Do You Seek Opportunities for (Self-)Promotion?

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I do! Which is why I'm linking to the first part of my series on (mostly) American teenpop this week over at Stylus. I compiled 5 mixes to correspond with the essays, and will be posting them in a SEKRIT PLACE (shhhhhhh) some time on Thursday or so.

If you agree, disagree, or otherwise care about teenpop, please share yer thoughts here or at my blog, where you might find s'more commentary if I can find some time for it, or over at the Rolling Teenpop thread, which has seen some activity with the back-to-back leaks/releases of Britney, Ashlee, Veronicas, and now DAHV and SKYE.

(If you don't know who Dahv is, stay tuned and you will at least know the glory of "Pass the Shirley Temple.")

Comments

[koganbot]

Was frantically looking for that "listening to Avril being drowned in the Baltic Ocean with a piano" crack, wondering why you'd deleted it; then realized it's coming later in the week.

Idiots Posting On Stylus Threads Shocker

[koganbot]

I guess this shows I'm not jaded: I still manage to get shocked and upset by the posturing childishness of the guys who post their disdain of teenpop on the Stylus comments threads. Not a one of them has shown evidence of having listened to a single song you've written about, or of having thought about or even noticed a single word you wrote.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

This feature is already very long so I'm going to have to print it off, which I'll do once all 5 parts are up. I promise I'll comment somewhere once I have read it carefully. But that may not be until the weekend.

[koganbot]

One of the huge problems is Top 40 radio's refusal to play any of the newer teenpoppers or ex-teenpoppers who are trying to create material for an older market, the only exception being JoJo. So Tisdale and Duff and Hudgens and Aly & AJ get shunned. I don't get it, that stations that would play Avril and Ashlee a couple of years ago won't play Aly & A.J. or Duff now. It's not as if the latter's current material screams "kiddie." "Potential Breakup Song" will probably peak on Top 40 with approximately 800 spins per week, which is better than "Rush" or "Chemical React" got, but is not good (number one right now is Timbaland with about 10,000 spins, and that's not even counting what he's getting on the rhythmic and the urban stations); and also, "Potential Breakup Song" got no major markets (got play on one Cleveland station that no one listens to but its markets were basically places like Charleston and Providence and Flint). So it's getting about 1.6 million listens a week - compare to Britney a couple days ago when "Gimme More" was still only three days on the charts and was down in the 800s and it was getting about 8 million listens, because she is getting places like L.A. and New York and Miami. (Not that it's relevant to the topic, but right now "Gimme More" is at 1,143 spins on the Top 40 airplay chart, and is actually in the Top 40 for airplay; I'm guessing it ends up with something like 1,400 for its first seven days, plus will get about 400 more from rhythmic and adult contemporary combined. While these aren't mad breakout numbers, it's the biggest take-off on that chart; I think the record company will be insane not to rush out the video and not to push forward the download release date from the scheduled November, though I suppose the biz people know better than I how to promote a song.)

Anyway, given the success of "Since U Been Gone" and "Girlfriend," what makes Top 40 radio stations assume that their listeners wouldn't want to hear "Stranger" or "Potential Breakup Song"? It's not like they'd be competing with Disney for the kiddie market; rather they'd be playing to a young and not-so-young Top 40 audience who'd probably be glad if the radio included stuff that wasn't 100% r&b or emo or Nickelback-Hinder rock. (And also they might as a bonus get some kids who like Aly & A.J. but don't want to stay strictly listening to Disney, which anyway isn't in every market: there are only 51 Disney stations in the country.) I do think there's something of a market for the Aly & A.J. video, by the way; is in the top ten on AOL, I noticed.