The Art of Hype

A Radio Today exclusive report lifts the lid on how the music biz works

Hype. The dictionary describes it as using underhand means to increase the chances of a record becoming a hit. To most people it conjures up pictures of DJs and TV producers being given large wads of money to feature bands, or teams scouring the country to buy up every last copy of a record.

In truth, the biz has moved on: it's gone respectable. Such direct hyping is too `dirty' for today. Instead they'll use methods which are more subtle — and effective. Hyping used to be used to bring records to the public's attention: it needed them to make the record a hit. Today they'll have already decided which records will be hits.

The music business has taken control of your ears.

The Scam

At first sight, the financial rewards don't seem to warrant the massive efforts made by the record companies to manipulate the charts. However, Britain has a privileged position: it holds the key to the world market — worth £15 billion!

Britain's influence in the world market is completely out of proportion to its size. Getting a hit here almost guarantees success in the rest of the world: half of all European hits, a third of all USA hits and a quarter of the hits in the rest of the world are British.

Because the market in Britain is so small it's easy to manipulate the charts for a relatively small investment. Success here acts as a springboard to the big money on the world market. In a massive tax dodge, the profits from the success of British records overseas never find their way back to Britain. Instead they end up in offshore companies, cheating our tax system out of millions of pounds.

Old Hype

Old hype is what the biz used to be based on: a mixture of payola, fraud, corruption and scandal. These days the majors don't like to dirty their hands with it. Old Hype has a direct effect, which makes it easy to spot, leading too easily to scandals in the press. Just look at the recent fuss over payola on the London pirates.

"In a massive tax dodge, the profits from the success of British records overseas never find their way back to Britain"

Powerplay

Payola is one of the oldest hypes in the books: paying to have your record played on the radio. These days the only place you'll find it is on the pirates. Radio Caroline operates a pay-for-play service, with nothing identifying the records as anything but the DJ's choice of music. Many of London's pirates do likewise, with what's become known as the 'Powerplay' system.

Powerplay records have the biggest influence on the charts when they are black music cross-overs. You've only got to look at the difference in black music sales between London and the rest of the country to see the effect the pirates are having. However, with the soul audience now fragmented between a large number of stations, many pluggers felt that powerplays were declining in importance. To reach the same audience as before you'd need to use several stations. However, in the wake of the recent LWT programme exposing the system and the subsequent media attention, there's been a revival of interest.

Record Shops

In the record shops, Old Hype reached a peak at the start of the eighties. In return for ticks next to their product in the weekly chart returns, record company reps would offer all kinds of incentives. One such practice, which still goes on today, is giving a shop a free box of albums by a top name act if they buy a number of singles by a new act. The albums will come free of paperwork so all the profit goes direct to the shop owner, not the taxman.

Eventually action was taken to stop such `extra promotional activities'. In 1983 Gallup took over the chart and replaced the system of manual returns with a panel of shops with computer terminals. Each purchase made is entered into the computer terminal and is logged along with the time it was made. Every night the central Gallup computer calls up all the terminals, which are connected via phone lines, and retrieves the day's sales information. This is then analysed, together with back-up postal returns from other shops, and any suspect sales are excluded.

Control

The new techniques to prevent chart rigging have given the majors much more control. It's in their interests to prevent Old Hype. It offers too easy a way to the charts for small companies on the fringes of the business. Industry watchdog, the BPI, has been quick to condemn the powerplay system, pointing it was non-members who were involved. Such a system could be damaging to their members carefully planned hits.

New Hype

New Hype is more subtle than Old Hype. It's indirect, not so easily spotted. It can be best summed up by the phrase There's no such thing as a free lunch. It's looking after journalists, DJs and record shops extremely well. They don't have to give anything in return, but if the favours are to continue then it helps...

You can best appreciate New Hype by following through the meticulously planned career of a new act.

