Dance But No Play!

A Paula Abdul fan (no not me) wrote in to Billboard asking about the radio play for "Dance Like There's No Tomorrow."

'DANCE' BUT NO SPINS

Keith,

I don't want this to sound like a stupid question, but do you know the reason why Paula Abdul's new single "Dance Like There's No Tomorrow" is not getting any airplay on the radio?

I was wondering if is just because DJs don't like it? Is it a corporate decision? Is it because the single is on a small label and the distribution is slower?

I'm pretty sure some people think is a good song (like me), but it just bugs me how a song that (hit No. 1 on the Top Music Videos chart in the iTunes Store) is not getting any radio airplay.

Thanks!

Richard

Guatemala City

Hi Richard,

For the seven days ending Tuesday, March 18, only five monitored U.S. radio stations played Paula Abdul's "Dance Like There's No Tomorrow" seven or more times. The outlets were WZEE Madison, Wis. (9 spins during the week), CKEY Buffalo, N.Y. (8 spins), KQMQ Honolulu (8 spins), KNCH Seattle (8 spins) and KKMY Beaumont, Texas (7 spins). Even KIIS in Los Angeles, which has a morning show hosted by "American Idol's" Ryan Seacrest, has only played the song 10 times total since it debuted in January.

Many radio stations played "Dance" initially in January when it was first released to radio. But since then, pretty much everyone has backed off the song. It's likely because their audience didn't respond well to the track. A radio station will only play something that it feels will work for its audience, and it seems the vast majority of stations don't feel "Dance Like There's No Tomorrow" is right for them. Among video channels, during the tracking week, only MTV Hits played the music video for "Dance," and it aired it four times. Its big sister station, MTV, has only played the clip once, on March 10. No other monitored video channel has played "Dance Like There's No Tomorrow."

It's not all bad news, though. "Dance" has sold 189,000 digital downloads and has moved in excess of 30,000 in each of the past four weeks. This week it was No. 21 on the Hot Digital Songs chart, having sold 39,000.