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Why did AC stop being soft?

N

nd2023

Walk of Fame Participant
Just a decade ago, many AC stations were still soft. They played many soft rock songs by the likes of Neil Diamond, the Carpenters, Rod Stewart, etc. And just a few soft currents such as Coors - Breathless. But in the late 2000s, they started sounding more upbeat and current. Now, it's rare to find an AC that plays the staples AC played just 10 years ago. And songs such as Blurred Lines would have been taboo on AC 10 years ago.
Why are AC stations sounding hotter rather than softer?
 
Look to the artists making the music. What contemporary artists are currently making "soft" music?
 
Avid Listener said:
Look to the artists making the music. What contemporary artists are currently making "soft" music?
Click to expand...

There are still artists out there continuing to put out soft music, such as Josh Groban, for example. I don't get why they don't play people like him anymore. Only time I hear anyone like him now on my local AC stations is at Christmas.
 
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My family and I got so disgusted with our local AC formats changing their sounds that we decided to seek out Internet AC stations. These are some we now listen to.

These stations play the old version of the format:

Soft N Easy Net Radio
www.softneasy.com

Lite 99 WLTB-DB
www.lite99online.com

This station plays a hybrid version of the format:

Joy 99.5
www.joy995.com
 
nkd said:
Just a decade ago, many AC stations were still soft. They played many soft rock songs by the likes of Neil Diamond, the Carpenters, Rod Stewart, etc. And just a few soft currents such as Coors - Breathless. But in the late 2000s, they started sounding more upbeat and current. Now, it's rare to find an AC that plays the staples AC played just 10 years ago. And songs such as Blurred Lines would have been taboo on AC 10 years ago.
Why are AC stations sounding hotter rather than softer?
Click to expand...
The artists you mentioned haven't been AC staples, in a lot more than a decade. I'd say two decades at least. For the rest, "David, clean up on aisle seven!"
 
Avid Listener said:
Look to the artists making the music. What contemporary artists are currently making "soft" music?
Click to expand...

Besides Josh Groban and Michael Buble, the contemporary artists that I can think of that fit the old version of the format would be Adele, John Mayer, John Legend, Christina Perri, Colbie Caillat, Jason Mraz, Norah Jones, Corrine Bailey Rae, Ed Sheeran, Lady Antebellum. Those are the ones that the stations I listed choose to play.
 
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The Soft N Easy station that my family and I listen to plays new songs by older artists:

Walking Good - Heart featuring Sarah McLachlan
Far From Home - The Doobie Brothers
Just Friends - Vanessa Williams
Going Back - Phil Collins
Home Again - Elton John
I Hope You Find It - Cher

Jim Brickman is still putting out new collaborations with vocalists.

I don't get why my local AC stations don't play anything new by such artists.
 
Music Lover said:
Besides Josh Groban and Michael Buble, the contemporary artists that I can think of that fit the old version of the format would be Adele, John Mayer, John Legend, Christina Perri, Colbie Caillat, Jason Mraz, Norah Jones, Corrine Bailey Rae, Ed Sheeran, Lady Antebellum. Those are the ones that the stations I listed choose to play.
Click to expand...

I am familiar with most of those artists. Of the ones I am familiar with, most of them have a repertoire that includes softer songs, and also harder songs. I'm sorry, but attempting to pigeonhole artists who have a broad and varied catalog of work doesn't explain much.
 
@Avid Listener
The Soft N Easy station that my family and I listen to plays Chris Mann. He's a crooner, like Josh Groban. I think singers like Chris Mann would be more suited for AC stations than Pink or Gaga.
 
Music Lover said:
My family and I got so disgusted with our local AC formats changing their sounds that we decided to seek out Internet AC stations. These are some we now listen to.

These stations play the old version of the format:

Soft N Easy Net Radio
www.softneasy.com

Lite 99 WLTB-DB
www.lite99online.com

This station plays a hybrid version of the format:

Joy 99.5
www.joy995.com
Click to expand...

Thanks for the mention, Musiclover! Glad to hear you're enjoying Lite 99. As you said, we do play the original version of the soft AC format. WLTB-DB is based on the original WLTB, Lite 99 FM here in Birmingham, which was on the air from 1985-88 at 99.5 (which is now country WZRR "Nash Icon 99-5"). We've brought WLTB-FM's format forward in time and added tracks that were "grafted"into the soft AC format in the early to mid 90's, as well as incorporating newer material. As many of you who listen to "old school" soft adult contemporary may remember, the format was primarily older-based soft rock ballads, with a few currents thrown in per hour to keep the format fresh, so we are adopting that same structure for WLTB Digital Radio. For example, we play John Legends "All of Me" "You and I" by One Direction and "A Thousand Years" by Christina Perri, just to name a few.
 
