Metal…Not Radio Friendly
by 
Metal Martyr on March 15th, 2008
So lets look at a few things. Why isn’t metal as mainstream as most other genres of music? It is…just not on a mass basis. Why? Because if a metal band puts out a record, the radio only plays the “Radio-friendly” tracks. Stone Sour for example. Stone Sour’s Come What(ever) may was a great record. 30-30-150, Zzyxx Road, Scars, Reborn, Cardiff? All Great songs, but what did they play on the radio? Through The Glass and Silly World. Through The Glass was a great ballad…but Silly World? Silly World was the worse song on that record. And it took about 6 months after the record was released for them to play any songs off of it at all. What a load of BS!
Now getting back. I don’t know how it is in other countries, and there are Metal radio stations in the U.S. but you know when they play the most Metal? Late at night, when the people that pay for ads on the radio don’t really pay for air time. The only place you can hear real half-way decent metal is on Satellite radio. Lets be honest with ourselves for a moment…most metal-heads are cheap bastards. I’m not going to pay for satellite radio for one or two metal stations. I pay for satellite TV that has metal radio stations on it, but when I’m in my car my iPod is plugged in and I play what I want to hear. The local radio stations that play “Rock” mainly play the typical pop/rock stuff like the Foo-Fighters, Finger Eleven, Nickelback and some metal like Disturbed, but that’s about it.
In America it’s all about selling a product. You can’t expect to try to sell ads on a metal station if one was to come about and play metal all day. It’s not because of the lyrics or the message being sent by the bands. It just doesn’t sound like it would draw enough of a crowd to sell product. While a lot of people don’t see metal as mainstream as most other “Rock” or “Pop”, Metal is as mainstream to us as it ever will be. In the eyes of a metal fan, metal is everywhere. We don’t need radio play for us to be fans. We don’t need ads and spokespeople. All we need is a loud voice, a blast beat (Optional) and some cool riffs to bang our heads to. So what is radio friendly? Who cares. We don’t need metal radio and radio doesn’t need metal. We don’t need bands that sell a million records in their first month of sales. Metal bands sell out stadiums and venues every day without radio support. Why? Because we have what a lot of pop and rock fans don’t have…Dedication, loyalty, and respect for the bands we listen to. Don’t Forget It!!
Tags: Heavy-metal, metal radio, modern-rock, radio friendly music, Radio Rebellion, rock radio| 2.9 |
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POSTED IN: My General Articles
7 opinions for Metal…Not Radio Friendly
Mar 16, 2008 at 1:49 am
Hell yea, couldn’t have said it better! Us metal fans don’t need all of that stuff, we just have a great love and support of the music, and that’s all we need. Besides, I’ve pretty much stopped listening to the radio completely. I just get keep my iPod with me wherever I go, so I can listen to exactly what I like. And considering how big the internet is now, it’s easy to learn about and hear new metal bands from all sorts of places. I only know of one station that plays metal, and even then, 99% of the time, it’s stuff I don’t really like.
LTC
Mar 16, 2008 at 12:53 pm
it is pretty sad that you have to go to satellite radio to hear a metal station. I remember in the 80s and 90s when wvcr ( a college station in upstate ny ) played real deal metal after midnight ( I know, I deejayed from 91-95). It wasn’t any punk little college station either. We had an estimated audience of 30000, a broadcast range of almost 100 miles ( stronger then many professional stations ). I think it would have been great to be playing that stuff in the middle of the day. It definitely would have had 1) an audience and 2) advertisers. Now though, forget it. It seems metal has gone back underground for a little while, at least until some of the big names ( Slipknot, Korn, Metallica) release some albums which dominate the charts for a little while.
Mar 16, 2008 at 1:06 pm
WKLL, K-rock out of Utica-Rome back in the early 90’s used to play some good metal and some really good metal late and on weekends late at night. The Sound And The Fury, as they called it used play all sorts of death metal. I don’t know of anything down in NC that plays metal radio, even late at night.
Mar 16, 2008 at 1:57 pm
on the other side. the reason country music is on the rise is the are also on t.v. and early morning shows and daytime t.v. people hear these and say that’s great. and that’s why country is on the rise. could you see “Ltc” on the ellen show
Mar 16, 2008 at 4:42 pm
No dale…I can’t imagine LTC on Ellen or the stupid remarks she would say about the band for that matter
Mar 16, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Country music has been ” on the rise ” for way longer then the existence of morning talk shows and daytime tv stuff, etc, etc. Country fans are dedicated. They tend to buy all the albums by their favorite performers as soon as they come out, and the back catalogues by these performers move out of the stores at constant volumes. So what you have is a constant high sales volume of both new and old country. Plus country fans generally have more disposable income ( middle aged people, working married couples ). Unfortunately the current trends in metal are not producing any bands who move high volumes and have staying power. Right now, sad to say, there is no next ” Metallica ” on the rise. Other then the big three ( metallica, Megadeth, Slayer ) it becomes pretty hard to name a band who has lasted a long time with constant good album sales.
Mar 18, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Here in Finland we have one radio channel playing some metal music. It is called “Radio Rock” and as the name says, they play mostly rock. Every now and then you hear some Megadeth, Metallica, Finnish metal bands, etc. but almost all those are “radio friendly” songs of the bands. For example, they play much Megadeth’s A Tout Le Monde and I am sick and tired with it. They never play good old material because the masses don’t know it and won’t like it. Every Thursday they play a couple of hours thrash and death metal, but that is an exception. During daytime they play rock and some metal, but not enough metal. It’s not “radio friendly”.
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