The songs "Mellow" and "Last December" has beautiful melodies and would fit well in Contemporary radio. I know Radio Programmers listened to the album and I know they must
find the above mentioned songs as valid songs to add to their playlist rotation. I am not knowledgeable behind the politics of how a song is added to the playlist but based what is being played right now there is just no reason why songs off the Rainbow Children is not being played.

i guess it's like why aren't independant movies shown in all multipex cinemas in malls?

the answer is that most the population would rather see scooby-doo/minority report than a deep alternative independant movie making a statement.

same thing. if u want to see one then go to a cinema that shows those movies.


prince's music appealed to me when i was a teenager in '85 and still appeals to me now. but his music is much more older in nature now and i know if i was 15 now i would be listening to cool poppy hip hop dancy stuff as i was back then.but it would not be prince ( if i was 15 that is)

i guess what i'm trying to say is that his music is not cool and/or hip anymore.

i still love it although lately i am skipping thru recent cd's to find that 1 gem.

maybe an easy-listening station?

pm1 said:

actually, that's a bad analogy. TRC doesn't get airplay because Prince isn't buying the airtime for it to be pushed. independant films aren't shown in huge theatres because, for the most part, they are boring pieces of crap that defend their awfullness under the guise that they are deep and have something to say, when in fact they don't. better messages can be found in huge hollywood blockbusters that indy films, but better music isn't neccessarily being pumped put of major record labels.

you only get played on commercial tv and radio if the so-called 'pluggers' from the artist's recordcompany do their job right. and that is to make those tv- and radiostations play your video and single. so, there are a few 'problems' here:

1. i don't think prince has released a single commercially; meaning he may have released 'she loves me 4 me' but on a very small scale with little marketing behind it (just like the album).
2. there's no video to support the single. and what 'video killed the radiostar' taught us: you can't have a commercially succesful single without a video.
3. does prince have any interest in having a hit after the commercially disappointing 'rave'? seems to me he ain't trying that hard anymore. TRC does have some great songs.

look, friends of mine have heard songs from TRC played on radio here in holland, but it just aren't the stations where you wanna be played if you wanna get back in the limelight..

dumbass said:

watch out with what you're saying. arthouse freak, right here!

"Radio"(and I mean "pop radio") won't give songs like these a legitimate chance because radio is a business, pure and simple...their goals are to make money...and radio has discovered a new revenue stream in dealing with "record promoting firms", which are really nothing more than a way of funneling $$$ into radio stations--and more specifically, into the corporations that own those stations...stations and corporations are able to make a profit without the "legal payola" of promoting firms, but they can make a hell of a lot more profit with them...

dumbass said:

so you are saying that scooby doo or the sum of all fears have a lot more to say than, say, a film by the Coen Brothers or Woody Allen or... I can think of millions of examples...
I guess you did not choose your username for nothing...such ignorance, god!!

gman1966 said:

TRC is just the latest among many, many, MANY worthy albums for years that gets no airplay. Airplay is about $$$, and the Clear Channel (The Devil) monopoly is leading the charge. Record companies pay for airplay. The very first time I heard anything from TRC was while listening to a college radio station out of Indiana.

Those are songs that arent totally popular with even diehard fans, so I doubt they would be requested on the radio even if they were released.

garganta said:

are you saying that Scooby-Doo and the Sum of All Fears are the only studio films ever made, and the Coen Brothers and Woody Allen are the only independent filmakers alive. I think you need to see more movies before you spout off.

besides, last time I checked, both Woody Allen and the Coen Brothers films are financed by major studios, so you obviously know nothing of what you are speaking of. please have a basis for your opinion before you attempt to share.

2 b honest.if i owned a radio station i wouldn't play those 2 songs.outside of diehards i don't c people requesting those songs much

theC said:

I would...simply to give it a chance...throw it into one of those "make it or break it" call-in deals...play it for a week or so, see if by chance listeners actually like it more than I suspect...as long as the quality of the song is good--and as long as it fit my station's format--I'd give pretty much any decent song a shot.

dumbass said:

Dumbass for such a looney name you have quite a bit of insight.

Working for an entertainment conglomerate, much of what you say is true.

I totally agree. Radio is indeed a mess.

By Eric Boehlert



June 25, 2002 | Is pay-for-play here to stay?

