When Kid Cudi performs at the sold-out 107.5 Summer Jam tonight at Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre, the New York-based R&B maestro of minimalism will play a 10-minute set.
Just 10 minutes. Funny, considering his breakout single (“Day ‘n’ Nite”) is the No. 1 record on the sponsoring radio station’s playlist, well ahead of songs by headliners Ludacris and T-Pain — each of whom will perform for 45 minutes.
Welcome to the wacky world of Summer Jam and other radio-sponsored music events, where the usual rules of concerts are turned on their head for consumers, as well as for the radio stations who cut complicated deals to put them together.
If you’ve been to any of the big ones — Summer Jam and 93.3-FM’s Big Gig — you’re familiar with the format. The tickets are cheap, the music is nonstop, the staging is bare-bones, and the hits are plentiful. The crowds skew young, and given the truncated sets, it’s like an all-day greatest-hits showcase of the given genre.
For fans, they can be a deal, and amazingly popular. The evening-long Summer Jam sold out in less than a week.
For radio stations, they are a balancing act of egos and playlists.
“We booked Kid Cudi in February, and now ‘Day ‘n’ Nite’ is one of the biggest songs we’ve ever played,” said John E. Kage, the station’s program director. “Right now it’s our No. 1 record.”
So why give your No. 1 record only 10 minutes of performance time at your big radio festival — relatively early in the concert, even? (Kid Cudi’s name is listed last on all of the station’s promotional material.)
With nine acts on the bill of a single- stage event, they don’t have much of a choice. And while Kid Cudi has a hit single, Ludacris has many hit singles.
“In Denver, we’re trying to give everybody at least 15 minutes,” said Brad Patrick, president of Phoenix Music Group, KS-107.5’s talent buying partner for Summer Jam. “Later in the night, people are playing a lot longer — T-Pain and Luda are both doing 45-minute sets. It’s a great value for the consumer, given the price of the ticket.”
These radio-sponsored shows used to be more commonplace, but major labels feeling the pinch are now less likely to fly an artist across the country for a three- song set, according to Gary Bongiovanni, the editor of touring publication Pollstar. Another big change in the radio concert world, Bongiovanni noted, is the charity aspect. The proceeds of these concerts used to go primarily to charity, though now they’re often used to keep stations afloat, he said.
Regardless, these shows are still popular with fans of certain radio formats — hip- hop, Top 40 and modern rock included.
“The public has now become educated that if 10 bands are playing a radio show, it’s only a sampling of their music,” Bongiovanni said. “If you’re a real fan of that artist, you’ll come back for a full set — if they do a good job. But that’s part of the problem with some of these young acts. A lot of them don’t have the live chops to bring an audience back.”
Fans do understand these shows by now. If they’re paying full price to see Ludacris headline the Fillmore Auditorium, as he has in the past, they’ll expect a 90-minute set. But they won’t leave Summer Jam — on a $24-$59 ticket — feeling jacked when Luda throws down 45 minutes after eight other hot artists.
In an almost perverse way, these short sets make more sense now than ever.
“There’s something about the way many fans listen to music nowadays that clicks with this,” said Ray Waddell, touring editor for music industry mag Billboard. “It’s single-driven, and fans download two or three songs on their iPod. A lot of fans of popular music radio do spin music one song at a time, so I think shows like this fit the way a certain large group of music fans like to listen to music.”
Some fans wonder about the behind- the-scenes of shows like this. You have a lot of marquee-level talent, and there is a certain amount of backstage mingling, said Kage, who has been with KS-107.5 since 1999. But how can stations and their partners keep ticket prices so low with such big-name talent?
Many artists playing radio-sponsored shows give stations and their promoter partners a break because of their history with the outlets. For example, Patrick’s Phoenix Music Group helps book from 20 to 25 major hip-hop festivals throughout the U.S. each year, including Denver’s Summer Jam. If he’s booking Soulja Boy and Keri Hilson on the majority of those dates, he’s buying in bulk — and getting a discount.
Is there any goodwill love thrown in to the many stations that have helped make these artists stars in these metropolitan hubs? Sure. How much? That’s tough to say, but in 2003, Cat Collins, who preceded Kage as KS-107.5’s program director, told The Denver Post, “A few years ago we got Jay-Z for about a third of what he would have normally gotten to headline an arena. . . . It’s a way for the artists to say thanks to the radio station and to the community for supporting their product.”
While artists played these shows for free in the heyday of radio’s pay-for-play days, “Those days are pretty well over,” said Patrick. “There isn’t an artist on any of these shows that isn’t getting paid these days, whether it’s a cut rate or something else.”
Loyalty to a radio station is the same as history with a promoter, so discounted sets make absolute sense, Bongiovanni said.
“It also makes sense for them to get 50 percent of their normal fee if they’re only playing a few songs,” Bongiovanni said. “The downside of playing a radio show is that every other like-minded station in the market will feel alienated. They won’t want to play your record or say your name on the radio anywhere around that show — it’s just human nature.”
Ricardo Baca: 303-954-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com
KS-107.5 SUMMER JAM
Hip-hop/R&B. Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre, 6350 Greenwood Plaza Blvd. in Greenwood Village with T-Pain, Ludacris, Flo Rida, Soulja Boy, Bow Wow, Kari Hilson, Baby Bash, Sean Kingston and Kid Cudi. Today. 5 p.m. Sold out. 303-830-8497 or
