60's Music Gone From WCBS-FM

jbg said:

Sounds almost like a desperation move and not a very good one. The Beatles, Stones, Grateful Dead etc. are true classics.

My 17 and 18 year old sons listen to this music. This is beyond stupid.

Click to expand...

Agreed 110%. Thankfully, thousands of these "lost hits" are accessible to listen to at my leisure, not when some mega corporate run station will tell us, when and what, we can listen to on our free time. Also try listening to small market, oldies stations on the AM, they tend to have very large playlists without the stupidity and mindboggling repetition that big city stations try to cram down our ears (well not mine anyways).

I read on another thread that "I Melt With You" is being spun EIGHT times a day on K-Earth 101. EIGHT!! How asinine is that, no matter the excuses or defenses given.

oldies76 said:

Also try listening to small market, oldies stations on the AM, they tend to have very large playlists without the stupidity and mindboggling repetition that big city stations try to cram down our ears (well not mine anyways).

Click to expand...

The bad news is that by doing so, they're losing money. Also, just today, another judge ruled against a digital radio company playing pre-1972 music. At some point, the streams will have to shut down.

TheBigA said:

The bad news is that by doing so, they're losing money. Also, just today, another judge ruled against a digital radio company playing pre-1972 music. At some point, the streams will have to shut down.

Click to expand...

Which digital radio company is that? Even this board's own Radio Spider doesn't seem to have picked up this news yet.

Also, Sirius XM responded to the initial ruling by pulling all Turtles tracks from its playlist; all the other pre-1972 music is still going out over the satellites and the Internet. Was the ruling that narrow or has SXM's legal team advised it to do the bare minimum until they can find a friendlier court to overturn it? Is this latest ruling Turtles-specific as well?

CTListener said:

Which digital radio company is that? Even this board's own Radio Spider doesn't seem to have picked up this news yet.

Click to expand...

http://www.allaccess.com/net-news/a...ornia-judge-hands-satcasters-and-webcasters-a

oldies76 said:

Agreed 110%. Thankfully, thousands of these "lost hits" are accessible to listen to at my leisure, not when some mega corporate run station will tell us, when and what, we can listen to on our free time. Also try listening to small market, oldies stations on the AM, they tend to have very large playlists without the stupidity and mindboggling repetition that big city stations try to cram down our ears (well not mine anyways).

Click to expand...

Thank you.

oldies76 said:

I read on another thread that "I Melt With You" is being spun EIGHT times a day on K-Earth 101. EIGHT!! How asinine is that, no matter the excuses or defenses given.

Click to expand...

Unfortunately though, during the "good old days" of the 1960's and early 1970's the same situation applied on AM radio. Does anyone remember that WABC played "Raindrops" about 8 or more times a day during early 1970? Even songs that I generally liked, such as American Pie, were played to death during late 1971 and early 1972.

I have told my younger son, kidding, that if he really wanted to annoy me, play "American Pie." He knows I am kidding but during February 1972 that would not have been far from true. Ditto Melanie's "Brand New Key." Of course songs that I hated, such as the Chi-Lites "Have You Seen Her" were played six or more times a day.

oldies76 said:

I read on another thread that "I Melt With You" is being spun EIGHT times a day on K-Earth 101. EIGHT!! How asinine is that, no matter the excuses or defenses given.

Click to expand...

First, you need to re-read that post. It was eight times in 36 hours, not a single day. Within a day, there were five plays.

But even if it were eight, what does it matter? The number of plays are irrelevant, it's the number of times the typical listener hears it. And, as has been pointed out time and again, that works out to once every three weeks.

michael hagerty said:

But even if it were eight, what does it matter?

Click to expand...

The only people counting are the handful of posters to this board. In the meantime, these stations are among the most listened-to radio station in the country. So obviously the real listeners love it. You need to ask yourself why stations that play more songs can't duplicate this kind of success.

CTListener said:

Which digital radio company is that? Even this board's own Radio Spider doesn't seem to have picked up this news yet.