Once a hush-hush topic rarely discussed even within the music industry, "pay-for-play," the costly system by which record companies pay independent promoters to get songs on the radio, has now become a hot-button political issue.


Some members of Congress are talking about holding hearings and offering legislation in hopes of tearing down the entrenched pay-for-play system. Not only does pay-for-play cost the music industry approximately $150 million each year, it virtually shuts off access to commercial FM radio for artists or record companies who can't or won't spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to promote a new single. Inside the industry, the veil has also been lifted; an entire panel discussion devoted to indie promotion is being put together for the radio industry's largest annual convention this fall. Meanwhile, ABC's "20/20" ran a prime-time segment on pay-for-play, and even the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have introduced the topic to their readers.

"It's become part of pop culture," says the head of radio promotion at a major label. "People are intrigued by it and they want to read about it."

It seems that most outsiders don't like what they see.

"It's an outrageous thing and it's a sad thing," says Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., who is preparing to introduce legislation that would, among other things, close loopholes in the Federal Communications Commission's outdated payola laws. "It really does affect the quality of what you hear on the radio. It's very disturbing for me, and not just for entertainment but even for democracy."

According to a poll recently conducted by the Future of Music Coalition, a Washington think tank, 68 percent of radio listeners want the government to consider laws ensuring that all musical artists have a "more reasonable chance" of getting their songs heard.

Inside the music industry, accusations over who is to blame for the broadening scandal have become fierce. As Salon reported in March, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), acting on behalf of the major record labels tired of paying escalating fees to "indie" promoters, was preparing to ask the FCC to revamp its payola laws. It now seems Feingold's pending legislation will attempt to do just that.

But can the pay-for-play machinery be fixed or dismantled? Can it at least be taken down a notch, from a $150 million industry black hole to, say, a $75 million one?

Feeling the heat, radio operators, led by the nation's largest, Clear Channel Communications -- which owns approximately 1,225 stations -- insist that record companies created the dubious indie system and must fix it. Borrowing a page from the Nancy Reagan handbook, radio's advice to the labels seems to be "Just say no."

Appearing at a media conference held by Deutsche Bank, Clear Channel chairman and CEO Lowry Mays told investors that payola was "an aberration of the record companies" and had been "a problem within the radio industry for many years."

Kraig Kitchin, president of Clear Channel's Premiere Radio Networks, told the Wall Street Journal: "The day [labels] choose to discontinue to pay the indies is the day [pay-for-play] stops," adding that it was "blatantly absurd" to blame radio companies for runaway indie promotion costs.

The problem with that simplistic analysis -- and the reason radio is not entirely blameless -- can be summed up in a single phrase familiar to all industry insiders: nontraditional revenue, or NTR. Led by Clear Channel, radio corporations have been scrambling to find new ways for their radio stations to generate revenue. And the hefty pay-for-play arrangements with indie producers have been among the most reliable and lucrative streams of NTR.

For Clear Channel, which has been perhaps the most aggressive of the radio networks in pumping up indie prices, pay-for-play has meant tens of millions of dollars each year to the corporate bottom line.

"Clear Channel would have a fucking heart attack if labels stopped paying indies," says one record company promotion executive. "Clear Channel looks at pay-for-play as an alternative source of income." In fact, until recently the upfront money indies paid out went to local stations to help defray promotional costs. Today, in the case of Clear Channel, those indie payments go directly to corporate headquarters, not the individual stations. Would Clear Channel simply go along if the labels decided to cut off those multimillion-dollar payments?

Clear Channel executives declined to be interviewed for this story.

If anything, says the label source, Clear Channel was instrumental in driving up the cost of radio promotion last year, when the company used its clout to sign exclusive deals with eight nationwide indies.

All Clear Channel station managers, says the source, were told not to renew any indie contracts. "Once all the contracts were up, the major indies had to bid for the stations," the source continues. "They offered multimillion-dollar contracts, which had to be paid upfront to Clear Channel. Then in order to make a profit for themselves, the indies had to turn around and charge the labels extraordinary fees for playlist adds."

The way pay-for-play works today is that independent promoters pay radio stations for the exclusive right to "represent" those stations, to act as a kind of middleman between the radio station and the record company. Generally, the indies pay between $100,000 and $400,000 per station, depending on the size of the market. Once that deal is signed, the indie sends out weekly invoices to record companies for every song added to that station's playlist. This is not technically considered payola under current laws, by the way, because indies don't pay station employees money to play a specific song.

