Roadrunner Promotion is enjoying one of its most successful runs in breaking hits and developing artists. Under Mike Easterlin’s leadership the RRP team is hyper focused on making sure each artist and song reaches its full potential. It’s a promotion system within the Atlantic Records Group that’s been a proven success within one of the toughest arenas to break music nowadays…radio!
Mike Easterlin
By Fred Deane & Bob Burke
Breaking and developing artists can be daunting task in today’s radio environment, but it’s not just about radio anymore. There are so many critical components that need to be in play for artists to achieve any level of success. Mike Easterlin has become a strategist in that area while serving as SVP of Promotion at Roadrunner Promotion (RRP) within the Atlantic Records Group. One that ensures that selected artists will receive the proper attention to detail, while providing the resources that gives them and label the best chance at to succeed in the area of developing new talent.
Easterlin is a promo vet who’s been on the front lines while working at Island Def Jam Music Group and Virgin Records. That experience has now helped RRP enjoy one of its most successful runs yet by delivering hits to radio and breaking superstar artists one spin at a time!
What is the origin of RRP, why was it formed and what is its prime focus?
RRP stands for Roadrunner Promotion. When we formed it, the concept was that we had a small staff at Lava Records and we had a small staff at Roadrunner, and whenDave Loncao left Roadrunner as the head of promotion they asked me to come down and oversee the promotion department at Roadrunner. We found that we could probably be twice as effective by putting together the two staffs and making one, doubling up our efforts at every specific format as well as doubling the amount of regional people we were able to have. Because Lava was primarily a Pop label and Roadrunner was primarily Rock it made perfect sense. It’s really been effective in our ability to take on a lot more, and do a lot more with more bodies. But, Roadrunner Promotion is not just Roadrunner, and I think that’s the key thing that people don’t always understand. We are 50% an Atlantic Records company. We just happen to have the title of Roadrunner Promotion.
How does RRP fit into the overall structure of WMG?
It is the primary promotion staff of Roadrunner Records, and it is a secondary promotion staff for Atlantic Records. That enables us to run a lot more records through the system by doubling up the efforts. The real key was that when I came to Lava the problem was that some really great artists were unfortunately getting shoved to the side in terms of priority just based on the amount of records that one staff at Atlantic had to carry. But by forming the second staff we were able to take some of these developing records and move them to a position where rather than being one of six priorities, now suddenly you were one of one or two priorities on the Lava side, so you would just naturally have a lot more focused attention and the Atlantic staff wasn’t spread so thin. It was a win for those artists that stayed at Atlantic and a win for the artists that moved over to Lava for a little bit more of focused attention.
What is the internal structure of the company?
I oversee the department. We have three Pop people doing National Top 40. We have two people doing National Modern Rock and two doing National Rock. Then hopefully soon we’ll have two doing Hot AC. We just added two Rhythm people, so now we’re taking on more Rhythm projects like Wiz Khalifa, while also having Cee Lo and Martin Solevig crossing to Rhythm now.
What are the primary A&R sources of the projects you deal with?
They come from both labels who each have their own A&R department. From the Atlantic side it’s more about product flow, and where we need to move things. For example, the last Cobra Starship record was run by the RRP staff, the current one is being worked by Atlantic. It just happened to be the way the traffic of releases worked out and where we needed to put things to make sure they got the most attention and focus. We work everything on Roadrunner, and nothing on the Roadrunner side has ever gone the other direction to Atlantic.
In the Atlantic Music Group chain of command, what factors into which projects get placed with RRP?
Craig Kallman and Julie Greenwald on the Atlantic side, and on the Roadrunner side it’s Cees Wessels andJonas Nachsin. It’s those four along with myself sitting down going through the priorities and ensuring that we’re giving every record its own opportunity to win. Everything has slowed down so much it’s so important to have this many bodies working right now because it takes so much longer to get things up and going. Given our two promotion staffs, we’re really able to put the concentrated time and effort into every project. So we’re not constantly swinging for the fence, we’re taking records and giving them the time they need to grow.
It truly is about artist development. It’s about realizing that you either get angry that it’s all slowed down or you can accept the reality we live in now. Then we figure out a system, which we believe we have here, that enables us to take the time we need to work records at the pace radio’s ready to accept.
What have been the most satisfying projects you’ve worked on over the course of your time spent at the company?
There’s a few that stand out. Specifically bringing Jason Mraz back with “I’m Yours.” It just took convincing a couple of stations at every format until we finally picked up momentum, but it was a long process. When it did connect it connected in a huge way with impressive album and single sales. It ultimately ended up being the longest running song on the Hot 100 to date at the time. Jason is such an amazing artist and that song brought him back to rightfully where he deserved to be.
Cee Lo completely falling off the charts and then coming all the way back to #1, was beyond gratifying. Gnarls Barkley“Crazy” was unbelievable because I don’t think anybody got that record at first. When it finally started to go it still took a tremendous amount of convincing. Most recently Christina Perri “Jar of Hearts” was especially satisfying. Nine months of just grinding. The fact that the tempo was such a battle, but almost everybody that played it had supportive callout and it then went to power at so many Top 40 stations. We knew it would connect at Hot AC, but the fact that so many Top 40’s (even the Rhythmic guys) had such great success with it was incredible.
