However, a radio hit was presumably not a paramount goal for the song: raising money and awareness was. By Jayson Rodriguez, with additional reporting by Gil Kaufman Wyclef Jean, Kanye West and Jennifer Hudson perform at the “We Are The World 25 Years for Haiti” Photo: Kevin Mazur/ WireImage When the original version of “We Are the World” was released 25 years ago, the all-star benefit song was a nearly inescapable presence — on radio, on MTV and on T-shirts. Thanks to the groundwork laid by England’s Band-Aid fundraiser “Do They Know It’s Christmas?,” audiences were primed for a new kind of fundraiser that not only helped famine victims in Africa, but also provided a keepsake featuring some of the planet’s biggest musical acts singing a heartfelt anthem co-written by the then-biggest pop star on the planet, Michael Jackson. Fast forward a quarter century to last week, when the video for the “We Are the World: 25 for Haiti” debuted to a huge audience at the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics. However, the song struggled to gain a foothold at radio in a media environment that is worlds away from the one that greeted the original in 1985. While “We Are the World: 25 for Haiti” landed at #2 on Billboard ‘s Hot 100 chart last week (powered primarily by digital sales), lagging behind only newcomer Ke$ha’s breakout hit “Tik Tok,” more than a week after its release, the single’s airplay numbers aren’t nearly as strong. According to Media Base, a company that tracks radio data, only five stations have added the track into their rotation in the past seven days, including Los Angeles’ KIIS-FM, one of the largest Top 40 outlets in the country. (By contrast, Rihanna’s latest, “Rude Boy,” was added by 48 different radio stations in the same period.) “Personally, I came into work on Saturday (February 13) and purchased the track on iTunes and played it all weekend,” KIIS music director Julie Platt told MTV News in an e-mail. “KIIS-FM added it into regular rotation on Tuesday (February 16).” Platt, however, noted that the record isn’t being pushed like a traditional new release. “It doesn’t have a record label distributing it or helping get the word to programmers like a normal single release,” she explained, noting that she didn’t receive a scaled-down radio edit of the eight-minute anthem until days after it was released. In total, the song was played across the country 987 times in its first full week since it premiered, according to Media Base. Again, by comparison, “TiK ToK,” the most-played song in the country, received over 11,000 spins during the same time span: One doesn’t need a math degree to see that’s more than 10 times the spins. Radio spins, physical sales and digital downloads together to account for the metrics used to determine a song’s success when it comes to the Hot 100 chart. While “We Are the World: 25 for Haiti” has fared better on the charts so far than the original version of the song (which debuted at #21 in 1985 before gradually rising to #1), the comparison isn’t a fair one, given that radio charts moved much more slowly 25 years ago: Songs often debuted low and gradually rose higher, almost the complete opposite of charting behavior today. “This [song] is not about airplay, which it won’t get a lot of. It’s about creating a viral hit on YouTube and Vevo, and maybe getting some traction at a few top 40 stations,” Keith Caulfield, the Senior Chart Manager/Anaylst for Billboard magazine, explained to MTV News. Caulfied said because of the splintered nature of radio today and the abundance of niche markets, an ambitious song that seeks out to reach a large audience wouldn’t fare as well today as it did in the past. The new song, for instance, was played on a Top 40 station in Kansas City, a “Rhymthic” station in Denver and an Alternative station in the Washington, DC, according to Media Base. Those spins, however, were extremely limited, with only 32 stations playing the song more than 10 times last week. In New York, for example, “We Are the World 25: For Haiti” was played only a total of six times across various stations. Hot 107.9 in Indiana played it the most, spinning the song 44 times. SiriusXM, the subscription radio service, played the song just once within the last week. Those numbers hardly qualify the “We Are the World” update as a radio hit. However, that was presumably not a major goal of the song’s organizers. While reps for the song’s organizers had not responded to MTV News’ requests for comment at press time, the purpose of the new song was to raise money, Sirius radio show Shade 45’s senior producer Rob “Reef” Tewlow emphasized. And by that scale, he said, the new song is a success, radio spins or not. “It’s for a great cause, you want to see it raise a lot of money, raise awareness, and help a lot of people, because that’s ultimately the goal,” Tewlow told MTV News. “It doesn’t have the same momentous impact as the original, nothing like that had ever been done before. And you had some of the biggest artists, Michael Jackson, first and foremost, as part of the track. Is this one something that everyone is talking about? Maybe not. But people are making contributions and downloading the song.” Learn more about what you can do to help with earthquake-relief efforts in Haiti , and for more information, see Think MTV . Visit HopeForHaitiNow.org or call (877) 99-HAITI to make a donation now. Related Videos Behind The Scenes Of ‘We Are The World’ Related Photos ‘We Are The World 25 For Haiti’ Recording Session Related Artists Michael Jackson
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‘We Are The World: 25 For Haiti’: Strong Chart Numbers But Little Radio Play
