I see you did a great job of watching the first 30 seconds of the video. And aren't you arguing in favor of local control of playlists here? Play more pop/hip-hop-infused "country" music in the cities, and more cowboy songs in Texas. What's wrong with that?
Stations in larger markets do their own local music research. While the format may be "syndicated" what is shared are things like talent, but the playlist is local and integrated with the multi-market bits and pieces.
Who's talking about destroying anything? We just want radio to play music with organic popularity behind it, not the songs which the record labels are telling them to give "max spins" on specific weeks to manufacture #1 hits and then drop them like a hot potato once that goal has been achieved. A song with organic popularity wouldn't be at #1 or #2 one week and then not even in the top 20 the next week.
We don't care what the national chart is. In radio, we have two or three current categories... power, others and new songs. #9 and #15 rotate the same, so chart positions are irrelevant: local data is what determines whether a song is a power, a regular current or in the "new" or "descending" category. In a category, they all rotate the same.
And I've seen a song test so powerfully at the #1 station in LA it was a power for most of a 13
month period. That was the product of local research; the label wanted to move on every ten to twelve weeks with a new single, but we could not comply as our listeners told us to keep playing that song.
I have no idea what "organic" popularity is. Radio is based on playing songs that each station's audience likes and wants to hear on the radio. Not songs they want to buy. Not videos they want to see. On the radio, today. That is the basis for radio research: ask your listeners about every song you might play and find out how much they want to hear them on the radio today. Period.
"Organic" is good for spinach. In radio, we want specifically popular songs among our core listeners.
You're saying that artists can have a successful career without any radio airplay, while record company executives say that if you don't get played on the radio, you don't exist. Who's right?
It does not matter. Radio has a synergistic or symbiotic relationship with the record business, but we don't sell records and they don't sell ads.
In the office of my PD at one station we had a sign that said "the record promoter is not your friend". That was to remind both us and the promoter that what they wanted and what we needed were not always the same. To be cute, we had the text embroidered on a little tiny quilt and put over the door to the PD's office. That station was overwhelmingly #1 in a 114 station USmarket.
Two wrongs don't make a right. And you're just proving that when only a handful of companies own the majority of media outlets, and only a handful of companies own the record labels managing the majority of artists, you get a pipeline of manufactured stardom.
No, it does not work that way. Stations in the larger markets... the ones that are weighted to have the biggest chart influence... have local research and have local playlists. In smaller markets, we might share research among several compatible markets. I used to share country research between Tallahassee, Albany and Dothan because we found that the three markets... even with separate owners... were nearly identical on currents and library songs. So we could test the library three times as often at the same cost per station by rotating markets and sharing the results.