Theory of a DeadMan was also special where we worked nine singles to radio, and took a band who averaged just over 200,000 on their first two albums to platinum! It was almost a two-year process and another incredible experience for all of us. The fact that we had multiple songs going on two to three different formats at a time, and just connected all the dots and were able to sell a million records was incredible.
What was the biggest hurdle in dealing with Cee Lo’s “F-You” record?
The lawyers at the radio companies were clearly the biggest obstacle, and it became almost comical, the stuff that one set of lawyers would accept and others wouldn’t. We ultimately had somewhere near 14 different versions of the song, and decided on a final four. The lawyers would contact us for more changes and to Cee Lo’s credit, he did whatever he needed to do. There were moments when it was getting border line crazy because it was like how many times can I go back to this guy and ask him to sing a different word.
Although the toughest battle was when everybody thought it was a novelty record. Stations all tested it at 50 spins, which never happens to a record, but for some reason this record got treated that way. We know why, because everyone thought it was a novelty and people where rooting for it not to work. No record in the history of time has had more than 50 spins and then not given a second chance in research. People would get their first batch of research and pull it. It was like 30% familiar, but it didn’t matter because they didn’t want it to test, and then they’d pull it. It was so frustrating and it was tough to explain to our bosses in some ways, but I think in other ways they understood.
Another battle was getting people to realize that sales weren’t going away. Now suddenly he’s nominated for Grammys, it’s on Glee. It’s like: “No, you really can put it back in. It’s really going to be okay!” It was such a clear case of people not wanting to admit that they just made a mistake. Ultimately they all put it back in, but there were just continuous battles throughout the entire process. The turning point came when the Grammys and Glee both fell in about a two-week period. That was the game changer.
The Christina Perri project was an exercise in patience and commitment. What factors along the way signified you had something really special for Top 40?
The initial impact of her showing up Top 10 on iTunes, plus her appearance on So You Think You Can Dance provided the initial excitement of we have to sign her. It made a lot of labels believe there was something with this song which led us to believe we should probably go get her signed. There were a handful of programmers on the Hot AC side that got it initially. We were seeing sparks and sales, then even bigger sparks in the larger markets, and the more they played it, the more the sales jumped. It was also one of the more active phone songs as far as curiosity calls and texts to radio. It all led us to believe we had something very special. The battle obviously was the tempo. We talked on numerous occasions, and in fact there were a couple of versions cut with drums and a little more guitar. It got to the point where she actually worked hands-on with us and she just couldn’t get comfortable with the idea that she wrote the song a certain way and it needed to change. As much we told her that so many people were coming back to us needing a different version, she stuck by her guns. Two million singles later she was right!
When we crossed it to pop there was a handful of guys who just got it. They threw it on the radio and it researched. I constantly heard stories about M-Scores through the roof! Between those two things word spread and people got it. But you still had programmers saying: “I was just on my conference call and everyone’s raving about the song, but I still hate it and still don’t want to play it.” But we actually got them all over the hump. Getting it Top 15 was a home run considering the tempo of the song and the duration of the project.
How patient do labels have to be given the deliberate nature of how radio reacts to new artists these days?
You have to set 8-10 months aside for brand-new artists, and you have to have the stomach for it. Then you have to not second guess yourself along the way. As long as the record is showing progress and signs it’s connecting with people, you have to go through the entire process. It’s actually pretty easy to know whether or not you’ve got one that is going to grab people and really hit them, and one that isn’t. That doesn’t mean you don’t go through the process, even if it’s not selling or whatever the case may be because we are ultimately in the artist development game.
Maybe that first single isn’t going to do for you sales-wise what you’d like it to do, but maybe it’s putting a face on the artist, and it’s getting the artist’s name out there so that somewhere down the road one of them will connect. And just because they didn’t sell, doesn’t mean they weren’t necessarily hits. They might have been great radio hits like the old turntable hits. But if you have the right kind of structure in place to develop an artist and with things such as 360 deals, it keeps you incredibly committed to the concept of taking more than one swing. History will show you many artists where the first song did what it needed to do and it may not have moved the needle in sales, but it led to the next one being the one that hit it home.
What have you found to be the most effective “set-up” vehicles prior to impacting radio?
Anytime you can have a record come from somewhere it’s obviously a much better thing. Christina Perri came from So You Think You Can Dance. There was a story already you could see and feel. You could walk into radio and acknowledge the song was really slow and she was a completely unknown artist, but then say look at what she’s done already without any kind of radio whatsoever. Sometimes you have to go in and basically go on offense and say I know all the things you’re going to tell me. But here’s why you should be paying attention. That has to be part of the strategy. Also part of the strategy has to be calling it what it is, and then saying: “But this is why it’s going to work for you.” Hopefully by doing that you break down their argument a little bit, although there’s still going to be a debate. I always tell the staff it’s okay to walk in there and say: “I know this song’s a ballad.” That’s why they call it a ballad. It’s okay to go in there and call it what it is. But go in there with a loaded cannon of info you’re going to fire at them, and suddenly it’s not a ballad any more. Suddenly it’s a hit!
