Chris Price, the new head of music at Radio 1 and 1Xtra, has a big task on his hands. The 42-year-old, who now holds what is arguably the most influential position in the British music industry, must not only replenish the passion for music radio, but justify the existence of his station at a time when the BBC is facing millions of pounds’ worth of cuts.
On the same day as Price started in his new role, 1 March, a report commissioned by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, said that changes to the focus of the BBC’s popular music, news and sport radio services, including Radio 1, could help advertising-funded rivals by as much as £47m annually. The changes would include airing fewer populist shows, with the “most likely and practical option” being to turn Radio 1 into “something more like” Radio 1xtra on FM, or a hybrid of Radio 1 and 1xtra, where the median age of a listener would be 18 to 20.
“It’s a terrible idea,” Price says, when I meet him in a small room on the eighth floor of Broadcasting House, as groups of young professionals in jeans and bright trainers congregate in studios nearby. “Breaking new music is enshrined in Radio 1’s service licence, it’s what we’re here to do. But what’s unique about us is that we play brand new music in the mix with more established names, that’s what gives us our size and our strength. So if Radio 1 were to play only music that was ignored by other broadcasters, it would quickly turn into a niche station. We would lose our ability to make the hits, which means commercial radio wouldn’t have any hits to play.”
This ability to discover and nurture talent is the reason Radio 1 brings massive cultural capital as well as revenue to the UK creative industries, which are now worth more than £75bn per year. “If you look at the three breakthrough artists of last year – Jess Glynne, James Bay and Years & Years – Radio 1 played a central role in kickstarting and then growing all of their careers,” Price says. “It’s because of our scale that we’re able to do that. Of course, all that money flows back to the music industry and it’s one of the reasons we have such a vital music industry that’s respected around the world.”
Price, who grew up in Buckinghamshire, doesn’t “remember a time when he wasn’t making mixtapes and playlists” for his friends. After a brief flirtation with record label marketing in the late 90s, the French and German graduate from Bristol University went on to become a music producer at Radio 1 for six years before heading the music team at MTV and later Last.fm. It was then that he decided to set up New Slang Media, a music strategy consultancy working with radio stations and streaming services to help them curate music.
The words “passion” and “heritage” are bandied around often in the interview, with Price calling his appointment a “Rage Against the Machine moment” in his life. “I think, in general, music radio has over the past five years or so become a bit too over-reliant on data,” he says, in what appears to be a step away from Radio 1’s previously established system of using streaming stats and social media-follower counts to pick artists to playlist for daytime airplay.
“We’re kind of drowning in data, whether it’s Shazam tags or YouTube views, and the irony is that it almost leads to less certainty about what’s going on in the market than more. The best and only response is a return to the two things that are never going to let you down: your ears and your heart.”
In an attempt to ensure radio catches up with changes in the music industry, such as the global release date for music being moved to Friday as part of the “on air, on sale” strategy, Price is launching an initiative on Radio 1 in April: New Music Friday will feature more music than other days, including the hottest new releases.
“I want to reflect and satisfy our audience’s impatience to hear new music,” Price says. “For example, last Friday morning I was getting the train into work and I noticed that Kendrick Lamar had dropped this surprise new album that nobody knew about overnight. At midday that day we had posted a Kendrick listening party on daytime 1Xtra, where we played the full album front to back, uninterrupted, with DJ Ace giving his spontaneous reactions as he went.”
It hasn’t been plain sailing for the station, which has had fluctuating listening numbers over the past few years. The latest Rajar figures showed it has lost listeners since the last quarter, going from 10.56m a week to 10.33m. This is in part due to the growing popularity of streaming services, with Apple recently saying it had signed 11 million people to its music service since launching last year. That compares with 75m active users on Spotify, 16m on Deezer and 2.5m on Tidal. In a further sign of transition, Apple’s Beats 1 poached Radio 1’s Zane Lowe and Price’s predecessor George Ergatoudis moved to Spotify.
Does Price think radio stands a chance? “It’s radio that’s sending people in their millions to streaming services,” he says. “Look at Justin Bieber: his hit Love Yourself was streamed about 2m times last week on Spotify. But radio impact for that track last week was in the region of 70m. Streaming services are moving into music discovery, and Radio 1’s been doing this for 50 years, so it’s inevitable that they’re are going to look to us for talent. But right now I don’t see them as competition.”
Price also points out that while Radio 1 has 10 million FM listeners, it also has 3 million subscribers to its YouTube channel and 7.5 million social followers, “so we probably need a new way to measure how young people engage with us”.
“Young people” is precisely the target audience for the station and Price faces a further challenge to lower the average age of a Radio 1 listener. In the late 2000s, the BBC trust chastised the station for having too old an audience and promised to monitor its listening figures among the 15- to 29-year-old demographic. To ensure this happens, Radio 1 has focused its output on music it deems appropriate for younger ears – a policy that has opened it up to criticism from older artists such as Robbie Williams and Noel Gallagher, who have been left off the station’s playlist.
“Radio 1 considers every single artist, every single record, on its own merits,” Price says. “Age really doesn’t come into it. Who’d have thought septuagenarian Paul McCartney who recorded a track with Rihanna and Kanye West would have ended up back on the playlist? We’re just focused on finding the best new music for our diverse young audience. If the person recording it is 15 or 50, that’s fine by me.”
