Major Labels May Be Worried About Sales, But They'll Always Have College Radio (Sadly)

On which year-end radio plays chart do you think Amy Winhouse, The Killers, Sheryl Crow and Fall Out Boy crack the top 40? Billboard? Maybe, I'm not going to look it up, jeez, but definitely the CMJ Radio Select Tracks 2007 chart.

CMJ scans the top 100 college/non-comm stations' signals and creates a chart bsaed on number of spins as an alternative to the main charts, which rely on self-submitted playlists from 450+/- stations. It's maybe a more honest way to look at the state of college radio. Although, not every independent label sends their music to Media Guide (the company that actually scans the signal, and who also owns the handy Yes.Com), most of the records that have an active campaign behind them are submitted. The 2007 year-end charts tallies up songs by the total number of plays recieved. Peter Bjorn & John's "Young Folks", unsurprisingly and fittingly, took the top spot, followed by a lot of major-lable-"indie" like Modest Mouse, White Stripes, Feist, Interpol and Bjork and then some actually indie whateverness like Spoon, The Shins and Bright Eyes.

Then there is some seriouse WTFness:
#6 Amy Winehouse "You Know I'm No Good"
#8 The Killers "Read My Mind"
#14 Incubus "Dig"
#16 Amy Winehouse "Rehab"
#21 Ryan Adams w/ Sheryl Crow "Two"
#22 Fall Out Boy "This Ain't A Scene, It's An Arms Race"
#27 Smashing Pumpkins "Tarantula"
#40 Papa Roach [they still exist? *roach joke*] "Forever"
#42 Foo Fighters "The Pretenders"
#51 The Red Hot Chili Peppers "Hump De Bump"
#53 Linkin Park "What I've Done"
Other appearances include KT Tunstall, My Chemical Romance, Hot Hot Heat, The Used, Nine Inch Nails, Yellowcard, Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, Sick Puppies and Eddie Vedder. Lily Allan, Gnarles Barkely (yes it came out in mid2006), QOTSA, and Bruce Springsteen made into onto the album equivalent.

All in all only 34 tracks on the 100 spot chart were actually on Independent Labels. Major labels also claimed over half of the album chart. I'm not going to argue this result from a taste perspective (although there's lots to be said), but instead from an ideological perspective (blah blah blah I'm the co-music director of WVUM, I direct co-music). There are few places in our culture that allow art that takes chances and is truly innovative to get through. The same reason you don't want Ratatouille at your art-house cinema is the same reason you don't want Amy Winehouse on your college radio station. Yes she may be a very entertaining little vermin, but she's going to get tons of (over)exposure otherwise. Every time a college radio dj plays a track off Billy Corrigan's shameless Smashing Pumpkins "reunion" record (which apparently was a lot, #13 most played record) it means some lesser, probably much better band who weren't MTV mainstays don't get their record played. Now I realize that not every college radio station is going to be as ideological as WVUM, and not every listener is going to respect that, but there has to be something better to play than Papa Roach. There's so few chances to play music on the radio that's not part of a corporate approved play list. Why anyone would waste it by playing Fall Out Boy, I'll never know.