January 17, 2023, Issue 841
Listen Up: Ears In The Real World
Stephanie Wright
Emily Cohen
Gregg Swedberg
Mike Molinar
Keeping up with the deluge of new music feels a bit like filling a shot glass from a firehose. For thoughts on managing the music flow, Country Aircheck spoke with four pros whose jobs involve lots of listening. From publisher pitches to recording projects, UMG/Nashville SVP/A&R Stephanie Wright is listening as much as four hours a day. “Several years ago, I would probably listen to 70 songs a day,” she says, though pitch meetings have been less frequent since the pandemic. Listening purposefully is important to Wright’s approach. “We have a really great listening room where I can shut the door and minimize interruptions,” she says. “A lot of people put music on in their office when they’re working, but people walk in and out. Well, when we’re listening, that is the job.” For Amazon Music Principal Music Curator Emily Cohen, music is “all day every day.” The tools of her trade include the Amazon Music For Artists pitch tool and a plain old web browser. “My team makes fun of me sometimes because I’ll have a lot of browser tabs open at once to keep it all organized,” she says. “I just go down the list of emails and submissions, listening throughout the week. Supplementally I’m on social media, Shazam charts, TikTok and our own charts to see if I’ve missed anything that’s bubbling up.” iHeartMedia/Minneapolis OM & KEEY PD Gregg Swedberg starts with music that’s sent to him. “I scour to see what’s streaming,” he says. “That’s just part of the job now. And I’ll listen to new albums a couple times (continued on page 6)
Dover Joyed: Mercury‘s Dalton Dover (c) with WGAR/ Cleveland‘s Carletta Blake and Steve Wazz on his inaugural promo tour.
Walking 9 To 5 With Hanrahan
In September, former iHeartMedia/Alabama Area SVP/ Programming Tom Hanrahan unexpectedly found himself with an abundance of free time – his first stretch without a job since he was 13. Facing the uncertainty of “what’s next?” after 37 years in radio, he decided to go on a (long) walk. The pilgrimage history of Camino de Santiago, or Way of St. James, stretches all the way back to medieval times. “Ironically, I knew nothing about it,” Hanrahan laughs. “My wife was the one who actually brought it to Tom Hanrahan my attention.”
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