRT
Reports show the day and amount of spins per day at each station
·
Comprehensive DRT
Reports detail the day and time of each spin at each station as well as which
version was played
·
Historical DRT Reports
illustrate the 8 week overview of spins per day at each station
Today, there are approximately 41,000 internet radio stations
around the world according to Internet-Radio.com (https://www.internet-radio.com).
In June 2016, the US government reduced the licensing fee by half for
internet-only broadcasts to $.0007 per stream. Performance fees were
dropped from 9% to 8.8% and charges for webcasting at non-commercial radio
stations stayed at $.0002 per stream.
For a station with 2,000 listeners playing 15 songs per hour,
the math looks like this:
·
15 x $.0007 = $.0105
per listener/hour
·
$.0105 x 2000 = $21
for 2000 listeners in an hour
·
$21 x 24 = $504 per
day
·
$504 x 365 = $184,960
per year
The fee exceeds the gross revenues of every internet radio
station. “It even exceeds the additional revenues made by traditional
(terrestrial) stations that also broadcast on the Net. Even the lower rates
($.0002/stream) charged to non-commercial broadcasters are far higher than
nearly all of them can afford,” according to Linux Journal (http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6218).
While SoundExchange tracks these stations and collects the
mandated fees from the stations to then pay the artists from those fees, I
can’t imagine they can easily chase all of the internet radio stations in the
US. I can see where a DigitalRadioTracker Report would come in handy to
collect artists’ fees from SoundExchange since it accurately tracks the spins
of music by artist and by song. Since it’s their mandate to collect the
fees, the artist is due the money.
DigitalRadioTracker has been a wonderful addition to the music
industry for artists, managers, record labels, singers, producers, songwriters,
publishers and anyone who wants to track songs played at Internet radio,
college radio and some terrestrial stations. The DigitalRadioTracker
system logs every song played 24 hours a day, 7 days a week without
fingerprinting or any special encoding. Unlike other tracking companies,
DRT offers a risk-free guarantee! If a song has not received any spins,
you get a credit to use towards another song. DigitalRadioTracker
specializes in monitoring radio airplay by broadcasters of the following genres
such as:
·
CHR/Pop/Top 40
·
Urban-Hip-Hop/R&B
·
Country/Americana
·
Rock/Alternative
·
Gospel/Christian/Inspirational
·
Adult Contemporary
·
Jazz/Blues/Fusion
DigitalRadioTracker tracks songs internationally and offers
weekly charts in each musical genre. The charts can be found at DigitalRadioTracker.com
or you can sign up to receive them weekly via email. They are also posted
on Instagram at @DigitalRadioTracker, on facebook.com/DigitalRadioTracker,
on Twitter @DRTradiotracker and at http://NationalAirplayCharts.blogspot.com/.
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