Record Companies and Radio Stations: Different Timetables

Do you let the record companies influence which records you add and play? Do you participate in "projects" to obtain the extra revenue?

Is this bad for your radio station? The answer is a clear "yes".

There is a difference in the way labels and stations operate. The labels have a supply driven approach. For example, when it is time to release another single in support of an album or a movie, they are anxious to get the exposure, and with the best timing.

Radio stations have different methodologies for evaluating and managing new music. A radio station is more demand driven. Songs are entertainment elements. Until listeners become tired of today's songs and demand new ones to replace them, there is no rush. In fact, we know that there is an ongoing problem of balance. If you play too many new songs, it affects rotations in such a way that people have to wait too long to hear their favorite songs. And the new songs you do play take far too long to become familiar.

One all too common result of the different priorities of the record companies is that most programmers will not consider adding a song that is not on a label's priority list. It is the path of least resistance. And it is a result of the record companies driving new music on the radio station, rather than careful listener-oriented programming.

With good weekly research, there is no need to rely on record companies to pick what you add. Learn what artists and types of music your listeners like, add it, and then track it in the call-out. There is little excuse for not having great new music for your listeners.

How to Dramatically Improve Your On-Air Communications

Note: This blog was inspired by a recent, excellent post by consultant Mike O'Malley. He wrote about something very important, the quality of our communications with the listeners. You can read Mike's original post here.

In this article, I've adopted his topic and added my own thoughts.

Listeners are busy. And they are distracted. Most of the time, they are doing something else, and our station is the background.

This means something about how they hear our promos, imaging, talent breaks, newscasts and all our other content.

So I have a suggestion.

Review your promos, imaging, talent breaks, newscasts and all your other content. Spend some time specifically thinking about how to make them better. Ask yourself questions like these.

· Are you grabbing the listeners’ attention?

· Are you broadcasting as WII FM? That’s the station your listeners’ want to hear: “What’s In It For Me?” radio.

· Are you trying to interrupt their lives to tell them about your concerns, or are you joining one of the conversations already underway in their live? I can’t overemphasize how important the answer to that last question is.

· Are you leading with your point? Don’t expect to get more than about 10 seconds to make it.

· Are you telling a story? All good communications is a story about something people care about.

· Are you brief? You simply must be. Add only what will increase their bond with you.

· Are you focused on the three most common shared bonds between listeners and the radio station? They are shared concerns, shared opportunities and shared feelings. That adds up to shared humanity.

· Is your message consistent with the values, concerns and desires of your station’s “tribe”? In particular, watch for commercials that violate this. Unfortunately, listeners don’t relieve you of responsibility during commercials.

· Are you careful to create more “emotion” rather than more “facts”?

· Do you talk about “why”? Only if you successfully communicate that will the listeners care to learn how to get whatever you’re selling. Whether it is a product, an contest, some upcoming new music or a special weekend of programming, “why” comes first.

This will take some time. That is okay. It is well worth it.

How did you do?

Can you do better over the next weeks and months?

When you listen to air talent, can you now decide more quickly whether they brought something special to their show?

Be passionate.

How to Conduct the Perfect Music Test

When it comes to music research I focus 95% of my attention on analysis. I try to answer the question "How do I turn this data into on-air changes that will increase ratings?"

But of course data gathering is also very important. If you do a high quality AMT you will get much more value from whatever tabulation and analysis you do. With that in mind, I wrote the book "How to Conduct the Perfect Music Test".

I suspect that most readers of this blog already have a copy. But if not, here is a reminder. This is the source you'll want to turn to. Until recently this information was available only as part of a research project conducted in association with Steve Casey Research, at a huge cost. Now, we've expanded the information to include a lot more general information about music research and how it has developed, from tabulating requests to the latest multivariate analysis tools. And I would love for you to have a copy at no charge.

Testing your music library is one of the most important programming investments your station will make. Get it wrong at any point in the process and you will sabotage your success. Now you can get all the answers to guide you through your next music library test, step by step. These are the techniques used by many of the most successful broadcast companies in the world.

You'll find this book to be a practical reference you'll refer to often. With the help of what you'll learn, your station's music test will be the most accurate and useful it has ever been.

To receive your free copy is easy. Just send an email to scasey@UpYourRatings.com with the following information:

• Station name
• Your name
• Your position with the station
• Your email address
• Your telephone number at the radio station
• Radio station mailing address
• Please let me know whether you are testing your music, and if so, what approach you are using at this time. 

Programming Thoughts: Using Your Research (Rather than Charts) to Move New Music Through the Current Categories

Many radio stations use national airplay charts to guide them as to which songs are moved from new music to secondary to power categories, as well as when they are moved up and for how long. Here are some guidelines about  how to use the weekly music research (call out) as a tool, rather than the national charts.

1. Start with the Powers, and deal with the entire category. Look at the AVERAGE burn over the entire category. And before you do anything else, go back over the past 2-3 years and see what the range of category burn has been. And look at what the average burn has been for songs during the first 8 weeks in Power. If there is a difference, use the lower figure that you’ll find in the first 8 weeks. If that number is still very high, perhaps you’ve been managing Powers badly for a long time.

2. You need the category to be the best music, but not communicate “yesterday”. The recurrents can do that. It is a balancing act. So when you see the burn in Powers move up past the average you’ve decided to use as a trigger, you simply must force out the weakest Power. By weakest, I mean a song with high burn and the least amount of favorites to balance that burn. Even if no single song has reached a very high burn level, a Power category with a higher than normal average level of burn will make the station sound far less “now” and interesting.

3. The songs moving up have two scores you should watch. The first is the popularity index. Different companies use different methodologies, but in the end it boils down to the positive energy is there for this song. The second score is the “potential” or “breakout”. This is simply the popularity index calculated only on those people who are familiar with the song. We learned many years ago that the relationship of potential to popularity will usually tell us when to move up or give up on a song.

4. Every song will start out with a potential score that is higher than the popularity score. Over time the spread will shrink. For new music, you simply expect the potential score to move up each week until it shows real strength. If and when that growth stalls or fails, the song is over. Otherwise, the familiarity eventually will be at a point to support a medium rotation.

5. In the secondary/B category, we’re allowing the song – which has shown good potential – to mature. Not all will reach Power status. As the familiarity comes up, the gap between potential and popularity will shrink. At some point, the spread will become fairly small. For a scale like the one I use (and CMM and many others), a spread of less than 10% pretty much signals a peak. If a song hasn’t “come through” by then, it is usually time to accept that it had a nice run and made some people happy (or else the potential score wouldn’t have allowed it to move out of the new music category). But now, it is time to let it go.

6. A real strength of call out is the ability to notice if and when songs reach certain points in their lifecycle. To recap: New music needs to establish an increasing potential score. Once the familiarity is fairly high (75%+) you can safely move it to a real rotation. Now we watch the potential/popularity gap. And when that stalls or the scores drop, we’re done, or we’re in Power. The average burn level of Powers must be monitored and managed. It isn’t enough to deal with each song individually.

7. By managing the burn of the Power category as described above and watching the shifting balance of unfamiliarity/popularity/potential scores in the music research, we should be able to avoid big playlist logjams while not accidentally throwing out perfectly good hits that simply need a bit more time.