How has the PPM and M-Score mentality at radio affected your strategies of working records these days?
I don’t think you can have it affect you at all. Certain records are going to work early on with PPM, and M-Score and certain records are not. I’ve seen records with really bad early M-Scores turn major corners and become huge success records. I will tell you that it makes it incredibly difficult to show radio momentum when people react at 50 spins to an M-Score and pull records off the air. Then put the record back on and wonder why three or four weeks later it fell apart on them.
It’s happening across the country and it’s very hard to establish what radio ultimately wants to see. I have to show radio this momentum, yet they have to be willing to stick with things a certain length of time or amount of spins before they start testing, whether it’s callout or M-Score. If you put the song on, you believed in it, not because you thought this is going to look really good on M-Score. I understand how it is because I walk into so many stations nowadays in this PPM world where people program to monitors. That’s okay because their jobs are ultimately about playing what puts numbers out for them so they get ratings. I don’t put radio down for it. But it has very little to do with what we do, which is to try to create a good piece of product that works. But when we’re sitting with an artist or making an edit on a song with any of our A&R people we’re not saying, “This feels like a really good M-Score song.” I don’t even know how you would do that. Maybe someone’s figured that out but I don’t know how you do it.
What do you look for when partnering with radio on promotion initiatives?
I feel bad for programmers. Not all of them but a large portion of them have been put in a situation where they are overseeing a lot of stations. They oversee the details and they don’t have the bodies to put together the things they would like to do. In some cases they throw their hands up and don’t really want to market things because it’s all they can do to figure out how to market the radio station much less work with us on how to market our artist.
I think the new CBS Radio initiative “Play It, Say It” is a good one. They really want to go out and try to brand artists with their formats so they can ultimately get something out of it, maybe it becomes a more familiar artist that works for them and then build something with the artists which is very smart. Why spend all this time playing these songs if you’re not going to at least try to connect to them in some way? I also like it when I hear them say they want to help us sell product, that’s fantastic! But for a large portion of radio, they just don’t have the time. So the issue we address internally and with our staff is to tell radio you have a partner here if you chose to call us partners, one that can help you in your daily grind of not being able to necessarily have the time to creatively connect with artists. In turn, I would like them to find the time as much as they can in their busy schedules to have constructive conversations about cool things we can do together that will help us both win. If we, as record people, are willing to acknowledge that their way too busy, but they’re willing to let us at least present our marketing ideas to help us sell our records, and also help them brand their station with something very cool, that’s all I would really expect or hope for.
Do you feel the national Top 40 charts need refinement along the lines of giving artists from all genres an equitable chance to gain chart success inside the Top 10?
I do. I’ve been working specifically with Mediabase to start with, and I have no problem working with BDS as well. Theoretically, there are some people that feel you should just have two charts, Rhythm and Mainstream Top 40, and we should go back to those days again. I happen to believe that putting a third chart in place might actually be more helpful because with what’s happened to Hot AC and them picking off more and more Pop songs. I honestly feel labels would establish new ways of working certain artists if they were able to have a third chart to look at that pointed people in a Pop Hits direction. You can call it whatever you want to call it.
But the reality is by creating a system where some of the Hot ACs in the country like WTMX/Chicago and Q102/Cincinnati, and some of the Mainstream Top 40s, like Z100, WFLZ, WXXL, even a WXKS, who just lean a little more towards the modern side, or KBKS/Seattle. If you ever put them in this chart, but not pull them out of the charts they’re currently in, then when I would go to work a Panic! At The Disco record I may not start it at Top 40 and cross it to Hot AC because I would have a chart to actually point PDs to that shows in the area where we should be winning…we are winning. I can’t tell you that we’re getting these Rhythm guys early on Panic At The Disco, and I can’t tell you that we’re getting the lighter Hot ACs on Panic, though I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the song and they couldn’t play it. But I think you have to start with these middle-of-the-road stations and put them into this one chart, you would then establish a chart where Mainstream Pop songs and actual bands with instruments would have an opportunity to show success. In the end that looks a lot better to a band, a manager, or even on a publicity sheet that you send out about the band, everything looks a lot better when you’ve had a Top 10 or Top 5 Pop song.
What does the summer look like for RRP?
Lenny Kravitz, James Blunt, Cee Lo, Gym Class Heroes, Black Stone Cherry, Young The Giant, Stone Sour, Paramore, Panic! At The Disco, needtobreathe, Wiz Khalifa, Christina Perri. We have a Theory of a Deadman album, Kid Rock to go along with KoRn, Sublime with Rome, Kenny Wayne Sheppard and fun.
[eQB Content by Fred Deane & Bob Burke]
