Radio Update

June 18, 2007

Roadmaps have become relics of a former age, it seems, with the advent Google Earth, Mapquest and GPS devices. But for a while, at least, the word will remain as an analogy until people forget what it means.

Rapidly evolving technology has been both a blessing and a curse for the music industry. Certainly the tanking of CD sales and the reduction in the influence of terrestrial radio in music discovery have been jarring, but the primacy of the internet has also made it possible for the independent label or artist to be exposed to more people.

That rapid change has seen the demise of major labels, major record chains, and major industry publications. The late-20th century decline in ad revenue led to the departure of the Gavin Report at the beginning of this decade. And new technology is leading to big changes for this publication as we head toward this decade's end.

After Gavin dropped its jazz and smooth jazz charts on July 13, 2001, this publication stepped in to fill the void, taking airplay reports from former Gavin reporters. Before long, a technology advance came on the scene, Mediaguide station monitoring, which led JazzWeek to evolve to a PDF-based trade publication using mostly Mediaguide-provided monitored data. However, as proud as we were of the magazine, a trade publication showed itself to continue to be unsustainable in an industry with tight budgets and a focus on spending advertising dollars where they would influence consumers - even if the return on those dollars was itself doubtful.

That led to our decision earlier this year to downsize this publication so that we could at least sustain the charts while looking to sell the magazine or partner with another company. We also began discussions with Mediaguide on how to make a transition if we were to close our doors.

Those discussions with Mediaguide have been very fruitful. They, as a company, have decided to make their focus on music discovery, and have been developing products and technologies to make that possible. Meanwhile, on the web front, new technologies like Web 2.0, AJAX, blogging, podcasting, RSS and others have made it possible to do some very interesting things online.

So, rather than shut things down, we have decided to move instead in a forward-looking direction to build the JazzWeek brand to promote the discovery of jazz and smooth jazz, using the tag line "Rediscover Jazz." During the course of the next several weeks, we will finish development that is already going on to incorporate many new features specifically for industry-based subscribers and for the music consumer in general. We'll be outlining those as things get closer, but in general, we'll be tying chart data closer to artist information and retail, making jazz and smooth jazz internet streams easy to find, and adding new news and community-driven content. Plans also include reader-driven directories so that we can create useful data for musicians, industry, and listeners alike.

These new strategies will mean some adjustment, however. One unfortunate casualty in this will be the end of manual reports effective this week. It's just not possible for us to continue to move forward with the new data feeds and maintain the laborious task of data collection. However, we are working with Mediaguide and a partner of theirs to capture non-monitored stations via internet streams.

The second change will be in the nature of the jazz chart. Effective with the June 25 issue, the non-commercial jazz chart will go away and the jazz radio chart will incorporate airplay from all stations who play tracks labeled as of the jazz genre, rather than just the current panel. From what we've seen in the past few weeks of test data, the current panel will represent about 75% to 80% of the spins on that new combined chart.

For stations that have been submitting manual reports, we suggest that you post those to the Jazz Programmers' Mailing List. When our changeover to the new JazzWeek.com site is complete, we will have a place for you to display those reports free of charge.

Our plans are to continue to publish a PDF "tip sheet," but to make its distribution much more widely available. And the charts will be available online along with additional retail links and artist pages for each release. Both of those will provide new vehicles for marketing releases.

We also hope that this new direction will allow us to resume the JazzWeek Summit in 2008.

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