FEATURE:
Rinse and Repeat
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Are Radio Playlists the Best Way to Market a New Song?
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ALTHOUGH it has been the way to promote songs…
IMAGE CREDIT: Freepik
for decades now, I wonder whether radio playlists are the best way to bring new music to people. Obviously, new cuts need to be featured on the radio, but I listen to stations like BBC Radio 2 and BBC Radio 6 Music and you tend to find the playlists are quite repetitive. I understand that a song needs to get out to as many people as possible but, if you are a loyal listener, you might hear the same songs dozens and dozens of times before the playlist is updated. Unless the song is pure genius – very few are -, it gets to the point where you get so weary and lose that initial spark of interest. Stations have an A, B and C-list where those in the ‘A’ playlist are the more popular and played; ‘C’ is the less-played/popular tracks. Maybe, in a streaming age, the best way to get people to take note of songs is through bombardment, but I am finding myself liking a new song at first and, within a matter of a few days, it has been played to death. Playlists cannot accommodate every new track that week/month, but I do wonder whether playlists focus on a few songs too much and over-play them. I tend to find that, as a regular listener to stations like BBC Radio 6 Music, I get turned off when some new tracks are played endlessly. In many cases, one song is played a lot after it comes off the playlist, so you hear it even more than you did when it was being spotlighted. In some cases, that artist has released an album and you tend to hear few songs from that album but nothing else.
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I appreciate a single needs to get some decent airtime, but it is the relentless spinning of individual tracks that causes boredom and means, more often than not, a song loses its flavour – maybe that is the best tactic to get as many people listening, but there are great new songs that are played seldom or not at all. Not that this is a slight against any artist at all. They are trying their best and releasing great music, but even the biggest fan is not going to listen to the same song several times a day for weeks and weeks – maybe they will, but I find myself far less invested as time goes on. Many big radio stations do not have bespoke playlist of new songs they have featured. That way, people would be able to hear the songs and access them at their leisure, without hearing them multiple times a day when they are listening to the station. So many stations, too, do not have an archive of playlists, and I wonder why. When I was growing up, we did have stations spinning singles a bit, but it was not as intensive as it is now – not with so many different tracks, anyway. Also, in an age of social media and streaming, we all have greater access to songs through various platforms, so I wonder whether stations need to be quite so full-on with singles and their playlists. At a time when people are less interested in albums, maybe stations playing more album tracks (in addition to the single) would be better.
IMAGE CREDIT: BBC
Radio is still the best way to promote music and there are countless examples where I have heard a great new act because of various stations. If I was to miss a gem then I would be annoyed but, as I say, I think a weekly/monthly playlist link would avoid that possibility. Some stations have something fairly similar, but most do not. If you are a committed listener to a station, it can be irksome hearing a song rinsed whereas other tracks are either ignored or only played a couple of times. Even if we were back in the 1980s or 1990s, I would not want to hear the latest singles so regularly. There is also a problem where artists are releasing singles so close together so, not only do radio stations have to promote one track for a long time; they then need to accommodate another track soon after. This is more common in the Pop market. Rolling Stone investigated further in an article from last year:
“But for years, radio was focused on amplifying one single by an artist for weeks on end, extending the life of an album like Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream track by track for more than 18 months. Now program directors are scrambling to support multiple singles simultaneously. “The challenge is not whether to play a record that’s really popular that the listeners want,” explains Mark McCray, the VP of programming and operations for KBFB and KZMJ in Dallas. “The challenge is making sure those records are separated the best they possibly can be so the radio station doesn’t sound like ‘97.9, Cardi B radio.'”
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The urban and rhythmic radio formats — rhythmic encompasses hip-hop, R&B, pop, an occasional dance hit and some Latin music — have already been trying to master this balancing act. “In the 2010s, a few times we’ve had several songs by popular artists all being in rotation at once,” explains McCray. (One of his charges, KBFB, is a rhythmic station.) “This has happened with Rihanna, with Drake several times, with Beyonce.”
But now pop radio, which reaches the most listeners of any format, is being forced to handle similarly fast release schedules. That’s because artists like Drake and Post Malone, who would be considered urban radio fare five years ago, have become so big that pop programmers have to at least try to play them. Not only that, rappers have been so successful with never-ending-waterfall release strategies that pop stars, including Grande, are trying to do the same thing.
“It’s a fairly new problem for us,” Graham acknowledges. “You used to have a single go for three months, then the next one. Now it’s a drop every other Thursday. [Grande]’s revolutionizing that for pop radio.”
What’s the big deal? Well, radio playlists are tighter than they once were — fewer songs are in rotation, so each spot is more heavily contested. And pop programmers center their attention on a tiny handful of songs. “A Top 40 radio station is playing five songs 120 times a week every week,” one longtime radio promotions veteran told Rolling Stone last year. Those spots traditionally go to a Swift or a Grande or an Ed Sheeran”.
It is good that, playlisted artists are not seen as disposable and, as the article explains, an album can have its life extended for months – though I contend featuring just one or two tracks from it is not the best way of getting people invested in that album.
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There is that conflict between supporting the bigger artists, or those who have the best songs out and being varied. Pop stations have to prioritise the most popular artists and stations with a wider remit are limited regarding the artists they feature. It is just that sensation of hearing a ‘new’ track being played for the nth time and, ironically, the same artist has brought out another single since then – it all seems like overkill. I am not sure whether a solution can be put in place where songs are given enough oxygen and time without suffocating the listener. With stations having social media accounts and access to Spotify, surely reducing storing songs there and having links on their social media means they could expand playlists; feature the same songs for two weeks and, afterwards file them in a library and then feature a rotation of fresh songs. This would mean artists on the original playlist are still available and visible, but it would be more varied and less overly-familiar for listeners. I am not the only one who gets a bit annoyed when the same tunes are hammered week after week to the point where you can’t stand the sound. Most people would say the solution to that is obvious: turn the radio off or change stations! The point is not my personal irritations and preferences; it is the way singles are marketed at a time when the charts are changing radically, and we can stream these tracks on platforms like Spotify or Tidal. Maybe focusing on a few songs and playing them a lot – rather than more tracks less frequently played – is best for artists, listeners and record labels, but it sort of puts me off as a fan of new music. Even though I like a lot of new songs, it can be a bit much hearing the same track cycled so much. I feel stations could change and artists would not suffer but, maybe, this is just…
IMAGE CREDIT: Andy Hook
THE way things have to be.