David Dyer

David Dyer attended the Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati to study jazz performance as a drummer and received a Bachelor’s degree in 1994. A year later he relocated to New York City and landed a gig in the BMG copyright department while concurrently starting a Master’s program in Music Business Studies at NYU. It was during his four year stint at BMG that Dyer connected with Arista executive Steve Bartels, who hired David in the marketing department. In 2001, Dyer jumped to the Arista promo squad (under Bartels). Next step was Regional promo for J Records and Richard Palmese, a segue to Jive Records for a National stint with Joe Riccitelli and then back with Palmese and Peter Gray at RCAMG as Senior Director, a position he has held for the past two years..

You have worked for some extremely accomplished label execs in your seminal years. How has each one of them influenced you in your career?
Steve Bartels gave me my first shot in marketing in the Special Products department at Arista. He then gave me another shot as a regional promo rep. The day I started as a field rep in New York, I knew little about the world of radio. Steve took a shot on me when I knew very little about the job at hand. It’s his faith that inspires me everyday. He made me realize that it’s less important that the new people around you have direct experience if in exchange they have the ability to learn quickly and make smart decisions.  Richard Palmese has very much the same mentality in letting his people learn and make decisions for themselves.

Rick Sackheimwas also a major influence in the beginning. To this day I still consider him one of the best promotion men in the business. From these guys one of the most essential tenets I’ve learned is that it’s more important for people to respect you than to like you. Respect gets more business done and is the foundation of longer, more trusting relationships. They also really instilled in me the sense of hustle, urgency and the idea that you always need to be closing.

There’s nobody more passionate about their artists than Joe Riccitelli. My first national gig was working for Joe and John Strazza, so I learned a lot about dealing with the staff and becoming a leader. I also learned a lot about helping to convey Joe’s passion to radio and pushing forth his vision of how each record should play out. Strazz quickly became a great friend and still is to this day.

Now that I am currently working in an office right next to Richard Palmese, the biggest thing that has changed my life working for him is a sense of professional happiness and balance in your life. He’s the promotion guy that everyone loves in the business. He has no enemies and is a legendary promotion executive.  He is also one of the happiest people I know. I learn from him daily; professionally and personally.

What was the biggest transition you encountered moving from Regional to National promotion?
It’s like going from the quarterback to the coach. As a regional your report card is exposed every day. Every week is triumph or failure. As a national it takes a second to step back and realize that adds aren’t your victories anymore. They belong to the regional reps, and they deserve ownership of them because they’re in the streets everyday earning them. As a national you’re the coach and your triumph is creating and executing the strategy, and bringing a record to its conclusion which is hopefully always a little farther than you had originally planned.

What were the most important aspects you learned as a field rep that you will carry with you throughout your
career?
The partnership with radio is always number one, and even more importantly, being open and honest all the time in that relationship. You need to be willing to have the hard conversations up front. It’s never best to hide anything because it always comes out in the wash. You need to keep things clean so no one has to wonder what your motives are.

What are the most dramatic changes in field promotion today versus when you started as a field rep?First and foremost the thing my current field staff has to deal with that I didn’t is the territory they have to cover. Due to industry wide cutbacks they have to work twice as hard to get the same job done. The cutbacks are no secret and it has made the job
more challenging and increased the workload tenfold. Relative to the post Spitzer environment and given all of the compliancy issues, the one positive that has come out of it is that the playing field is leveled. As a regional I would always get frustrated when I had the better record and the better stories, and someone would come in and swoop up that slot because they had something else going on. Now if you want to get that slot away from me, you have to have the better song, the better rap and the better stories. And thanks to Clive Davis, Richard Palmese and our field staff, I’ll take that bet any day.

Peter Gray, Alicia Keys and DD

As a national promo exec, how critical is it for you to empower your field reps?
This is something (VP Pop/Promo) Peter Gray and I discussed well before we ever worked together. Our field staff has one hundred percent decision making power in their markets. They are the most qualified. As a regional I always felt I had a better idea of what was going on in my markets than my nationals. It’s the nationals job to see the bigger picture and create the game plan for the record. Part of doing that effectively is listening to the field and allowing them their voice in the markets where they live and work.