Music Lover said:
@Avid Listener
The Soft N Easy station that my family and I listen to plays Chris Mann. He's a crooner, like Josh Groban. I think singers like Chris Mann would be more suited for AC stations than Pink or Gaga.
Click to expand...

And I think that some of Pink's or Lady Gaga's songs are as soft as soft ever gets, even if most of the songs aren't. I think it's ridiculous to reject a soft song for a playlist just because the artist mostly records hard songs. Hell, no one would ever accuse Kiss of being a "soft rock" act, but listen to the song "Beth". Or, take a listen to the rest of Extreme's catalog other than "More Then Words".
 
It sounds like what some of you are looking for is really AC Oldies. Music changes but people don't. Whatever type of music people like, they tend to stick with what they liked growing up, being in school, being single and dating. New artists and new styles come ago and things change. Country changes. Top 40/CHR changes. So does AC.

AC stations want to keep their place with the money demos. For a time, they could keep older listeners but AC has changed too much from AC Oldies to the point both don't fit in the same format and playlist. The music some of you want is now Adult Hits or Adult Standards.
 
FredLeonard said:
It sounds like what some of you are looking for is really AC Oldies. Music changes but people don't. Whatever type of music people like, they tend to stick with what they liked growing up, being in school, being single and dating. New artists and new styles come ago and things change. Country changes. Top 40/CHR changes. So does AC.

AC stations want to keep their place with the money demos. For a time, they could keep older listeners but AC has changed too much from AC Oldies to the point both don't fit in the same format and playlist. The music some of you want is now Adult Hits or Adult Standards.
Click to expand...

Right. If you're in your 40s now, you were in your 20s in the '90s, and that's when CHR really started to splinter. You could listen to a hit music station and never hear 2 Live Crew, or never hear Celine Dion, or never hear Nirvana, because they were only being played on certain types of CHR stations. And if you were listening to a CHR that was playing 2 Live Crew or Nirvana, you probably weren't hearing many slow songs of any kind. In the '00s, the slow songs increasingly started to go exclusively to AC, bypassing CHR with all its teens and early 20s listeners entirely. So why should today's CHRs, which are after a demo with 40 as the bull's-eye, play the kind of music that today's 40-year-old never listened to as a 20-year-old?
 
@Avid Listener
From what I understand, it's the blend as a whole that determines an AC station being soft or lite vs. hot. The Soft N Easy station I listen to plays Big Girls Don't Cry by Fergie. She's one you wouldn’t normally consider as an AC artist. When you mix that song along with ballads by Barry Manilow, Celine Dion, Lionel Richie, and The Carpenters it becomes decidedly lite.
 
These are two streams in the works. No premiere dates for them yet. When they finally premiere, I plan to add them to my list.

Easy Hits
Web site: http://www.softrockradio.net/softrockradionet/easyhits.html
This station will be Soft Classic Hits from the 60s, 70s and 80s, with just a touch of the 90s. Core artists will be Air Supply, America, The Carpenters, Neil Diamond, Elton John, Barry Manilow, James Taylor.

The Seabreeze
No website yet but info about the stream can be found here: http://thebreez.com/the-news/303-message-from-the-boss.html
It will be 60s years of easy listening vocals. I'm thinking it will be like the playlist for WEZW in Wildwood Crest, NJ.
 
FredLeonard said:
It sounds like what some of you are looking for is really AC Oldies.
Click to expand...

Nope. What we're looking for are AC "newies" that have the same general sound as the AC Oldies. We use the names of older songs to illustrate what we're talking about. The problem is that too many radio people understand the word "format" as a radio term, but they are totally clueless with the concept of "genre" as a musical term. I'll try to give you an illustrative example, though I doubt that you'll understand it. There was a genre of music in the early 1960's best described as "Spector Girl Groups". Songs like, "(Remember) Walking in the Rain", "Be My Baby", and other similar songs were part of that genre. In the early 1980's, Tracey Ullman recorded a song that was a dead-on recreation of the sound of that genre, "They Don't Know". Despite being 20 recorded almost two decades after that genre was one of the most common on the Top 40, it was still an example of the genre.

The crooner ballad genre of the 40's through the 60's had many, many artists recording songs that fit the genre. Then, several decades later, Harry Connick, Jr. and Michael Buble revived the genre and recorded brand new songs that fit the old genre. The swing genre was big in the 30's and 40's, but then there was a revival of the genre, and bands like Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and the Cherry Poppin' Daddies recorded a large number of songs that were faithful replicas of that old genre.

So, what fans of the soft-rock genre that was a common staple of Adult Contemporary radio stations want is for those stations to play NEW songs (and those songs are out there) that are in the same soft-rock musical genre.
 
The question is whether the demos for the softer side of AC support having a station dedicated to that format. I sure don't have the answer to that one.
 
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