Also, Sirius XM responded to the initial ruling by pulling all Turtles tracks from its playlist; all the other pre-1972 music is still going out over the satellites and the Internet. Was the ruling that narrow or has SXM's legal team advised it to do the bare minimum until they can find a friendlier court to overturn it? Is this latest ruling Turtles-specific as well?

Click to expand...

As for "Fox Oldies", and "Magic 590", they will continue to play a lot of pre-1972 music with half of post-1972 stuff on terrestrial radio rather than Sirius/XM or you can listen to Internet radio such as Rewound Radio as a prime example.

Yeah CBS-FM has the best ratings in the history of the station, #1 over all and most importantly #1 25-54, but that doesn't matter, some radio geeks along with a few random statistical anomalies teenagers want to hear 60s music so yeah cbs-fm needs to do that, otherwise they are crap and not doing good, hooooray! Yeah to narcissism!

Nothing wrong with the Beatles, nothing wrong with a 60s song showing up every few hours so long as it is one of the 30 best testing ones for those in the money demo, I just love the mentality that k earth and cbs fm who are doing fantastic are put down by those who do understand the game but their own narcissism has them believing that they are more important than the 13,999,999 other New Yorkers in the metro.

DOB said:

Nothing wrong with the Beatles, nothing wrong with a 60s song showing up every few hours so long as it is one of the 30 best testing ones for those in the money demo, I just love the mentality that k earth and cbs fm who are doing fantastic are put down by those who do understand the game but their own narcissism has them believing that they are more important than the 13,999,999 other New Yorkers in the metro.

Click to expand...

And to me and many other music and oldies fans around the country, what the other 13,999,999 people enjoy is irrelevant.. If they want to hear certain songs 10 times a week over and over, then that's their issue. (And I guarantee, many of them are still not satisfied) We enjoy the entire spectrum, not a force-feed corporate 400 song playlist over and over.

Obviously radio stations like CBS-FM and KRTH neglect music fans (and 55+), otherwise their playlists would reflect it. What happened to the Sunday Night Countdown with Dick Bartley? In the meantime they can throw out their 400 measly repetitive songs to their hearts content to the crowd that frankly does not care about older music, or the music they grew up with or even have the musical knowledge that fans possess . They just accept it as it is and the ratings reflect that.

And to us that's boring as hell.

Check this station out, they are certainly headed in the right direction! Oh, and be sure to read their "disclaimer" under the main station heading. Something that all stations should implement

http://www.kfxm.com/

oldies76 said:

And to me and many other music and oldies fans around the country, what the other 13,999,999 people enjoy is irrelevant.. If they want to hear certain songs 10 times a week over and over, then that's their issue. (And I guarantee, many of them are still not satisfied) We enjoy the entire spectrum, not a force-feed corporate 400 song playlist over and over.

Click to expand...

How much are you willing to pay for what you want?

The music industry, specifically the artists and the record labels, want you to know that their music is not free. If you love it, especially pre-1972 music, you will soon be paying for it. They don't care how much you love their artists, or how much you supported them when they were on the chart. If you listen to them now, you have to pay for it. They're taking that fight to Congress too.

TheBigA said:

How much are you willing to pay for what you want?

The music industry, specifically the artists and the record labels, want you to know that their music is not free. If you love it, especially pre-1972 music, you will soon be paying for it. They don't care how much you love their artists, or how much you supported them when they were on the chart. If you listen to them now, you have to pay for it. They're taking that fight to Congress too.

Click to expand...

How will this affect streamers based in other countries? I listen to plenty of oldies on UK- and other European-based streaming sites. Will these sites be pursued, too? What if they funnel their product through countries that welcome scofflaw streamers -- Belarus, Sweden, Romania -- where so many sports and entertainment video streamers have hidden untouched for years? I have a feeling the pursuit of the pound of flesh (kilogram of flesh?) for pre-1972 music might become the same sort of game of Whack-a-Mole that sports leagues have found impossible to win.

CTListener said:

How will this affect streamers based in other countries?

Click to expand...

They may block their streams. It depends on what the new royalty rate is. I believe they'll be deciding that next year.

TheBigA said:

They may block their streams. It depends on what the new royalty rate is. I believe they'll be deciding that next year.

Click to expand...

