How deep should you take your oldies?

Here's my observations.
1) Everybody is playing classic track A from artist A. You can play that as well, but you're better off playing their classic track B (more often).

2) People do like for you to go deep with your oldies. It sets you apart from other stations. Listener: WOW, they're playing that song. I've not heard it on other similarly formated stations.

3) Keep your oldies in the "popular" tastes area though. Just because you really liked it doesn't mean everybody else will. You'll always get turn offs. Consider them to be LEARNERS who don't fully get your station's message.

4) Why are people fixated on finding the NEXT BIG HIT? You've got a treasure chest of proven classic material available. Should you toss out 99% of your format history in search of that NEW 1% track? No.

gregg75 said:

Here's my observations.

3) Keep your oldies in the "popular" tastes area though. Just because you really liked it doesn't mean everybody else will. You'll always get turn offs. Consider them to be LEARNERS who don't fully get your station's message.

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Not sure what you mean by "popular tastes". Would those be songs that charted "back in the day" or songs that "test well" in today's market? Personally, I listen to internet radio because I want to hear songs that were played on the radio back in the day. This includes "pick hits" that never charted and songs that never made the Top 20.

Looking back before I started an Internet Radio station even though I am Album Rock which means tracks outside the singles charts that were also good on the albums by popular Rock bands and super groups. Seeing this means a lot of people also want the same but they really don't know what its actually called.

It would be cool if their was an Album oriented oldies station or a station that played oldies that were not on the top 100, but were really good and stood the test of time. Too many Clear Channel terrestrial Radio stations only stride towards the chart toppers but there were plenty of great tunes outside the chart toppers. Going outside the top 100 per yr and looking into the other tracks that a super hit was on and the album it was on and playing some of those tracks.

Even album oriented Country would be an interesting concept thought I never heard of it.