Which only goes to show why artists and labels need to stop depending on radio.

Well, sure… but what do they depend on for mass distribution instead? Youtube is the other major distribution path (I can link the survey results on music discovery again, if anybody cares)… but aside from a small number of highly viral videos, the mass hits on Youtube tend to go to artists who are also getting substantial radio play.

Television or movie placements obviously have some value in building interest and thus goosing the Youtube numbers and sales, so there’s that. It works best when there’s frequent and intense repetition, as in P2′s Olympics placement. And there are bands like OK Go who get financial mileage and PR (though not massive sales) from corporate sponsorship.

Winning Idol is probably one of the most effective ways to get a one-time HUGE sales boost without substantial radio play (well, Lee DeWyze might beg to differ, but it usually works)… but without radio, the boost is good for only one album, max.

As things stand, “stop depending on radio” means “lose your biggest driver of sales.” Major labels carry appalling levels of debt that have to be covered by their already declining sales revenues. Part of the reason there’s so little money for true artist development is that labels are running scared on debt coverage — the bad decisions that got us where we are today didn’t come from A&R but from the Chief Financial Officers’ suites.

Record labels are businesses and they can’t survive without sustaining a profit, irregardless of how talented or good a singer someone is.  Most Idols do get some initial investment (promotion), but if they can’t make a return on investment quick enough, the label can’t just keep throwing money out there.

The Phillip/Haley pairing is a good example of that. Haley is a nice person.  She’s a good singer.  She did a good job with the interview.  But unfortunately her sales have not catch on quick enough.  So Interscope’s promotion will continue more with Phillip, because he has made Jimmy Iovine enough money with Home for them to be able to do that.

If labels were efficient businesses they wouldn’t have so many failures, which are always blamed on the artists. 

Of course, unsophisticated public buys all the stories that artist didn’t connect, when it is label that didn’t put artist in front of the right audience.

Oh, well, real artists will survive and will find their audience, however small, while manufactured ones will go away eventually.

You mean that the label spent NO money whatsoever on promoting Adele worldwide? 

Putting songs/albums on i-tunes with banners  in all the different countries cost money. Putting out (positive) press about Adele in all the different countries cost money.  Getting the songs played on the radio to make people aware of Adele in all the different countries cost money (note that other countries don’t have laws against payola like US, so you can literally buy radio play).  Yes, Adele phenomenon was a brilliant piece of marketing, starting with the choice of songs, first promotion in UK where people were nostalgic for this kind of sound (with the death of Amy Whinehouse) and then moving to US and to the world.  

So, yeah, Adele success cost her label pretty penny.  Without money she would just be a singer known only in UK, like many other UK artists are.

“You mean that the label spent NO money whatsoever on promoting Adele worldwide” 

You mean spending any money on an artist on your label is equivalent to “buying” success for them. If only it were that simple ;0 Anyone with an iTunes banner and a radio single should be a superstar!

I’m not sure the label bought Adele’s success with her first or second album. The Grammy she won for Best New Artist for her first album probably helped as well!

Putting songs/albums on i-tunes with banners  in all the different countries cost money.

Well yes, except that it doesn’t. The myth that iTunes banners are bought has been put to rest many times. I don’t have the link, but I’m sure somebody does. iTunes decides what songs and albums it wants to give banners to. If there’s a quid pro quo at all, it’s usually in the form of letting iTunes sell exclusive content.

That some money must be spent to promote an artist properly does not automatically mean that throwing a large enough amount of money at any artist guarantees superstardom. If there was a tight logical connection, labels would keep a small roster of artists, spend hugely on them, and call it done. In fact, some artists who get big bucks flop, while others with modest budgets happen to hit well and thus generate non-paid news that floats their sales upwards.

Appropriately, P2′s Home probably hasn’t had a huge promo budget other than its push to radio. The Idol studio cuts are made pretty cheaply. The Olympics placement was pure luck and didn’t cost Interscope a cent. The American Family Insurance placement and the Trouble With The Curve trailer/commercial placement probably were arranged by P2′s management and also didn’t cost Interscope anything. I don’t know what they’ve done in the way of direct advertising, but they’ve also had the advantage that the most recent Idol winner gets coverage as news.

No, you’re right, 19R had so much foresight that they convinced NBC to hire a long term sports segment producer before American Idol ever aired, and before Interscope was the major label of record, just so that they could hire his daughter, who could then make personal appeals/funnel money under the table so that NBC would use the song for Olympics coverage even though it had no merit on its own.

Or, there was a little serendipity involved with the song being popular/well-received in the first place and also having the particular structure that worked so well for sports montages that NBC would keep using it.

Not every song would be received that well. Essentially your argument is that with enough money, labels can always make fetch happen, and sometimes fetch is just not going to happen.

I agree to some extent, but I also think that record companies don’t invest as much in the Idols.  They can promote an artist who is totally unknown into being a star,  but when it comes to the Idols, who are relatively pretty well known, they don’t seem to get as much of a push, especially after the first album.

“Anyway, my point is that you cannot expect idols or any other artist to
become a superstar without monetary investment.”

Duh. A totally different point to your original one that spending tons of money is all that is required to make “anybody” a superstar. That the music (product) doesn’t matter.

“So, returning back to
PP, if his label will care to spend money on his promotion, he will be
successful, if they don’t, he will not be.”

No, not necessarily. You are still arguing that a label spending money on the promotion of an artist will guarantee success, which is not true. Yes, monetary investment in an artist is (usually) necessary for success, but monetary investment in an artist does not guarantee success. All bears are animals, but not all animals are bears.

They are somewhat talented, but it is not enough to have a career as a recording artist

I’d amend that to say “it is not enough to have a career as a recording artist when the contract is structured to assume that every album release goes gold or better.” Plenty of them would have survived just fine with more reasonably structured contracts.