For your central Jersey real estate needs: JudyNJHomes.com
Catch Kat in The House Bunny in theaters nationwide NOW! fandango.com
Picking up info from Clay fans. Clay has a new CD coming out in Sept.
The short answer on where to buy is:Amazon.com if you are buying online.Retail stores:All the big chain stores:WalmartKMartTargetBest BuyCircuit CityFred MeyerFYEThe big chain bookstores (although their prices are a lot higher than the ones in the previous list)Barnes & NobleBordersDo NOT buy at drug stores or discount/shopping clubs like Sams and Costco. Their sales are not reported to SoundScan which hurts in two ways.. they aren't included in the totals reported by the media and since Billboard uses the SoundScan figures to make their charts it hurts on chart ranking also.The only exception to the above is Walgreen's. It's the only drug store that does report to SoundScan.So.. if you stick with the tried-and-true ie. Amazon and Walmart, Target, Best Buy, etc. you'll be fine !!!
Another lurking find on Clay's AI folder
Posted by Glampire 9/27/06
I worked in radio for a couple of years while in college. What gets on the air is regularly determined by a program director who determines that select songs/artists fit the format and others don't. Beyond that, there is also a graph that shows DJs what needs to play and when it needs to play. Sometimes it's as clear as saying that the DJ has to play a certain artist at a certain time and, other times, it simply says that certain types of songs have to played at certain points in the hour. Now, due to this and the fact that DJs have room to select material have already blocked out about an hour of music, there's really no room to insert requests. It's common to tell listeners that you will because it gets them off the phone and it pulls them in for the next hour or so. There's reports that listeners only listen for an hour, on average, and the belief is that the listener will stop listening for some point and believe that's when the request was played. Yes, there are times when you hear the DJ pick up the phone and someone says, "Could you play ______?" Then, they play the song. That, however, is deceptive. Usually, that phone call was recorded an hour before and the DJ has just now got to a point where he can insert the song.
Getting into a PD's favor is more about gettomg that person to think it's going to work with that particular audience. A lot of times, PD's will jump on known names because they know that person already connects with their audience or they wait for some other PD to go out on a limb and start playing an artist. --- There are those cases where a PD will listen to a single and believe it to be so good that it needs some airtime but, usually, those people are afraid of being the one to break outside of the mold. There's a story in the radio world about how Shaggy had released that one album and it was pretty well done but a PD was on vacation in Hawaii and heard a DJ in a club playing "Angel" or whatever and thought it was a great song. He went back and started playing it at his own station. It caught on there and other stations soon started playing it, too. All of a sudden, the album started catching on and he broke into the Top 10. Listeners are welcome to keep calling or writing their local station and requesting songs but I don't know how much good it really does. If it was an unknown artist, there might be some thought by the PD that they're just missing out on a breaking artist but a known name like Clay or whomever may not hit them the same because they already have their thoughts on who he is.
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Let's all be clear. Paying radio stations to play an artist, aka "payola," is an illegal practice and one they've clamped down on in recent years. If RCA isn't paying stations to play Clay, it's because they're conforming to the law. Now, that doesn't mean the stations and labels don't work on the favor system. By that I mean that it's not uncommon for the two bodies to work some deals. For instance, a radio station may call the label and say, "Hey, we're putting together a show and would like for _______ to play. Do you think you can make that happen? By the way, we just got the single from that new artist you're trying to break and we're trying to see if we can get it some airtime." I know of a situation when I was living in Dallas where a local station was doing a Halloween event and called up one label and said they needed a member of a particular band to come out for the event or they wouldn't be playing anything off their new album.
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It really is crazy. The thing is that both sides need something that the other can provide. Radio stations need artists to appear at their events, do exclusive on-air interviews and provide tickes/special packages to upcoming shows because those are the things they can promote and draw listeners in with. Labels, on the other hand, need their artists to be played because that's what drives album sales. Now, you get to a point where a station can't ignore an artist. For instance, pop stations have to play Justin because he has the number one song in the country and his 900,000 album sales in two weeks have established that he's hot, right now. His label doesn't have to do anything to get stations on-board. The backside of that, however, is that they have to build some good will for the upcoming singles and the labels other aritsts. Justin will work those stations because that means they may be more willing to play his next single or the label may get him to do it because they'll use that as a way to get the station to play one of their other artists. I've always believed that Clay exists out in his own area. Although it's hard to determine what fits within a pop station's playlist, there's an arguement to be made that maybe Clay is just outside that and PD's may feel he doesn't really fit their format. Yes, I did say that there are times that an artist is so huge that you can't ignore them but that doesn't mean that a station is going to go against what it feels its sound is. For instance, Justin has the number one album but country radio or hard rock stations don't need to embrace it because it doesn't work for them. Similarly, Kenny Chesney does well on the charts but pop radio doesn't run after his music.
That's not necessarily true. A lot of artists have had huge radio hits with covers. I think radio is just as likely to jump on a cover that interests them as they are an original track. Here's a couple of examples: What's Whitney Houston's biggest song ever? I think we all would agree that it's "I Will Always Love You." That, of course, was a cover that was originally written and recorded by Dolly Parton, and had already been a hit twice for her. What was the biggest song of the last 10 years for Johnny Cash? That would probably be "Hurt," which was originally done by Nine Inch Nails. What was Alien Ant Farm's only real radio hit? Their cover of Michael Jackson's "Smooth Criminal." Jessica Simpson's only appearance on Billboard's year end Top 100 chart was with a cover of "These Boots Were Made For Walking." Beyond that, Rod Stewart's cover albums all went platinum or better and that's something he hadn't been doing with his regular albums in the years prior. I think radio is willing to embrace covers and, sometimes, it's almost easier because there's a built-in familiarity. The problem is getting people excited about a cover of song that they already love or dislike. Either of those cases can be tricky
Katharine McPhee fans around the world