How is a artist's musical genre determined?

Cafe Society
1

I began to wonder this when Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow appeared on Country radio. Now I hear Bon Jovi on the country stations. Until Picture KR and SC had not, to my knowledge been on country radio. Bon Jovi was in a hair band, and granted, now he does vocals with known Country artists, but is he a Country singer now?

Then you can hear Bruce Springsteen singing The River on the same station that plays AC/DC. So is there a reason artists are found on a certain format? Are the singles marketed to all stations and they get to pick what is on their rotation? (Top 40 obviously excluded.)

SSG Schwartz

2

Program Managers play what they think their audiences want to hear. That position may be at a local station or it may be a corporate national post that dictates the programming for a number of stations.

PMs can be edgy, pushing boundaries to play groups that might be unexpected, or they can be extremely conservative, tightening playlists to fit a distinct demographic.

But they make all the decisions. There’s no national body out there that decides who plays what or what the music is called.

3

Actually, the major 3rd party music data providers (like AMG) classify all major music releases. That data is used by all sorts of music sellers, both online and bricks and mortar. Granted there are more then one data provider, but I think there’s only 2-3 in major use.

4

It’s usually the record companies that decide which radio format a song goes in. Since it can cost hundreds of thousands to promote a single song, they can’t afford to waste money by promoting a song in the wrong radio format. First they decide in which formats a song will be successful. They release promo singles only to stations in that format(s). They then order their promotion people in that format to spend time and money convincing stations to play it. As far as Sheryl Crow and Bon Jovi, their songs may or may not be promoted to country stations depending on the sound of the song. In many ways they’ve been forced to go to country radio, since they’re too old for top 40 and not loud enough for most rock formats.