Peter and I also agreed from the beginning that the national staff would never call in adds. I believe that Richard judges me on the overall performance and long-term success of our projects. The regional reps work hard for their individual successes and deserve that credit. We can’t hold regionals to task in their market place if they don’t have that full autonomy to make decisions.

What qualities do you look for the most when evaluating field reps?
Thanks again to Steve Bartels and Richard, when recruiting I feel I don’t have to look solely for experience. I look for the ability to be a sponge and learn quickly and also look for a prospect to properly analyze a situation and make the right choices. We look more for the guy who responds to why it’s going to happen as opposed to why it didn’t happen. The best field reps are the ones that come with a can-do attitude. If they miss this week, they know the info they need to get the job done the following week. It’s about being aware of the marketplace and how to respond accordingly.

Your national Pop staff has great chemistry. What makes your executive promo team click?
This is something I’m very excited about! Peter and I had always talked about being on the same team well before it ever happened. We all worked on the same (RCA) staff when I was a regional. Josh Reich was a regional in Cincinnati and Peter was a national in LA. We always got along and always had long discussions about the day that we’d all be on the same national staff. Even two weeks before Richard called and offered me the national gig here, Peter and I were out and that was the topic of discussion. We never thought it would happen but we were excited about the idea. However, two weeks later we were doing it and we now have a chance to test the theories we’ve always discussed and are able to do it our way. We like to say that we’re two people in the business who weren’t placed together but conversely, we chose each other.

Richard gives us a lot of autonomy to run the department our way. Peter is a great leader with great vision and wants all of us to win. He also allows me my quirks. Josh is a great balance for Peter and me because as a national based in Chicago he’s out in the field the most. The three of us work well together and we really have a blast everyday.

What unique qualities does the RCAMG promo exec staff possess in its strategic thinking of the promo/radio
marketplace?
It’s the vision we share and much of this has to do with our company leadership. We’re always talking about the future, what’s next and how we can do things differently. We consistently challenge ourselves. The conversation quite often with a lot of promotion people is about adds and spins. The reality is we should all be embarrassed to call ourselves the new generation if we are going to continue the terminology of past generations. It’s still the basics and part of the puzzle, but what are the new buzz words we should be using? It can’t be about getting the add and walking away and going to the next station. It has to be about how we are supplementing the airplay by getting the artist to the market and micro marketing the artist directly to the listeners.

Thanks to our aggressive digital department and our close relationship there, if we want to reach a listener or programmer we have a variety of ways we can do it beyond just picking up the phone or sending another e-mail. We can target any station’s listeners directly with specific campaigns. Our goal is to aggressively target a station’s core listeners in support of airplay to make the add so much more worthwhile to the station.

What do see as the key components necessary to be in place before taking a project to Pop radio?
Every project is different. Some people want to have a year of touring under their belt. Who can afford that these days? A lot of people want to have a million MySpace streams. That’s fine, but as we’ve seen with Tila Tequila it might not matter. What I’m concerned about most is the tools being ready. I might not have anything but a great album and a killer single. I’m willing to go if the video is ready and my digital team is ready. Do we have TV product placement? It’s all about familiarity. You can’t break a record at radio without having those pieces in place to help your familiarity. That’s more important than anything. I’d love to cross a record from another format. I’d love to have it be Top 10 at Hot AC or Rhythm, but that’s not always available to us and even when it is, it doesn’t always guarantee results. Having the tools in place and ready to go is always key.

Gavin DeGraw with David.

The American Idol factor of many of your artists has to be a big boost for your Pop promo efforts. What are the pros and cons of working Idol artists?
Everyone should be disabused of the idea that tracks from American Idols just jump on theradio. The American Idols, before we go to radio are television stars but they are not yet proven at radio. This is where Mr. Davis steps in with an amazing A&R process and soon after we follow with a radio plan. These records are just as much work as any others and you have to have equal focus to be successful. The upside is that winners or runners-up are likely to sell an impressive amount of records out of the box. In this marketplace when we don’t know if a brand artist is going to deliver an album this year or next, we always have an American Idol in the pipeline. We’re very lucky because we know that in November when it’s crunch time for the holidays we’ll have an Idol record on the way with a built in brand. Daughtry is a great example. He was not only one of the biggest sellers last holiday season but he continued to be a best seller through the year and gain brought some impressive holiday sales this holiday season. On top of that we’re Impacting “Feels Like Tonight” on Monday (1/07). That single’s on the radio in three consecutive calendar years.  Yes, it’s a blessing to be partnered with American Idol.

