Christmas Presence               by Jana Reid

We had requests to run this article again. This seemed a like the right time seeing as Christmas is just around the corner.
Grab a glass of eggnog and read on and enjoy!

As you can imagine, releasing a Christmas song has always been a good way for mainstream artists to generate sales, and remain on radio throughout the year.

But a Christmas song faces the same difficulty in achieving airplay, if not more, than other commercial releases, especially if it is religiously heavy.

Your competition is those old "chestnuts" roasted from years gone by and based on market studies, include these favorites:
   1. Nat King Cole/the Christmas Song
   2. Burl Ives/A Holly Jolly Christmas
   3. Celine Dion/O Holy Night
   4. Bobby Helms/Jingle Bell Rock
   5. John Lennon/Happy Xmas (War Is Over)
   6. Johnny Mathis/"It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas"
   7. Brenda Lee/"Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree"
   8. Harry Simeone Chorale/"The Little Drummer Boy"
   9. Dean Martin/"Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!"
 10. Carpenters/ "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas"

So first you have built in competition there, as well as the large number of songs submitted to radio by your contemporaries attempting to do the same thing you are and cash in on the holiday market.

Radio, which is an advertiser driven media, must keep their advertisers happy as well as their listeners and therefore conduct music test market studies to keep abreast of what their audiences like and don't like from their station. Edison Media Research conducted one such study focused on Christmas music.

They tested 640 Christmas songs to an audience of women between the ages of 30 and 49, the most extensive market study of Christmas songs to date. Sean Ross VP of Music & Programming and the former editor-in-chief of Airplay Monitor, Billboard Magazine's radio programming publication offered up an analysis, here are a few key points he brought to light:

"The notion that "safe song" + "safe artist" = "playable" often does not hold up. There are very few standards where every version is golden. In most cases, we saw pretty clear preferences. People knew what they liked, even after hearing 10 different versions of "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas." And while a few sound-alike versions of Christmas standards-newer artists doing note-for-note arrangements of the hits-tested playable, those were the exceptions". Translation: just because you pick a standard Christmas song and you are a known artist does not guarantee airplay, especially if you arrange the song exactly as the original. Although the study later suggests this is not true in the Country format, Sean states" we saw that the combination of a familiar song and a familiar Country voice was very potent".

"While a few recent songs have gained traction, Newsong's "The Christmas Shoes" and Faith Hill's "Where Are You Christmas" among them, it still takes the better part of a decade for songs to get traction with the audience." Translation: Given that each Christmas song is played 7-12 times a week for approximately 6 weeks and non holiday songs on all formats generally get a minimum of 16 and up to 36 weeks of steady rotation, it is understandable that it takes several seasons to ingrain new Christmas songs allowing them to become familiar.

"Likewise, there's been a lot of new instrumental music produced for AC radio, following the sales success of Mannheim Steamroller, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, and others. With a sample whose tastes skewed slightly older, the new age Christmas music did okay. On tests that went a little younger, the playable songs from instrumental artists went down to a handful".

"Likewise, there's been a lot of new instrumental music produced for AC radio, following the sales success of Mannheim Steamroller, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, and others. With a sample whose tastes skewed slightly older, the new age Christmas music did okay. On tests that went a little younger, the playable songs from instrumental artists went down to a handful".

OK, if you are an instrumentalist… you will have better chances with a song marketed to the almost 50 year old AC listener.

"As for older instrumental music, it barely did better than novelty songs."

Seems the novelty song is the least popular!

We asked Sean if he could suggest the best market amenable to new Christmas compositions and he replied "Country does seem to have a handful of superstar artists who can generally get a new(er) Christmas song played", and also pointed out that "once you get one prominent cut, you'll seemingly get many more-e.g., all the versions of "Grown Up Christmas List.

So if you are thinking about the potential of a Christmas song consider these factors:
   " It's a hard sell at radio.
   " If you want to do an old standard, try to create a distinguishable       arrangement. " If you are looking for opportunities for a new composition,
      writing for a country radio format is your better bet.
   " Instrumentals have a small market
   " Forget NOVELTY songs, unlike reindeer, they just don't fly!

Read previous issues of Songbridge articles and iinterviews.

     ©2006 thesongbridge.com