CMJ RECAP ISSUE 1367 WEEK 42

Welcome back everyone. I hope that if you were at the CMJ music festival you had a great time. I had a great time meeting up with a lot of MD's and hanging out with all the promoters in town.

The chart the week after CMJ is a crapshoot. You have all these MD's that were away coming back to PILES of records and feeling a bit overwhelmed with that plus school work and you have promoters that had little to no time to call anyone the week before.  As expected I did see a lot of Did Not Reports come through this week. Funny enough though they were from stations that were not at CMJ. I would say most of the stations that were at CMJ actually did report this week.  Just thought that was a funny observation.

We had another add week where no one record stood out from the pack. A lot like the last report when Kindness came in at #1 most added with only 69 adds. ( Kindness did have a pretty decent debut though at #53) This week Cold War Kids came in at #1 most added with 78 adds. I am sure CWK will do fine but the past has shown that most contenders have to break that 100 add mark.   But not every week is going to produce a record that will have a shot at #1 and a lot of those weeks you see a lowish #1 and a highish #20.

On to the charts! King Tuff keeps #1 and early on it looked like Caribou or Foxygen would also contend but in the end it was not very close. I think next week with promoters having a full week of work and stations having a full week of catching up that all three of those records should have a chance at #1.  

1	1	2	1	5	KING TUFF	Black Moon Spell	SUB POP
2	4	48	2	3	CARIBOU	Our Love	Merge
3	5	14	3	4	FOXYGEN	And Star Power	Jagjaguwar

Caribou being the newest record at radio I think has the best shot but Foxygen was not too far behind and it is all together possible that King Tuff can hold on to the top spot for another week. 

Flying Lotus made a nice jump into the top five but the chances of that moving ahead of the others is pretty slim. 

It is hard to believe that there are only 6 more reporting weeks of the year! How many more #1's will we have? 

What were your highlights/ lowlights of CMJ? Lets talk about all of that on the twitter 

CMJ ISSUE 1366 WEEK 41

Well it is here! The last reports before CMJ!!! I am pretty excited for CMJ week and hopefully we can meet up at the Pirate! CMJ party! Or any other party just hit me up on Twitter and we can make plans!

This week we finally saw the fall of Ty Segall from the #1 spot. What a run though! Has to be in contention for biggest record of the year. As expected it was King Tuff that took over the #1 spot with just under 70% of the stations charting.  This sets up what should be a fun few weeks on the chart.  As we have a bunch of records that have put themselves in position to contend.

TW	LW	2W	PK	WKS	Artist	Recording	Label
1	2	5	1	4	KING TUFF	Black Moon Spell	SUB POP
2	1	1	1	8	TY SEGALL	Manipulator	Drag City
3	3	7	3	13	ALT-J	This Is All Yours	Canvasback-Atlantic
4	48	-	4	2	CARIBOU	Our Love	Merge
5	14	113	5	3	FOXYGEN	And Star Power	Jagjaguwar

This top five should be rather volatile over the next few weeks. I could of included some of the next group as well 

6	80	-	6	2	FLYING LOTUS	You're Dead	Warp
7	8	19	7	4	APHEX TWIN	Syro	Warp
8	7	8	7	6	BANKS	Goddess	Harvest
9	26	165	9	3	EX HEX	Rips	Merge

but really think top five will be the ceiling for these records.  Foxygen made a nice move into the top 5 but Caribou has the added push of 2 indies on board and being a week younger, it will be tough for Foxygen to pull past Caribou.  Alt-J I feel is out performing what I thought it would and while I doubt it has the momentum to take #1 it is worth keeping an eye on.  

We have 7 more reporting weeks after this CMJ break. My guess is that King Tuff holds for another week before Caribou takes over. After that its anyones guess. 

The ADDS this week were not much to look at. Anytime you see a record get #1 most added with under 100 adds you know its an underwhelming  week. To have the #1 most added record get only 69 adds... ooof.. none of these records will be contenders for the top of the chart. 

See you at CMJ!!!! 

PIRATE 2014 CMJ PARTY

HERE YOU GO!

...special secondary invite coming soon. 

CMJ ISSUE 1365 RECAP. WEEK 40

It amazes me how fast the CMJ festival can sneak up, we are one ADD week away before we head to NYC to see bands and put some names to faces. That also means there are only eight more ADD weeks before the end of the year!  I can't speculate who will make it to #1 over that time but we have a lot of interesting contenders. 

This week we have Ty Segall at #1 for the 5th week! It has been impressive by how much Ty Segall has been #1. Most weeks it has been a gap well over 50+ . This is the first week where the #2 record is within striking distance. King Tuff is making that move all the way up to #2 this week with just around 10 less stations.  Alt-J moved up to #3 and it will be interesting to see if King Tuff can run away with the chart for a few weeks the way Ty Segall did. There does look to be more legit competition now.  

So who are the contenders? 

After King Tuff and Alt-J we have Aphex Twin and Growlers who both cut their chart number in half. But neither of these records really should compete for #1, maybe top 5 for each though.  Foxygen, last weeks #1 made a solid week 2 move up to #14 in what would of been the debut week. 