What makes Pop radio stations effective marketing partners with labels?
Radio is still the best way to get new music out there. When you do market research, 98 percent of the people (iPod users) say that while they go to their iPod for their favorite music, they still go to radio to hear new music first, not the internet. So, radio is still the best place we can go to get exposure for new artists. Now more than ever with radio’s ability to break artists and their need to drive listeners to their web sites we can build familiarity by providing more info about the artist and market the artist in ways we couldn’t before. Creating a well rounded marketing and promotion plan that includes the station on-air, on the web and with the artist in the market is the only way to break through the clutter.

Do you see the record/radio relationship as an equitable relationship, in terms of understanding each other’s goals?
It’s more equitable now than it has been in the past. We’ve made a lot of progress and our mentality of being open and honest and respecting what radio does has been a big part of it. We are not a team of bullies. We don’t run around and yell at radio. We want them to make their decisions based on what they think is right for their station and in their market. We want to provide them with the best info about our artists. Clive Davis provides us with amazing Top 40 music which makes our jobs easy in that respect. It’s our job to expose them.

What gaps still exist with the label/radio relationship?
Of course there are gaps. There are still companies out there that act as an island. As an example, Cox Radio in general won’t participate in the conversation. It’s a major problem and it’s bad for business, ours and theirs. They discourage their employees from discussing their business with record companies including research and adds.

Somehow the entire Spitzer investigation was misinterpreted and people became afraid to report adds. Why? Reporting adds is simply just another way of participating. For record companies, you can see what new music radio is embracing and at what rate. For radio stations they can see what their contemporaries are doing. When a PD adds a song to a play-list it’s a statement and one they should be proud of. Not reporting adds seems more suspicious to me. Not reporting adds, in its raw form, is like a company saying to its supplier ‘we’re gonna take your product but you’re gonna have to figure out which of your products and when.’ It doesn’t help us know what you need and what you don’t.

I’m not all in on radio stations paying royalties to record companies but in any case, where the radio station is not participating in the conversation, I think it makes sense. In cases where the lack of communication exists between radio and records, the station is simply using the music to make money for the radio station it’s hard to make an argument for them not to pay.

As another example on a more micro level, I called a programmer in Fort Collins for the first time. He didn’t know me, but he picked up the phone and as soon as he heard I worked at a label he immediately said ‘I really don’t talk to record guys, you can talk to my MD.’ I was taken aback by this. It’s frustrating. There are still guys out there that think like that and who don’t participate in the conversation. In a time and age where music is more vital than ever, and we’re on the front lines and your still facing attitudes like this. We need to be partners. We need to continue to find ways to get kids excited about our music and our radio stations, and not participating in the conversation is shortsighted and very harmful.

If you could prioritize the issues at hand that would ensure long-term growth in the music business in general,  that are the critical issues that must be addressed?
We need to harness the power of music in a better way. We know how important music is. Now, instead of carrying around five CD’s or six cassettes, people are carrying around 5,000 songs on their iPods. We see how music is leveraging products in commercials. We know that when we watch TV our biggest artists are on just about every show. Ten years ago that didn’t happen. Ten years ago if an artist connected himself to a commercial of any kind, they were selling out. The labels are at the forefront and we need to continue to take ownership of that and monetize it as a partner with radio. We need them to be successful so we can be successful. We need them to maintain the power of the marketing of our artists and, most notably, so we can continue to grow new artists for the future.

What is your concept of monetizing a digital music model?
When it comes to the digital aspect, it’s really about putting it everywhere. I’m not worried about mp3’s, because they are already out there, and there’s not a lot that can be done about that.  I’m more concerned about the person that legitimately wants to buy our music. We need to make it simple. If you’re on MySpace or Facebook or even blog sites, you should be able to purchase it right there. If you’re in your car you should be able to download and purchase a song you’re listening to on the radio. We need to make music available to buy anywhere and everywhere. We’re moving towards ubiquitous music. People are not going to be upset with having music purchase opportunities thrown in their faces because it’s the one thing that permeates everyone’s life. Once it becomes that easy, our business will turn around. Right now it’s easier to steal music than it is to buy it. Change that and you change the game.

** QB Content by Fred Deane **