www.smoothradio.com
Because in the USA, The Jacksons were primarily marketed to R&B radio, it was the same with Jermaine solo. They didn't get the same amount of crossover to Top 40 that Mike did. R&B artists in general did not get the same amount of promotional money by the major labels that rock acts got. Also, after the disco demolition riot at the baseball game, a lot of pop radio stations started to play fewer R&B artists because it was considered disco. In the very early 1980s, there was a lot of soft rock/adult contemporary like Christopher Cross & Air Supply and country crossover that was popular.
Maybe today it doesn't with streaming. But back then it surely did. If radio airplay had no influence on sales, then record labels were stupid for spending all of that money on payola for decades since the 1920s or whenever.
You really think Thriller would have sold what it did without radio airplay? It was no accident that Clive Davis specifically chose songs for Whitney Houston so that she would get mainstream Top 40 airplay to get the bigger sales unlike Millie Jackson, Regina Belle, Stacy Lattisaw,, or Betty Wright who just got R&B airplay. That's why there was a singles chart. Before the internet, the singles chart tracked radio airplay & sales of 45s. Album tracks that got radio airplay could not chart on the singles charts in the USA. Nobody bought a 45 of those. Even the rock bands that didn't get much Top 40 airplay like Pink Floyd & KISS were played on the AOR radio format they had back then.But it did back in the day. Radio was just as massive in the 80's and 90's as it had been in the 60's and 70's. Radio wasn't just influential, it was pretty much the whole story. Some records could become a club hit and that might cross over to the charts or it might not. But, otherwise, it was all about radio play. Daytime radio, to be specific. My bands were on teeny tiny indie labels - if they were signed at all which most of them weren't. They were lucky to get played on John Peel's show but that didn't translate into much in the way of record sales. He was too niche. Daytime radio is where it all happened, chartwise.
Don't have the figures but my guess is his record sales will have buried Take That. Robbie was HUGE in a way the TT just weren't. TT were very, very successful, of course, but Robbie as a solo artist was a phenomenon.
All of this.Maybe today it doesn't with streaming. But back then it surely did. If radio airplay had no influence on sales, then record labels were stupid for spending all of that money on payola for decades since the 1920s or whenever.
If radio airplay has little influence on sales, then how come music that isn't on commercial radio don't get huge sales like jazz, polka, zydeco, gospel, bluegrass, opera, barbershop quartets, etc.? Or acts on small indie labels instead of majors? People would just buy that stuff in the same quantities as Journey & Bon Jovi, who did get heavy radio airplay. Milli Vanilli sold multi-platinum because they were on the radio. Notice that Lionel Richie was way more successful than the Commodores were after he left. They only really had 1 big hit (Nightshift), other than that they didn't get the airplay even on R&B radio. But both Genesis & Phil Collins got a lot of Top 40 airplay. So they were both successful. Pop radio pretty much ignored the 2300 Jackson Street album, but it got R&B airplay.
Also just because one act is popular does not mean everything they do will be, or else Ringo Starr & John Lennon would have sold as well as The Beatles. Paul was the most successful solo Beatle, not the other 3 so much except on certain records. John probably had the least commercial records or the 4, None of the solo records of The Rolling Stones were really successful, but the band itself is still popular today on the touring circuit. I doubt a Mick Jagger solo tour would make anywhere near the same amount of money.
some of my answers may have been different though..
I love lists 
they manage to be calming yet stressful at the same time..It's a bit of a chicken and egg situation but there was also, for the UK at least, the playlist.
To a certain extent that is what happened. Daytime DJ's didn't get to choose what records they played. John Peel and Bob Harris for late evening programmes plus the pirate stations (in the 1960's) - yeah, sure, they got to choose. But daytime radio was dictated by the playlist. The producers decided what went on the list not the DJ's. They couldn't decide what would become a hit but they did decide what records would be put in front of the listening audience. Then there's the whole payola thing.
I'm not speaking for DuranDuran, obviously, but over here in the UK airplay doesn't count towards chart positions. I think it does in the US. But radio play still affected actual record sales just bc it was part of the promotion. It's not straightforward. Lots of popular songs that got loads of radio play didn't necessarily get really high in the charts. My Sharona is just one example. Didn't stick around in the Top 20 for very long but got tons of radio play and is out there on countless compilations. Generally speaking, though, without the radio play a record would struggle to do well.
Maybe it just can't be explained. I was into J5 from day dot and yet the music I listen to over and over is the 90's stuff and Invincible. I don't even really get into the Q stuff unless I'm watching a video. I do love Michael's voice but the music that pulls me is the later stuff.
