MAKING MUSIC RADIO THE RECORD INDUSTRY AND POPULAR MUSIC PRODUCTION IN THE UK James Mark Percival A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Film and Media Studies University of Stirling July 2007 J Mark Percival - Making music radio: the record industry and popular music production in the UK For my mother, Elizabeth Ann Percival (née Murphy) (1937-2004) and my father, Stanley Thomas Percival. J Mark Percival - Making music radio: the record industry and popular music production in the UK i ABSTRACT Music radio is the most listened to form of radio, and one of the least researched by academic ethnographers. This research project addresses industry structure and agency in an investigation into the relationship between music radio and the record industry in the UK, how that relationship works to produce music radio and to shape the production of popular music. The underlying context for this research is Peterson's production of culture perspective. The research is in three parts: a model of music radio production and consumption, an ethnographic investigation focusing on music radio programmers and record industry pluggers, and an ethnographic investigation into the use of specialist music radio programming by alternative pop and rock artists in Glasgow, Scotland. The research has four main conclusions: music radio continues to be central to the record industry's promotional strategy for new commercial recordings; music radio is increasing able to mediate the production practices of the popular music industry; that mediation is focused through the social relationship between music radio programmers and record industry pluggers; cultural practices of musicians are developed and mediated by consumption of specialist music radio, as they become part of specialist music radio. J Mark Percival - Making music radio: the record industry and popular music production in the UK ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It's been a long haul. And there are many people to thank for helping me get here. At the top of the list is Jennifer Rachel Birks, without whose intelligence, patience, humour, general coolness and innumerable excellent conversations over the last 6 years or so, I very much doubt I'd have made it at all. And she proof read the final draft (although any errors still present are entirely my responsibility). Equally, without Professor Simon Frith's frequently tested belief in my ability to complete this thesis, it would probably never have started in the first place. Of my academic friends and colleagues whose support has been invaluable, particularly in the last 3 years, Dr Martin Cloonan has been a consistent and invaluable steadying presence. I may owe you more than just the one beer, mate. My visits to London for research and other things would have been both less entertaining and less productive without Andy Linehan of the National Sound Archive, and Dave Laing, whose encouragement early in the life of this thesis was most welcome. Thanks also to John Williamson (academic, journalist, and excellent company), to Dr Raymond MacDonald of Glasgow Caledonian University and to all the other members of the Scottish Pop Academic Network (SPAN). Oh, and I haven't changed my mind about jazz, sorry. Thanks to colleagues at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh for their support way back in 1996, in covering my teaching to permit the one semester sabbatical that enabled me to get this work off the ground. A particular mention should go to Dr Jeremy Valentine, with whom I have gratefully shared an office for several years. Punk's not dead. Thanks are also due to my students whose contributions in class over the years have helped to clarify my thinking. This research project may have commenced at Strathclyde University, but it was at Stirling's Film and Media Studies Department it found its true home. I met many good J Mark Percival - Making music radio: the record industry and popular music production in the UK iii friends there as part of the post-graduate research community, including Adam Behr, Matt Brennan, Christine Lohmeier, Maggie Magor, Mike McDonald and Pedro Nunes (all members alongside me on bass, of The Distractions, a Department band put together following a pub challenge from the rather wonderful Inez Templeton). A special mention should also go to another Stirling post-grad with a recently completed PhD, Szu-Wei Chen, who was unfailingly enthusiastic about The Distractions gigs despite being new to the kind of racket we generated. In the last year I've been lucky enough to attend regular research seminars at the University of Edinburgh. Those two-hour formal sessions in the Music Department and less formally in the pub afterwards kept my research faculties ticking over - thanks to Melissa Avdeeff, Kyle Devine, Nick Prior, Mary Fogarty, to Sean and to Paul. It has been (I regret to say) a few years since I've seen some colleagues and friends in the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM), but there are several people who deserve a special mention for their interest and support of this research project, particularly in its early years: Scott Henderson, Keir Keightley, Geoff Stahl, Will Straw (the Canadians) and Yorkshire's own Andy Bennett. My gratitude also to various other IASPM members with whom I have shared lecture rooms and pubs since my first international paper in 1995. This research would not have been possible without the willingness of my interview informants to give me time from their often very busy schedules, so to all of those people from the record industry, from music radio and from the Glasgow music scene, my heartfelt thanks. A special mention should go to two of the most essential supporters of contemporary alternative music and culture in Scotland (and thoroughly nice men with it), Stewart Cruickshank and Craig Tannock. To my friends who thought I'd never make it, thanks for the consistent levels of good- natured verbal abuse and support in the final run for the line (in alphabetical order, to avoid J Mark Percival - Making music radio: the record industry and popular music production in the UK iv unseemly scenes of grown men squabbling): Greg Jones, Craig McNicol, Campbell Mitchell, Simon Nicholls, David Williamson, Andrew Wilson. And for being there consistently, with hospitality and warmth, through the dark and the light, the top-notch TV shows, the great whisky and the rock and the roll, my excellent friend, Laurence Williams. I'll be there with you on the Highway To Hell. For the unique theraputic effects of making music together, my gratitude to my gifted friends and co-conspiritors, Danny Farrimond and Roy Henderson. Finally, enormous thanks to my family for all their love and support over many years. To my Dad, Stanley; my sister, Karen; my brother, John; my uncle and aunt, Jim and Diane Murphy. My mother, Ann died in 2004. She always said she knew I was going to get there eventually with the PhD - I'll always be grateful for her confidence in me, and her seemingly boundless optimism about life. J Mark Percival - Making music radio: the record industry and popular music production in the UK v CONTENTS ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................................i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS............................................................................................................ii CONTENTS ..................................................................................................................................v I INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................1 Thesis ....................................................................................................................................3 II MUSIC RADIO MATTERS ......................................................................................................5 STUDYING MUSIC RADIO ............................................................................................................10 Status of radio as a medium...............................................................................................13 Unique characteristics of radio ...........................................................................................15 THE ROLE OF MUSIC FOR RADIO ................................................................................................18 Records are cheap and easy..............................................................................................19 Music and branding.............................................................................................................20 Music, audiences and advertisers......................................................................................21 THE ROLE OF RADIO FOR MUSIC ................................................................................................25 Radio, the record industry and revenue.............................................................................26 Promoting record sales ................................................................................................................. 26 Broadcast performance payments................................................................................................ 28 Production ...........................................................................................................................29 Music radio feedback and record releases .................................................................................