Those invoices add up. Every song added to an FM radio playlist comes with a price: Roughly $800 per song in middle-size markets and $1,000 and more in larger markets, up to about $5,000 per song for the biggest stations in the biggest markets. Most stations add between 150 and 200 songs to their playlists every year.

Bibleteacher89 said:

It mirrors the state of the music industry.

dumbass said:

Even if sometimes financed by major studios, the Coens (maybe not such a good an example), Woody Allen and so many others can still be seen as independent artists. My point was that thanks to a lot of independent fims, cinema as an art has a chance to survive and people can get to see daring, edgy stories that major studios won´t finance because they are very conservative and only care for the almighty dollar.

There was a time when Hollywood´s intention was to make good and entertaining films. Nowadays, entertaiment is all that counts. Quality is not necessary anymore. The simpler the stories the better and the messeges are most of the time superficial and manichean and many times reflect an incredible ignorance towards other cultures and countries. the characters in these fims are hardly human and have little or nothing in common with the people that go to see them. Thanks god for independent films and for the good mainstream fims (Spielberg or Scorsese come to mind) that Hollywood still manages to make from time to time.

If you're not listening to the Mellow song live, It's a pretty boring song, Prince should put a better song than this out on single.

The song "She Loves Me 4 Me" is getting radio airplay.I've heard it in my area.

Give it up. Prince will never ride the radio airwaves like he used to. He can't hack it artistically, commercially or even business-wise. Yet you'd rather blame the radio stations than Prince. Some of you make me wonder - if Prince was accused of murder, would you find a way to blame the victim?

lovebird said:

You gotta be kidding me! TAKE THAT BACK RIGHT NOW! Mellow is great. The same stations playing "She Loves Me 4 Me" could be spinning "Mellow" & it would fit in just fine - going w/ Adult Contemporary/Quiet Storm type stations is the key. I don't think anyone expects to see TRC songs playing on Pop stations...

why should prince release a song from TRC as a single? the only reason that singles are released is to promote the album. and prince ain't giving the public the chance to buy this album, 'cause of the limited distribution of it. i think prince should focus on a next album, but nothing completely instrumental, 'cause that won't work in my opinion. not if you want it to be commercially succesful.
if prince only gave TRC a better chance, i would've made the title track the first single. speed it up a bit, cut out the narrator, make an animated video to accompany it. why this song? because my flatmates don't like prince that much, but love that song. the catchy chorus, choir in the end, the jazzy feel, etc. the narrator bugs a lot of people (not me!), that's why it must be cut out for a single. that way you also don't confuse people with the story that is only a snippet of the complete concept.
it would be so cool to have an animated video visualizing the lyrics from chorus and bridge. i wouldn't make it to divine, just a little. why animated? if prince would appear in the video, too many people would immediately say "man, him again!" and be prejudiced before listening.
i garantee it would be played on MTV, 'cause it's not a song and video the grand public expects from an artist like prince, it's nothing controversial, just easy listening, and so MTV won't mind and will probably give it a good chance. Imagine sitting on your couch, eating doritos, zapping from channel to channel, when you all of a sudden see this on your MTV:

next up: prince - the rainbow children

hmm, all my dreams..

all very interesting indeed.

i just wish prince would get back out there commercially already!

IrishEcho said:

I think it is strange for a person to visit and post on this site as frequently as you but consistently state negative remarks!!! All I said was the give the songs a legitimate chance that's all.

wellbeyond said:

Exactly I have played songs off of the album to a number of my friends and they all liked the songs. Last December is a beautiful song!!!

Red said:

This definitely gives validity to this thread!!!

anyone ever read the front news page of this site? says Prince is actually on radio. and charting...

go figure.

I simply want to be able to turn on the radio again and be able to stomach the stuff coming out of it. I am so sick of turning it on and hearin Britney and N'sync. I am tired of such bubble gum artist and would kill (alright maybe just maim) to hear good music coming on again. Yes there are some very good artist getting airplay but they are easily being drowned out by the above sub-standards. Prince still has the stuff to make it commercially but it seems he's not to interested in making the effort.

Lots of love to you all.

Aaron said:

If that's true he ain't hit the airwaves where I live that I have heard. Or does anyone know of a station in North Carolina that I might be overlooking some how, that is turning his stuff?

Lots of love to you all.