No longer is talent signed on the basis of musical ability. Instead, a record company will be looking at how an act fits in with its financial plans. Universal appeal is vital, like today's rock, pop and soul mix, resulting in the almost complete ironing out of any musical individuality.

The Image

Next comes the visual image, specially calculated and precisely moulded to appeal to the 14-19 year olds who make up the singles market. It's much more important than the act's musical talent. Lack of musical talent will be compensated for by the use of session musicians and clever electronics.

The video allows record companies to present the exact visual image required for an act. Previously, appearances on shows like Top of the Pops were quickly filmed, perhaps with unsympathetic staff, unable to spend a long time over filming one act. Now, there's no danger of an act being shown up on TV as anything but enormously talented. Poor acts can now be sustained for a long time, where they used to be quickly exposed as untalented and over-hyped.

The Record

It's important to realise that the records which will be hits will have already been chosen before they are released. A record that's destined for the top of the charts will be described as having `priority' and will have all a record company's promotional muscle put behind it.

Records without priority will get little or no promotion and will flop in all but a very few cases. They're only needed to maintain the illusion that the chart isn't the big fix it really is. Few record shops will stock non-priority records and they'll get few plays on the radio.

The Media

To get the media behind a record it's over to the pluggers. They used to only work with the radio stations, but pop has now gone mainstream, helped by media events like Live Aid. These days Fleet St tabloids, glossy teenage magazines and TV are just as important.

Pluggers will aim to build up a relationship with DJs, TV producers and journalists. They'll do this using 'acceptable' bribes. Not money; just looking after them extremely well. This could include lunches, tickets to see bands play (often abroad), free goods and services...

For a few DJs there's another bribe: cocaine. A plugger will drop by for a chat about the records he's currently working on and leave behind a small bag. Unlike payola it's non-specific. The DJ doesn't have to play the record or the journalist write the article. However, they'll then owe the plugger a favour for another time.

The people on the receiving end of the pluggers attentions are unlikely to bite the hand that feeds them. It won't win them any favours when the big name exclusives are handed out. Record companies have also been quick to withdraw advertising and press facilities from music papers deemed to have overstepped their mark.

Advertising in the music press is one of the main ways a record company tells the rest of the music business — and especially record shops — that a record is priority. Fly posting and magazine adverts also help sell a band's name and image, so when people see or hear the name again they'll make a connection.

"A plugger will drop by for a chat about the records he's currently working on and leave behind a small bag of cocaine"

The Record Shop

While the media push has been gaining pace, the record company will have been gearing up its sales reps for the promotional push at the record shops. Chart shops especially are looked after by the reps with as much effort as the pluggers look after the media.

They'll get better terms than non-chart shops, with record prices often lower and the shop making a bigger profit on each record. In return, the reps will be looking for favours like window displays and dump bins. Combined with the exposure in the media, these will influence many customers into buying a record. For the final push, there's also the special editions and remixes needed to maintain or increase a chart position.

The biz has one more trick up its sleeve. The reps will tell shops which records are priority, ensuring that few will bother to stock the also-rans. Even if all their other efforts fail, you may still find it impossible to buy anything but the singles they want you to.

The Future

Through the music business' control of the interlocking media industries and distribution networks, pop has become a privileged club that only the lucky few can join. For them, the manipulation of the chart is only a small investment compared to the potential earnings worldwide. For everyone else, that investment is out of reach.

However, the biz has a problem: the number of teenagers, the main singles buyers, is on the decline. Radio is finding it increasingly difficult to justify Top Forty formats when the people buying the records make up an increasingly small part of the audience. The biz has hit back by concentrating on crossover acts, the sort who won't sound out of place on Mike Smith's Breakfast Show or Nicky Horne on CFM. Whether this tactic will keep them in such control of the charts in the long term isn't clear.

They've also begun to move away from the current situation themselves. Several companies entering the world of specialist music records, where although the sales aren't so high they're often steady over a long period of time. Major changes are coming to the music scene, hopefully new radio will hasten them.