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Can just one song make or break a station for you?

tall_guy1

tall_guy1

Star Participant
If a station has just one song in their playlist that you either really like or really hate, does it cause you to tune in or tune out of said radio station? For example, for me, any station that has Meghan Trainor in power rotation immediately goes off my presets until her song is off the charts. What about you?
 
tall_guy1 said:
If a station has just one song in their playlist that you either really like or really hate, does it cause you to tune in or tune out of said radio station? For example, for me, any station that has Meghan Trainor in power rotation immediately goes off my presets until her song is off the charts. What about you?
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That's pretty extreme. I'd say you are one of a very tiny number of radio users who do that. Most have stations they like and stick with those stations even if one performer who fits a certain station's format puts out a song they don't like.
 
MarcB said:
No. I'll just change the station if I hear a song I don't like. Anything by Nikki Minaj. Along with Hotel California and Magic Carpet Ride. I do have my own personal list of songs I would never care to hear ever again.
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Funny, you just named two of my favorite songs although I agree with you on Nikki Minaj (and a whole host of her contemporaries).

You, being from CT, might explain why you don't like those two songs. :)
 
I don't listen to top 40/CHR for this purpose. Or most of today's country music.
I change the channel every time I start hearing "Ice Ice Baby" by Vanilla Ice on my local rhythmic oldies station. Gosh, what a trainwreck, no matter how old it is.
Oldies? I tune out of the 1723rd playing of Only the Good Die Young. I'm surprised the song isn't skipping and sticking by now with how many tens of thousands of plays it has received since the '70s. And Dancing Queen, and Hotel California, and Sweet Home Alabama...sure, sure, great songs. But played way too much.
 
crainbebo said:
I don't listen to top 40/CHR for this purpose. Or most of today's country music.
I change the channel every time I start hearing "Ice Ice Baby" by Vanilla Ice on my local rhythmic oldies station. Gosh, what a trainwreck, no matter how old it is.
Oldies? I tune out of the 1723rd playing of Only the Good Die Young. I'm surprised the song isn't skipping and sticking by now with how many tens of thousands of plays it has received since the '70s. And Dancing Queen, and Hotel California, and Sweet Home Alabama...sure, sure, great songs. But played way too much.
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Your complaint is exactly why I prefer listening to my own library instead of the 200-300 song rotation of most broadcast stations.
 
landtuna said:
Your complaint is exactly why I prefer listening to my own library instead of the 200-300 song rotation of most broadcast stations.
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The tightest playlist I've ever run into on a classic hits station is about 500. Some of the tracks are indeed played more often than others, especially, I've found, during dayparts with peak listenership, which is probably why you're hearing "Hotel California" so often. Middays, nights, graveyard shift, that when the "other" 200 songs are spun more frequently. It's all about making sure the songs with the fewest negatives reach the most ears.
 
CTListener said:
The tightest playlist I've ever run into on a classic hits station is about 500. Some of the tracks are indeed played more often than others, especially, I've found, during dayparts with peak listenership, which is probably why you're hearing "Hotel California" so often. Middays, nights, graveyard shift, that when the "other" 200 songs are spun more frequently. It's all about making sure the songs with the fewest negatives reach the most ears.
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The member complaining was crainbebo, not I. "Hotel California" can spin many more times before I tire of it. But then.....I lived in California so I understand it. :)
 
MarcB said:
No. I'll just change the station if I hear a song I don't like. Anything by Nikki Minaj. Along with Hotel California and Magic Carpet Ride. I do have my own personal list of songs I would never care to hear ever again.
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America's Best Music (KKOV online) has "Waiting for a Girl Like You" by Foreigner and "Making Love Out of Nothing at All" by Air Supply, which will absolutely make me "change" the station. I heard the Foreigner song on "Scream Queens" and I'm not exaggerating. I don't listen to any other online stations, so I just turn the sound off. I just heard "I'm Not in Love" by 10CC which is pretty close and "Paradise" by Sade. Other songs that really don't belong are "I'm on Fire" by Bruce Springsteen and "Almost Paradise" by Mike Reno and Ann Wilson. What are the people in charge of this music THINKING? Nat King Cole, Perry Como, Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett are still there. Harrison Ford got away but Tommy Lee Jones kept chasing him.

I'm more tolerant on the oldies station that used to be America's Best Music, but when I heard "Cold As Ice" by Foreigner, I knew I was not dealing with something I could live with. I keep coming back to this station hoping to hear good songs, but it doesn't always happen. "Sweet Emotion" and "Dream On" by Aerosmith and "Frankenstein" by Edgar Winter are among the songs that I will not tolerate. "Hotel California", interestingly, is one I like.
 
MarcB said:
I'm listening to the online stream of Kool 104.3 the Oldies station in the Westerly market and I just heard another one I can't stand. "American Woman."
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I'll stick around through that, but it's my least favorite Guess Who song. One of the very few songs I find an instant tuneout is the Hollies' "Long Cool Woman." It's is just so ... I don't know ... un-Hollies-like compared to all their other hits and just completely turns me off. The only other tuneout I can think of right now is the Doobie Brothers' "Black Water," which bores me to tears and takes far to long to fade out to its merciful end.

Of course, all these songs we're mentioning in this threat obviously test very well and have done so for years, so no station is losing many listeners at all by playing them.
 