So, if this legal money grab results in the death of pre-1972 music across the above-board online/satellite landscape, what good will the lawsuit have done the artists, the RIAA or anyone else? The pirates will still be out there, beyond the reach of US law. Will the next move be a sweep of users of such outlaw sites, as we've seen with file sharers, even though users of online radio as background music hardly ever store or redistribute what they hear? Or is the assumption that Sirius XM will eventually agree to pay and pass all the costs on to the subscribers, and a significant number of streamers will pay and become pay-per-hear services instead of freebies? Sounds like a big gamble for Big Music to be taking.

CTListener said:

So, if this legal money grab results in the death of pre-1972 music across the above-board online/satellite landscape, what good will the lawsuit have done the artists, the RIAA or anyone else?

Click to expand...

They get a pile of money. Remember Napster? They got a lot of money. They may have been wrong, but they still got a lot of money, and put Napster out of business. It's a short term victory and a press release. That's what these legal things are all about. Yes I agree with you. It's like stomping out cockroaches.

Chan, with all due respect, then why are YOU on a radio discussion board vs. all the other options boards? Fact is, radio is still relevant and that's pretty encouraging in 2014. The world of music has changed in the last five years. AC stations are kind of like more CHACR now. They have more energy and the mix is tougher with the "old" songs up against the new. The Classic Hits stations are in a situation where they actually can be softer sounding than some ACs, and those 60s and 70s sings are often in that genre. Like Big A said, the time and market is moving forward. It's a natural progression that we all readily embraced when we were teens listening to the old Top 40 stations that our parents hated. As for advertising and buyers being first priority....can't have ads without correct audience to support continuing revenues into the station. The order doesn't really matter. Listeners vs. Ad Buyers. Miss one part, you don't get the other. That's what the real evolution is all about. Stay up on that trend, you see another possible paycheck. Or then again, what do I know? It could be right to actually think all that matters is one listener out of 14 million. Right? I won't even type my thought on that comment.

It has been interesting reading everybody's response to WCBS FM. It might surprise some of you that I am actually 33 and run an online oldies radio station http://www.nonstopoldies.com. It gets a great following from listeners AND I know there are a good number of people aged under 50 who quite like the music BECAUSE the songs are timeless.

I feel that although the 80s are popular at the moment, I do feel like they are everywhere. Many stations in many markets are playing them all the time, which gets a bit tedious I think.

I'll always be a fan of CHR and Rhythmic CHR, but I will always hold a soft spot for the oldies format (oldies in terms of 50s, 60s and 70s NOT 80s and 90s). We have radio stations playing classical and jazz and a lot of that music is older than 50s/60s. I think we need to be thinking of music from the 50s, 60s and 70s as more of a "genre" rather than for a certain target audience...because from the young people I speak to, a lot of them are quite fed up being fed with the likes of Kanye West and the like...

TheBigA said:

How much are you willing to pay for what you want?

The music industry, specifically the artists and the record labels, want you to know that their music is not free. If you love it, especially pre-1972 music, you will soon be paying for it. They don't care how much you love their artists, or how much you supported them when they were on the chart. If you listen to them now, you have to pay for it. They're taking that fight to Congress too.

Click to expand...

We live in an age of populist political earthquakes. The music industry may come to
really regret that decision.

nonstopoldies said:

I think we need to be thinking of music from the 50s, 60s and 70s as more of a "genre" rather than for a certain target audience...

Click to expand...

Online radio and broadcast are different, for many different reasons. We get demographic data for broadcast, especially in a PPM market like NY, and can see that when you play older music, the audience is older. Sure there may be a sprinkling of younger folks like you. But that's not the driving force. And since these stations actually sell the advertising, and don't just leave it to GoogleAds or other online adservers, they hear what the advertisers say. The other thing you should know is that because of the recent court decision for The Turtles, your rights fee for pre-1972 music will likely be increasing very soon. So playing this music will cost more, and the audience it attracts will make less.

I would be remiss to not mention that this thread is two years old, and despite the protests of the Radio Dentist and company, CBS-FM has been quite successful since moving the format into the 80's and leaving the 60's behind.

But please, tell me again how they're doomed because they're targeting Gen-X over Boomers.