i agree with chuckd, i think "tears" should have come out first. i hope the same $$$ and effort is put into promoting "tears" as it was for "the dance". i really didn't like "the dance" much at all. our local dance station from a year or two ago (power 105.5 in sacramento) never touched "the dance", not even in the mixes. never heard it once on the station. but they did play "what u did to me" and i think i even remember hearing "tears" too.
"CA", I don't think we played "Tears" unless one of our mixers had it on CD and mixed it in that way. None of our 3 PD's nor our APD liked "The Dance", neither did our mixers, and never had any requests for it, so we never played it unless one of our mixers ever mixed it in. But I don't remember hearing it ever. Our mixers had the freedom to play anything they wanted and I didn't listen to us 24/7 so who knows. I understand John's strategy though, it was a song that fit in certain clubs very well, and if I remember correctly, there were a few dance stations that played "The Dance".
"What U Did 2 Me" however, did get quite a bit of mixshow play. We even came close to playing "Tears" (in rotation) even though the single wasn't released. Our station was free to play what we thought was good, and unlike many of today's dance stations which are run musically by just a couple of people and companies, we didn't have to wait for the big boss at corporate headquarters in some other city to ok a track to play or wait for a consultant to tell us we should play. We would play whatever we though sounded good (well for most of our history, anyway). So that's why we came close to playing "Tears" even though it would be something that none of the other stations would have done, (if they like it they usually wait until it is released and pushed to radio). We didn't get the impression that "Tears" was a song that would be released, but liked it so much that we almost did it, but then our station was sold before we ever did, and you know the rest.
"Tears" was only recently considered because the marketplace (Dance music friendly radio stations) has once again made it possible for a Freestyle track to be accepted at some radio
stations. Dance music is on the move and Freestyle can become a big part of it with quality productions and sensible songs.
Here is my take on this...
True there are several new dance stations that have opened recently (Denver, Phoenix, San Francisco, Miami, etc.), the problem is that the programming is being controlled by a very few people when it comes to dance music. There aren't too many programmers out there who know dance music and how dance radio should be programmed. So the dance music choices that get played on radio are being controlled by a select few people (what they think and their personal tastes even) which has made it tough for freestyle to get radio airplay. This has given the false impression that freestyle won't work on radio. But trust me, some freestyle is much more radio-friendly than a lot of the dance music you hear today. But we need someone out in the dance programming world who is open to freestyle and doesn't hate it personally.
Also freestyle coming from a big name and big label will help. This is where Robbins has an advantage and I hope to see "Tears" appear on some playlists when it is released.
I'll post once again the damage a good freestyle song can do. At one time, we had 2 songs at Power 105.5 that were standing out and getting the most requests... Gigi D'Aostino's "I'll Fly With You" and Darude's "Sandstorm". Again, since we had some freedom to play around, we decided to put in a song that was several years old from an artist that no one in Sacramento had ever heard of, just because we thought it would be a good song for our station. The song was "No One Knows" by Susan Santiago. In a short time this song started getting tons of requests and for a few weeks even had more requests than Gigi D'Agostino and Darude whos 2 songs were the hottest dance songs in a while. That's no typo, a freestyle song no one in Sacramento heard of before that was several years old competing with Gigi and Darude! We just need some more people out there with an open mind and some balls to try something different.
But anyway, with an established artist putting out a song on Robbins, I do see more hope of this song getting airplay than most recent freestyle releases.
-Brian from the old Power 105.5, Sacramento