I like "Black Water".

On the other hand, Michael Bolton SHOULD NOT sing "Georgia on My Mind". Oh, what a relief. KKOV is notorious for putting commercials in the middle of songs.
 
landtuna said:
Your complaint is exactly why I prefer listening to my own library instead of the 200-300 song rotation of most broadcast stations.
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Then you were never a radio listener. Pop stations have always had tight playlists, only the selections have changed.
 
vchimpanzee said:
America's Best Music (KKOV online) has "Waiting for a Girl Like You" by Foreigner and "Making Love Out of Nothing at All" by Air Supply, which will absolutely make me "change" the station. I heard the Foreigner song on "Scream Queens" and I'm not exaggerating. I don't listen to any other online stations, so I just turn the sound off. I just heard "I'm Not in Love" by 10CC which is pretty close and "Paradise" by Sade. Other songs that really don't belong are "I'm on Fire" by Bruce Springsteen and "Almost Paradise" by Mike Reno and Ann Wilson. What are the people in charge of this music THINKING? Nat King Cole, Perry Como, Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett are still there. Harrison Ford got away but Tommy Lee Jones kept chasing him.

I'm more tolerant on the oldies station that used to be America's Best Music, but when I heard "Cold As Ice" by Foreigner, I knew I was not dealing with something I could live with. I keep coming back to this station hoping to hear good songs, but it doesn't always happen. "Sweet Emotion" and "Dream On" by Aerosmith and "Frankenstein" by Edgar Winter are among the songs that I will not tolerate. "Hotel California", interestingly, is one I like.
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The demo that listened to Air Supply and foreigner is now reaching the target demo of America's Best Music. They will tolerate some sinatra and Bennett selections (from listening with their parents). Cold as ice is probably something that was slipped in during a local daypart ?
 
Groove1670 said:
The demo that listened to Air Supply and foreigner is now reaching the target demo of America's Best Music. They will tolerate some sinatra and Bennett selections (from listening with their parents). Cold as ice is probably something that was slipped in during a local daypart ?
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Air Supply and Foreigner's hit-making years overlapped. Many of their songs were played on the same stations at the same time. Why wouldn't the targeted female listener who liked both "Cold As Ice" in 1977 and "All Out of Love" in 1980 not want to hear both in a nostalgia format in 2017?
 
Groove1670 said:
Then you were never a radio listener. Pop stations have always had tight playlists, only the selections have changed.
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When I was a teenager a tight playlist wasn't an issue. Now that I have been exposed to 60+ years of music I am a bit more selective and tend to love the songs you don't hear too often. That is one reason one of my favorite stations is "Midcentury Music" WKCE out of Eastern TN (a long drive from where I live now). They have a playlist that is quite unique.

I have been a radio listener since the early 1950's when my favorite "must listen" show was "Little Orly" on KCNA in Tucson. I grew up in the RnR 50's and 60's and was a huge fan of music radio through the mid-80's. Then, when I discovered I could build my own library and eliminate the songs I did not like and the commercials my radio listening began to diminish. I still listen to my local Oldies outlet (on HD) in the car and at home I listen to a real radio station that streams. In addition to my music library I have a large collection of old radio programs of all types from early Jack Benny through The Lone Ranger. I was a radioman in the military and used much of my spare time to DX although I sold the last of my gear several years ago. Radio used to be a hobby. Now it is a pastime. But I still listen.
 
landtuna said:
When I was a teenager a tight playlist wasn't an issue. Now that I have been exposed to 60+ years of music I am a bit more selective and tend to love the songs you don't hear too often. That is one reason one of my favorite stations is "Midcentury Music" WKCE out of Eastern TN (a long drive from where I live now). They have a playlist that is quite unique.

I have been a radio listener since the early 1950's when my favorite "must listen" show was "Little Orly" on KCNA in Tucson. I grew up in the RnR 50's and 60's and was a huge fan of music radio through the mid-80's. Then, when I discovered I could build my own library and eliminate the songs I did not like and the commercials my radio listening began to diminish. I still listen to my local Oldies outlet (on HD) in the car and at home I listen to a real radio station that streams. In addition to my music library I have a large collection of old radio programs of all types from early Jack Benny through The Lone Ranger. I was a radioman in the military and used much of my spare time to DX although I sold the last of my gear several years ago. Radio used to be a hobby. Now it is a pastime. But I still listen.
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We have aged out of the radio demo. Where the hits were more important in our 20's and 30's, our musical tastes widen in our 40's, and top 40 radio becomes repetitive and stale. I listen to very different musical selections than what my stations play, but then again I am over 50.
 
Playlist size is determined by the listeners.

Many larger stations do extensive music research. Others take the playlists of stations that do research and build their own list from them.

The purpose of research is to find songs everyone in the target likes, or, at least, does not hate. Songs with big hate / dislike scores don't get played.

The size of the list is determined by the research. We don't purposely set out to find 100, 200, 500 or 1000 playable songs. We set out to find all the songs our listeners as a group want to hear and don't, to any significant extent, hate.

That is why stations in similar formats tend to have very close to the same number of songs even if they are as far apart as Boston and Bakersfield. The slight differences are mostly due to the local competitive array and not differences in tastes as America is a connected, mobile nation so "regional hits" are mostly a thing of the past.
 
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