Under the headline “They Said It: Former Radio Executives Slam Terrestrial Radio” — immediately after the story broke that Warshaw and Sharkey launched their new online radio station — musicFIRST Coalition sent out a press release pulling quotes from a Billboard interview to try to convince their e-mail base that two former radio executives were bashing the radio industry. Of course, Warshaw is not a former radio executive. Here are the details…
musicFIRST wrote in its e-mail that…”Others in the radio business are starting to take notice and call out “Big Radio” for their antiquated business and unfair practices. Jeffrey Warshaw, co-founder and CEO of radio conglomerate Connoisseur Media, and Michael “Shark” Sharkey, a longtime radio programmer, highlighted the failures of terrestrial radio while speaking to Billboard this week about a new project.”
Here are two quotes musicFIRST pulled from the Billboard interview:
From Warshaw: “We’ve watched the shift from traditional radio to streaming after an entire generation was ignored by radio … They don’t identify with it, it’s over-commercialized, it’s hokey and repetitive and it doesn’t resonate with them.”
From Sharkey: “Radio has always been extremely formatted and regimented … stations can only play specific songs.”
musicFIRST claims “Big Radio” is getting away with “paying artists nothing, and radio’s revenue is generated “using artists’ songs.” The group says the arguments made by Warshaw and Sharkey point to why Congress should support the Fair Play Fair Pay Act (H.R. 1836).
