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Joe Kelly’s CDX Mission – Super
Serve Country Radio
By David M Ross | on October 28, 2013 | 0 Comment
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Programmers around
the world might consider
CDX a digital music
valet, that regularly
announces, “Sir, your
new songs have arrived!
How would you like to
listen today?”
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In fact, it seems so well
conceived that one
might not realize that
many of its current
listening channels are
the result of a year-long,
massive modernization
effort. Heading up the
Joe Kelly
project has been CDX
VP/GM Joe Kelly.
Together with co-founder Paul Lovelace they built a digital download center
that contains all the songs distributed by the company since it started in 1991,
a destination web site, a smartphone app for listening on the go and much
more. An interactive map showing all the stations they service is visually
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(L-R) Sirius XM's John Marks, Natalie Stovall of Natalie Stova
The Drive and HitShop President Skip Bishop celebrate after
band's standing room only showcase at Anthem on Oct. 21
impressive.
The company was formed as a partnership between two friends, beloved
Country Music Disc Jockey Hall of Famer Charlie Douglas who passed on in
2011, and promo exec. Paul Lovelace.
When first created, CDX only distributed product to secondary stations. But
Kelly says, “Over time things change. About five years ago we expanded our
reach to include the mainstream stations too.”
Joe Kelly returned to CDX about a year ago after an extended leave of
absence, with the mission to build those new media channels and find ways
as he says to, “super serve country radio.”
NEKST: How did CDX start?
Joe Kelly: Paul Lovelace and Charlie Douglas formed the company in 1990
and released the first disc in March 1991. Paul had just left Capitol Records
where he was the VP of National Promotion and had helped break Garth
Brooks. He had been servicing secondary radio while at Capitol which is
when the idea for CDX came to him. He and Charlie went to lunch one day,
formed the company and almost immediately it went gangbusters. At the time,
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many of the smaller stations had real issues getting new music. I remember
one station saying they had to record new current songs off the reporting
station 50 miles down the road and sometimes they’d miss the first few bars
because the announcer was talking! So when secondary radio stations
started getting a regularly delivered compilation CD of all the new singles, it
made their lives easier. And that’s been our model and mission statement
since day one, what we do has to make radio’s lives easier. Charlie’s radio
background and Paul’s promotion experience afforded them a high level of
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understanding about what was needed.
NEKST: Isn’t this your
second time around at
CDX?
Paul Lovelace
Joe Kelly: Yes. I had
been at DPI Records
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working with Mae Axton
and Jim Foglesong. After
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that I joined Paul and
Charlie at CDX in ’92
created by Nashville’s HitShop
Records to highlight exceptional
and stayed there until
’99. Paul’s been my
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industry areas. Please follow
greatest mentor and
when I got an offer to do
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it for my career. So with
his blessing, off I went.
Then about a year ago,
at lunch Paul said, “It’s time for you to come home.” So we identified a list of
goals to accomplish and so far we’re knocking them down like dominos.
NEKST: And that mission was to deploy new technology and modernize the
company’s distribution methods?
Joe Kelly: Paul began gathering email addresses almost five years ago
because he felt the shift coming, but it was a slow process (back then some
stations would fax in their email address). But we wanted to offer country
radio every way they might choose to receive and preview new music. With
that in mind we started building a digital download/listening center that offers
programmers our entire 22-year music catalog.
NEKST: Is country radio taking advantage of this new asset?
Joe Kelly: We did a first quarter callout campaign to all CDX stations about
download use. Seventy percent of the stations said, “We love the digital
access, but please don’t quit sending us the disc.” Digging deeper we found
that about 806 of the 1,750 U.S. country stations we service regularly use the
download center. That gives us a barometer and is a sizable number. “Why?”
was especially interesting. PDs and MDs are so busy. Traditionally, we think
of them in an office reviewing music at their desk for 3-4 hours. But it doesn’t
happen that way. When we asked the right questions we found that, boots on
the ground, many are listening to new music via CD in the car, commuting
between home and the station. When listening to the disc they either actively
listen to parts of each song, or just put it on and wait for something to catch
their attention. We also found that many of the users are making
programming decisions based upon the CD and then going into the digital
download center to download high quality versions of the tracks. Everyone
uses the tools differently which is why options and choices are important
when you are presenting new music to programmers or gatekeepers.
NEKST: Do you offer a digital lite version of the complete disc in one low res
digital download?
Joe Kelly: Yes, it’s available as a zip file. We also have airplay-ready MP3s
and wav files available of each song.
Joe Kelly: Another big priority was to redo our website and make it a
destination by offering information such as daily trivia and show prep type
stuff. Our website is often open in on-air situations because when a listener
calls in and wants to hear “Chattahoochee,” it’s right there in our download
center. We’re getting over 4,000 hits each month from radio, so in the process
we also created some download area ad space which is a helpful way for
artists to draw attention to a track.
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NEKST: The web site and
download center were
clearly priorities, was
there more?
Joe Kelly: Based upon
everyone’s day-to-day
lives we knew we also
needed to create a
smartphone app. If a
programmer is going to
the YMCA and running on the treadmill for an hour, we want him to have the
option of throwing on his earbuds. So we built a custom app/music player
adding another way to expose new music. The app may be a little ahead of
it’s time, but our monthly analytical reports show there are about 100-150
radio stations consistently using it and that is enough to make it worthwhile to
us and to our clients.
NEKST: How about building a social media presence?
Joe Kelly: We began with Facebook and Twitter and have dabbled with a few
others like Pinterest and Google Plus. Our distribution and client sides are
already pretty well developed, so social media in our specific case is like
spraying oil on the moving parts to keep them in tip top shape. It’s also helpful
as a means to gather information from our clients and users about what is
working and what isn’t. We aren’t going after consumers directly, but we are
in touch with these gatekeepers who have the consumer’s ears— they are the
megaphones of our industry.
NEKST: Looking ahead, what’s on the horizon?
Joe Kelly: We want to touch every decision maker who exposes new music
to the public, so we are always on the lookout to see who we need to be
servicing. You could say we try to have one foot firmly planted in the present
and the other in the future. The world we service is enormous—according to
Nielsen, US country radio has a total cume of over 66 million people. Bill
Ford made a great comment that sums up my feelings. He said, “A good
company delivers excellent products and services; a great company does all
that and strives to make the world a better place.” In 22 years over 10,000
songs have been serviced through CDX to an average of 2,000 radio stations
and that’s saved 20 million plastic CD singles that otherwise might have
ended up in a landfill… that’s impactful.
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