Irish music has gone through somewhat of a renaissance over the past number of years. With an influx of new Irish voices, we have a diversity of genres in Irish music. No longer is this country’s repertoire limited to folk and rock.
I was fortunate to have experienced this revolution first hand. From 2017-2018 I was presenting a Sunday night Irish music show on FM104 called the Open Mic. The producer and I always made a concerted effort to have diversity on each show, both in terms of gender and genres. From the hip-hop beats of Soule and Erika Cody to the blues of Wyvern Lingo and the experimental jazzy riffs of BARQ. It was a pleasure to hear all of these artists perform live. Also – it was a rare luxury to have a degree of control over what songs were played and what acts were interviewed. Usually decisions about the music are made by a programme director.
This week, publicist Linda Coogan Byrne published research on the percentage of Irish female musicians played by Irish radio stations. The results were disappointing but not all that surprising to me, given that I am privy to the industry. You can read it in full here. I applaud Linda for doing the study and I appreciate that it is a solid, data-driven piece of research. Every industry needs the opportunity to look at itself critically.
There’s a couple of ways of looking at this. ‘It’s sexism in action’, might be the first port of call. That might be true, or partly true, but it might be worth considering the backdrop.
Music radio stations typically have very tight playlists. The most common radio station format is CHR or Contemporary Hit Radio. It generally plays songs from the last 3 months at a high frequency and is aimed at 15-24 year-olds. If a song is in in ‘heavy rotation’ (if it is new and most-played) you could hear it once per hour. A CHR radio station might have a total of 200 songs in its playlist. This sounds like a relatively significant amount, but when a station is playing up to 14 songs per hour and some songs at a particularly high frequency, then the same songs tend to come around frequently enough, particularly if you are listening to the station for a long period of time on a daily basis.
I am no expert on music radio playlisting but it would seem to me that the prevailing philosophy has been that ‘tried and tested’ music is the touchstone. Radio no longer has exclusive dominion over breaking new music to audiences, a privilege it once enjoyed. Today, radio programmers take their lead from Spotify, charts, YouTube and increasingly even TikTok in establishing which songs are a hit with audiences. This often results in stations introducing songs as ‘new music’ although a proportion of the audience will already be familiar with them. This is the case with the smash hit Say So by Doja Cat which premiered on TikTok.
There is also groupthink between stations. Stations are constantly engaged in subterfuge looking at what their competitors are playing.
Music playlisting is conservative. The constant fear of a programmer doing anything which would make a listener tune-out. The longer they can keep a listener on the station, the better. It’s much easier to achieve this by not taking risks, for instance, with new music. This is why new music is typically sold to the listener by the presenter with gusto and passion to bribe the audience to persevere listening despite being unfamiliar with the song.
There’s a little background for you. It may explain part of what is seen in Linda’s research. In fact, I would guess there is only a handful of Irish acts which get played on Irish radio on a regular basis. These are the likes of Kodaline, the Coronas and Picture This. They are considered ‘tried and tested’ acts. Notably, there are no females in sight. FM104 had no female acts in its top 20 Irish acts. Some stations reported in the study which had, say, two female acts out of their top 20, were typically playing the same two acts.
The debate about Irish music played on radio comes up every few years, typically in a rant on Twitter or in a newspaper column. Again and again campaigners ask for a ‘quota’ of Irish music on radio stations. This quota is not novel – it is already in existence. As Brian Adams, Head of Music at Today FM explains, the BAI requires most stations to play 20% Irish music. This is very significant – every fifth song must be Irish. So why is there a problem? This quota is not meaningful. It can be spread throughout the day. Many stations, probably most, jam-pack their overnight hours, when listenership is low or zero, with Irish music. If you are driving through the night you happen upon a station that plays only Irish music between 2-3am, for example. Secondly, there is no emphasis on new Irish music. Playing U2, the Cranberries, the Corrs or Van Morrison counts as Irish music. It is, of course. Surely the purpose of the quota should be to promote new Irish music, not to entertain the already rich and famous.
I suggest, as Brian Adams does, that a smaller quota be introduced with a greater emphasis on playing new music. This would surely be a reform which would help to elevate Irish female artists.
Every time I come across the debate about Irish music on radio I ask myself – who does a radio station serve? Who does it have responsibilities to? My alma mater, FM104, is a private business owned by Wireless Group which is in turn part of Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp. A narrow approach would be to assume that the aim of any station as a private business should merely be to return a profit to the parent company or shareholders. FM104 has shown that this is not the only aim. The station has placed emphasis on introducing new Irish music through specialist shows and our Select Irish feature. The station has also run a number of charity drives.
Back to the conservative playlisting I spoke about earlier, and how it ties into the revenues of a station. Radio programmers might tell you that to appeal to a greater audience, in turn attracting greater revenues from advertisers, you need to play songs which listeners are familiar with and like listening to. This is, supposedly, a virtuous circle. The more familiar songs you play, the longer a listener listens and the more listeners there are, in turn the more a radio station can charge for advertising. The responsibilities of a commercial station like FM104 to Irish artists, should be contrasted against those of a public service broadcaster such as RTE.
This might seem like a self-harming statement from someone within the industry, but it is true. Radio does not have the exclusive dominion over breaking new music. Many Irish artists have broken their careers online, without any support from radio. Dermot Kennedy had amassed a strong fanbase and played the Olympia Theatre in February 2018 before he ever had play from Irish radio. Kojaque, Inhaler and countless others the same. Spotify’s A New Eire and A Breath of Fresh Eire are brilliant platforms for up-and-coming Irish acts. If you are an Irish artist – female or male – don’t let this survey discourage you from making music. Radio isn’t your only port of call.
It is disappointing to see female artists not being given the due recognition they deserve. There seems to be a structural issue in the music industry with publicising female acts. A great project, which we spoke about on the Open Mic, was by Stellar Magazine which removed the names of male performers on the posters of music festivals to show the dearth of female talent being showcased. I hope this can change. Interestingly, I took a look at the Irish Homegrown Chart for the past number of weeks. There are no Irish female artists there, nor had there been for the fortnight prior. A quick look at Spotify’s Viral 50 in Ireland revealed only one female act among the 50 songs, Denise Chalia.
Radio programmers should trust listeners and play it less safe, both in the context of Irish music and otherwise. I was sorry to see the results of this research and I hope that this is the start of change.
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