Critics don't buy records though. Rock critics praise stuff like Lou Reed & Tom Waits, but The Partridge Family sold more than them. Kenny G albums sold more than ones by Miles Davis & Louis Armstrong. Rock critics also don't give the same amount of praise to women artists. I've noticed that in general, the stuff that critics don't like is the most popular with the mainstream audience. No matter if it's music, TV, or movies. Do critics rate Madea movies highly? But Tyler Perry is said to be a billionaire now and he owns his own movie studio, which other Hollyood movie studios also use.
If Quincy's name made that much of a difference in Top 40 radio airplay, then Patti Austin would have been as popular as Mike. I think Jam & Lewis and Babyface were later more successful in the Top 40 field than Quincy. The majority of Quincy's productions during his entire career were jazz or film score related. He did produce Leslie Gore in the 1960s though. I think Epic didn't want Quincy at first for Off The Wall because they thought he was mainly a jazz producer.
There's also "Latin jazz" & "Latin soul" & there's a separate Latin Grammy Awards show. Both Daryl Hall & John Oates have said they hated the "blue eyed soul" tag and so did Lisa Stansfield later on. Living Color was called "Black rock" when rock n roll was originally developed by Black artists. CBS Records had to threaten MTV with removing their other artists like Journey & Bruce Springsteen to get them to show the Billie Jean video. Billie Jean has a similar sound as I Can't Go For That by Hall & Oates, which MTV did have in rotation. There were Black bands that made rock music like The Bus Boys & Fishbone who still didn't get on early MTV. A Black Christian singer was usually called "gospel", but a white one was called "Contemporary Christian".That's not how it worked in the USA. Songs got on the radio because the labels promoted them (aka payola) to commercial radio stations. A R&B artist would get promoted to R&B radio and a country artist would get promoted to country radio. In some cases, an artist from a specific format would get promoted to the mainstream Top 40, which is called "crossover". Like in country, Kenny Rogers & Shania Twain would get pop promotion but Willie Nelson & George Strait didn't. R&B as a genre was never mainstream like hip hop is today. Only a small percentage of R&B artists got Top 40 crossover. People talk about Motown, that's only because some of their artists got pop airplay, The Supremes in particular. Motown wasn't the only label in the 1960s that had R&B/soul artists. Before the 1970s, radio DJs did usually have say in what they played. There was still a payola influence. In the 1960s, James Brown himself would sometimes buy gifts or give money to DJs. That wasn't the case when conglomerates like Clear Channel started buying up a lot of stations to make generic playlists for all of them.
I wasn't talking about critics, though. Beatles' fans, music fans, people in general - all of them usually rate John Lennon as being the artist over Paul. And I disagree. Critics do buy records. Yes, they get loads for free. Of course they do. But they do actually buy stuff, as well.
That may be so, but there's not enough of them to make much of a difference in record sales compared to what the mainstream audience liked and bought. Before Thriller, the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack was the biggest selling album. That wasn't because the rock critics liked disco music. Some US rock critics in the late 1970s were giving good reviews to punk rock, which was never really mainstream popular in the US or got Top 40 airplay. I think punk was mostly popular with the British audience. It was what the critics called "corporate rock" (as a dismissal) that sold a lot and got a lot of airplay. Such as Styx, Journey (with Steve Perry), Boston, REO Speedwagon, Foreigner, etc,
That is not the point I was making at all.
I love critics. Some of them are idiots, of course. Some of them are a waste of space. But some of them write stuff that is brilliant or interesting or at least thought provoking. I love them.
That's what I was saying though with "critics don't buy records". You were saying that John Lennon is more respected than Paul McCartney. But Paul/Wings is the one who got the higher sales and probably the Beatle who gets the most oldies play. With The Beatles I usually hear George led songs more often than the others like Here Comes The Sun, Something, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, & Taxman. A lot of people didn't like that John had Yoko "broke up The Beatles" Ono on his records. Even recently I've seen negative comments about Yoko's presence in the Get Back documentary that was on Disney+. Like that's something that was filmed over 50 years ago. Why are people still complaining about her now?That is not the point I was making at all.
Especially from people who weren't even born then. If they like the song a listener might call the radio station to request the song be played again.they’re not the same group because they have a different lineup, as well as a different name. there are also two separate categories for their chart histories and sales.
The Jackson 5's last album at Motown underperformed, too, yet they still got signed. No reason MJ's solo career would have been any different.
they were the jackson 5 before they came to motown. it was actually a lady in their neighbourhood who suggested they call themselves that. they were also credited as such on their steeltown releases.
That's because Motown registered the name "Jackson 5" as a trademark, and told the group they couldn't use it when they left. This also happened with another group called The Moments (not on Motown). When they left their label (Stang Records), Sylvia Robinson said she owned their name. So that this couldn't happen again, the group used their own last names as the group's name (Ray, Goodman, & Brown).
Do we know if Tamla registered the names of any of the other groups that they signed?
