Rebecca Black’s “Friday” Played 12 Times on Radio
(UPDATED) Commercial radio gets quite a bit of criticism for playing mindless pop music. Interestingly enough, stations have opted not to give Rebecca Black's viral video single "Friday" much airplay. According to Billboard, the song has only been played 12 times in its entirety in the March 16-22 tracking week.
That's right. Of the more than 1,200 stations monitored by BDS for Hot 100 Airplay, DJs only dared to play "Friday" 12 times. Despite having 43,434,327 views on YouTube, which is 22,317,762 more views than Lady Gaga's hit single "Born This Way"; stations don't seem to want any part of the web phenomena.
Will radio change their mind? Maybe. For now, Black remains denied airplay.
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she’s not in the club and they don’t want anyone changing the rules! Too much money at stake
it should be forgotten.
That’s still 12 more than a lot of people who deserve to be heard.
Amazing! Kyle’s math in the original post indicate that Lady Gaga has roughly -140,000,000 views on YouTube! No one has ever achieved such a high negative number of views before!! 🙂
Seriously: Poor Ms. Black’s video went viral due to its trainwreck value. Why would a radio station deliberately play a song whose chief “virtue” is how annoying it is — do they want to drive listeners away?
I think it’s a sign of how desperate the music business is becoming that Ms. Black’s trainwreck value is being examined closely. Can we see a way forward with REALLY bad music? (Would Ahmet Ertugen or Jac Holzman have pushed Ms. Black?)
(I think the trainwreck value is overrated — hardly the worst ever recorded, have you ever heard Florence Foster-Jenkins? — and it’s really a shame that this kid and her parents set her up in the Internet’s dunk tank for everyone to hurl at.)
The song itself is horrible. Over-produced, over-autotuned, complete with trite lyrics that were seemingly written by a 5-year-old who was dropped on their head a few too many times as an infant.
But people are watching the video because it’s an epic trainwreck. They’re in awe of the sheer crappiness of it. I’ve watched it at least 5 times, each time finding new things to silently mutter “WTF is that?” to myself.
If I heard that song on the radio, I’d turn the station in a heartbeat.
Thanks for catching. Not quite sure how that happened. It's updated now.
This is a non story. Regardless of what anyone thinks of the song (Youtube “dislikes”689,100; Youtube “likes” 81,418), if Music Ark didn’t hire a legitimate radio promotion indie, they won’t ever see any significant airplay. Even if they do hire an indie, they’ll only get megaspins if they affiliate with a major label. That’s the way the CHR radio game works. Stations don’t give up spots on their tight playlists to interlopers–regardless of how much money they have to buy spins (oh, wait, that doesn’t happen now)or how much internet buzz there is on a track. Radio’s bread is buttered year after year by major labels. You take away an add slot from a major’s promo guy who’s been paying your bills for years by adding an unaffiliated indie record, and he and his label get pissed and your station giveaways start to dry up.
Payola is alive and well! If you don’t pay,you get no play!
I think you just described just about any “rap” record!
she is 13 on itunes chart. Her song is not so bad. Well, her song is bad, what I meant is that there are people that like it.
the fact that the song is bad is not a reason to not play.
Big labels need radio, if they dont stay there all the time, they are out.
A radio station owner in brazil said once on a interview:”One week the big labels decided to stop to pay to have their songs on radio (he is open about payola on his radio). I stoppped playing their songs, called my friend that has a dance label, and said, give-me 50% of your label and I will play your stuff in the label.”
End of story:He got 50% of the label and the station and started to play only dance music (that was in the 90s) just few months after the labels decided to pay him again.
I guess YouTube view are not as important as one thinks
This isnt about the quality of the tune. No one is putting money on RB, so she gets no airplay. If she wants airplay, she has to pay and lounge the radio stations, like every other label does.
Well she has a lot of views but look at how many dislikes she got.