I don't really see any others could make a run though. This weeks ADDS though should provide some interesting contenders in Caribou, Flying Lotus and Zola Jesus.   Caribou and Zola Jesus both have 2 indies on them but I feel that the two indie push really shows its best impact on the ADD week and does not translate to the charts as much as you might think.  We will look more in-depth at that in a few weeks. 

This next week should be fun though as everyone wants to be going into the CMJ festival with a good number as trying to rebound or catch up after the week off is a huge pain. Those that went for ADDS this week should be in pretty good shape I would think. 

I noticed something I had not noticed before this past week when logging into CMJ. On the industry log in page reads this :

Not a subscriber?

Subscribe to CMJ New Music Report, the world's leading trade magazine for the new music industry.

For the NEW MUSIC INDUSTRY 

But what defines NEW MUSIC? I guess that could be different for everyone. I would say New Music is anything in the past 4 months while someone else might say its anything that came  out in the last 4 weeks. The point is it can be different for everyone and that everyone is "right."  I bring this up because there is always what I consider OLD things on the chart and that would be anything over 3 months old or 12 weeks well over the typical 6-8 weeks a promotion company will work a record to radio.  Black Keys, Jack White, Old Crow Medicine Show, Morrissey, First Aid Kit, Eno-Hyde, A sunny Day in Glasgow, How to Dress Well all OVER 12 weeks and in my opinion taking a spot from a new band that could use the help and exposure.  But because there is no guide to what is new or even an suggestion we can find stations charting records that came out last April.   So then the question is can we define NEW? Or should we just continue to let stations chart a record that is over a year old? At some point I think there should be a cutoff so that stations are encouraged to play new music. After all CMJ is the "worlds leading trade magazine for the NEW music industry " So shouldn't they be trying to help define what is NEW music? 

Thanks for reading! Let me know your thoughts  on Twitter.  And stop charting The Knife. It came out a year ago. 

CMJ ISSUE 1364 WEEK 39 RECAP

Happy October friends! We have 2 short weeks until the CMJ Music Festival, have you checked out the lineup? Who are you excited to see? It amazes me how many Music Directors have no idea what this festival is. I asked a station yesterday if they were going and they said I don't know. ( They were in Utah so I am pretty sure they would know if they were going) It just got me thinking about how many MD's don't know how things work  because no one has taken the time to tell them because of having previously bad Music Directors before them or in some cases no Music Directors before them.  So while I do poke fun and am frustrated with stations that don't know how to do ADDS whenever I can I try and explain what they are and how to do them. 

Lets take a look at some examples of doing ADDS wrong, these all come from stations that did adds for issue 1364. 

	-
1. KING TUFF Black Moon Spell 2. NEHRUVIANDOOM NehruvianDOOM 3. KENDRICK LAMAR "i" [Single] 4. WAR ON DRUGS Lost In The Dream 5. ICEAGE "How Many" [Single]

So what is wrong with these adds.  Well first off King Tuff was an official ADD last week. By Adding the record this week this station is helping no one.  When it could of been used for someone like Emilyn Broodsky who only missed the adds chart by a handful of ADDS or Bonnie Prince Billy who missed by even less.  This is an example of not paying attention to what is new at radio and that is a lot of what College radio is about. 

Another common mistake is not adding 5 records. 

1. EX HEX Rips

This station decided to only add EX HEX for whatever reason.  I guess you could make the argument that it was the only new record they liked and everything else would of been older stuff.  So what is worse.  

Well my answer would be this... this is worse. 

1. GERARD WAY Hesitant Alien

2. EMPIRES Orphan

3. TY SEGALL Manipulator

4. KASSIM RITE "Spaceman" [Single] Doing both. Not only did this station add a record that went for adds WEEKS ago but they only added 4 records.  It is my opinion that you are better off not doing ADDS at all if you feel like you do not want to participate in the way they have been done for years.  Most companies send out emails and have websites where you can get this information so adding something on the wrong date is very avoidable. Let's talk about this week now!  If we were waiting for Ty Segals armor to weaken then we will be waiting a bit longer.  There was an uptick in reporters this week and that only meant more stations playing Ty Segal.  The percentage of stations playing him even went up.   Death From Above 1979 made a nice move up to #2 but I believe thats as far as they go.  King Tuff, last weeks #1 add comes in at #5 and Alt J moves up to #7 from #66.  If i were a betting man my money would be on King Tuff to take over the week before CMJ.  One thing thats fun about the charts this time of year is all the stations that were off for the summer come back and want to play all the stuff from the summer, but that quickly turns to being replaced by new stuff so we should see a lot of turnover on the chart in the next few weeks.   This weeks #1 ADD was Foxygen and was the only record that had 100 adds this week. It will be interesting to see how this record does. The last one went to #2 so the expectation has to be a #1 record.  It is going to be tough as Foxygen does not have a secondary indie working the record to radio while King Tuff, Alt J, Ty Segal and the upcoming Caribou all have promotion companies behind them. If you look at every #1 from last year only one came from a band that did not have the extra push of a promotions company behind it. So it can be done with an in-house push, we shall see. So lets continue the conversation on Twitter.    And if you are new at being a MD and have questions just ask. Most of us are here to help!