Amazing Radio
Life can be pretty difficult for unsigned bands these days.
With the music industry in decline and record sales falling most record labels seem uninterested in taking risks and nurturing new talent. The most obvious signs of this are the way the airwaves are flooded with sound-a-likes of the latest hip band.
When The Libertines exploded onto the scene with ‘Up The Bracket’ in 2002 it wasn’t long before the station’s playlists were swamped with the efforts of a hundred pale imitations. If your band doesn’t sound like the latest big thing it’s going to be pretty difficult to get signed, and if you’re not signed, the chances of getting your songs heard on the radio are, with the notable exceptions of 6music’s Tom Robinson Introducing and XFM’s Xposure, virtually zero. It’s a vicious circle that’s seemingly impossible to break.
Determined to even the playing field, Amazing Radio, who describe themselves as an ethical radio station, aims to change all that by exclusively playing tracks by unsigned bands. Amazing Radio is the UK’s newest national radio station, available on DAB and the internet, and it has some entertainment heavyweights behind it; founder Paul Campbell is a successful TV and radio producer, and former BBC head of music entertainment Trevor Dann (it was Dann who famously banned Status Quo from BBC radio playlists) is not only a DJ but also in-house consultant.
So how does it work? Artists upload their songs to sister site amazingtunes.com for streaming, free download or to sell at a fixed rate (currently 79p per track). Amazing Radio promotes the music that has been uploaded to amazingunes.com by playing the most popular tracks (decided by the amount of plays, downloads and purchases as well as how many times they have been rated/recommended). The tracks that receive the most airplay make up the Amazing Chart, which is published on amazingtunes.com as well as in industry magazine Music Week.
That sounds great on paper but what about in practice? Neither the station nor the website carry advertising, so interested in what the artists got out of it and how the station financed itself, I spoke to station founder Paul Campbell. He was quick to point out that the artist gets 70% of the profit from each download and unlike some other stations and websites they don’t have to sign over the publishing rights to the songs they upload. But if there’s no advertising, I asked, how can the station finance itself?
“The most important thing to say first is that we are incredibly low cost,” 
he said. “This is partly because we’re based in Gateshead, which is a lot cheaper than somewhere like London (we’re the first national radio station ever based outside London – a shocking fact if you ask me, 80-odd years after broadcasting started in the UK).
“We run incredibly tightly and we never waste a penny. So whereas BBC 6 Music costs something like £8m per annum to run (although I’ve seen £9m reported): our total running costs of our entire operation are lower than the BBC Director General’s annual salary – under £800k per annum.” Paul told me.
He went on to explain that the station’s revenue streams came from four main sources:
Downloads: For every track sold via amazingtunes.com the artist receives 70% of the profit and Amazing gets 30%
Sponsorship: Although the station doesn’t carry advertising it will shortly be taking sponsorship for shows, i.e. ‘the breakfast show brought to you by ACME Trading Co.’
Records: Amazing are soon to set up a record company to give the most popular bands the opportunity to release physical copies of their records.
Royalties: The last revenue stream revolves around PRS (royalty payments). As Paul explains: “Because our music is 100% PRS-exempt, it’s possible to play it in shops, offices and business premises without a PRS license. We’re now being besieged by businesses asking for us to supply music to them to allow them to stop paying PRS, which many businesses seem to hate. Again, we do this ethically (the way it works out, we can give about twice as much to the artist as they would have had from PRS, if they’d got anything at all through that route) although it’s much cheaper for the shops themselves: it’s a real win win.”
So that’s the business model covered, but what about that rating system that helps decide whether a song makes it to the radio, the stakes are pretty high for bands – how does the station ensure the system is fair?
“There are both software and human interventions to stop the system being rigged,” Paul said. “We also continually monitor activity, of course, to look out for spamming….we’re 100% certain this can’t be rigged, and that it is fair. We also think the system is subtler than pretty much everything else around, since it’s so broad in its assessment of popularity.”
This all sounds pretty good, but is it too good to be true? Could there really be a commercial radio station whose primary concern is helping unsigned bands get the exposure they need?
I asked David Lightfoot, front man of unsigned band The Fades and Chris Hutchison of The Stereo Shutdown, who were recently top of the Amazing Chart, what they thought of Amazing Radio’s model and was met with opposing views.
Over to David: 
“The problem is – the average music listener probably has no interest at all in listening to unsigned bands, so the majority of plays you get will be from other unsigned bands and/or your own music fans who you’ll have to hound incessantly to get them to listen to you…
“There are loads of sites giving the artist 70% of the revenue now – that doesn’t really mean a thing, it’s all about the thousands of bands signing up and driving traffic to the site. Where’s the quality control with these things? It just means that any old crappy band that has a recording can sell it online.”
However Chris disagreed: “We found Amazing Radio to be quite positive as a marketing tool… we played a show on Tuesday night [7th Sept] and were surprised to see that there were a few who had come as a result of Amazing Radio. I think all in all it’s one of the best for features, downloads etc and to have the radio station actively playing new bands to people – it’s a great idea.
“I think that its only downside would be the limited cross section of people who will listen to the radio channel are the ones actively seeking new music which isn’t a huge demographic, however all in all it’s a very well designed website with excellent features and one that we have had a great reaction off of.”
But what of the radio experience for the listener? The feedback on the website is really positive so I spent a week listening to Amazing Radio rather than my usual 6music. After a while I started to miss hearing more familiar bands and songs but I did find some new music that I liked and it was nice to then be able to visit amazingtunes.com to find out more about the bands and download the songs I’d heard. The DJs are generally OK and it’s great that Amazing is willing to give amateur DJs a chance (you can submit audition mp3s via the Amazing Radio website) but some of them are a little too lively for my liking. Although I have gone back to 6music, I still dip into Amazing for short bursts most days and to get me to tune out of 6music is quite an achievement.
My biggest reservation is whether the British public will take to a station that plays only new music. This is, after all, a public that has shown, via appalling shows like X-Factor and Britain’s Got Talent, that they have a preference for being told what they like rather than seeking out new music for themselves.
I guess only time will tell but there doesn’t appear anything to lose for bands wanting to upload their tracks. In the meantime check it our for yourself and let us know what you think!
Mark Cousens
www.amazingradio.co.uk
www.amazingtunes.com
www.myspace.com/thestereoshutdown
www.myspace.com/thefades
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