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Radio Determines Which Songs People Remember

TheBigA said:
You call it an analogy. I call it fiction. Pimps never have trouble finding younger hos. What you've done is invented fiction that you believe, because it proves your point. Only problem is it's completely false.

Look, if it was strictly up to the people in radio, we'd love to program 50s and 60s oldies. But the only way we could do it is we'd have to send you a bill every month. And you would never pay.

You want a personalized service for free. That will never happen. My analogy is you want to stay young forever, and never do anything to make that happen. That's a fairy tale.
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I left commercial music radio about 10 years ago. I don't have a dog in this fight. What I'm trying to do to prepare the next generation of 55+ listeners for the time when the hammer falls. They need to know it's not the end of the world. There are many great options for music in today's world, many of which I didn't have 10 years ago.
 
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TheFonz said:
What I'm trying to do to prepare the next generation of 55+ listeners for the time when the hammer falls. .
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The funny thing about aging is that it happens to everyone one year at a time. So there is no "generation shift"... there is a gradual evolution where stations remove a few older songs every year and replace them with newer ones so that their target age continues to match the actual listening age range.
 
Here is an interesting sidebar to the "changes in music / changes in radio" discussion. This comes from a downloadable PDF that is found at the Cornell University Library http://arxiv.org/abs/1502.05417 and is called "The Evolution of Popular Music: USA 1960-2010"

"The history of pop music is rich in anecdotes, folklore and controversy. But despite the keen interest, there is little in the form of hard evidence to back up most claims about the evolution of music. Now a group of researchers have used data analysis tools developed for genomic number crunching to study the evolution of U.S. pop music. The team studied 30-second segments of more than 17,000 songs that appeared on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 between 1960 and 2010. Their tools categorized the songs according to harmonic features such as chord changes as well as the quality of timbre such as whether guitar-based, piano-based orchestra-based and so on. They then used a standard algorithm for discovering clusters within networks of data to group the songs into 13 different types, which turned out to correspond with well-known genres such as rap, rock, country and so on. Finally, they plotted the change in popularity of these musical types over time.

The results show a clear decline in the popularity of jazz and blues since 1960. During the same period, rock-related music has ebbed and flowed in popularity. By contrast, rap was rare before 1980 before becoming the dominant musical style for 30 years until declining in the late 2000s. The work answers several important question about the evolution of pop music, such as whether music industry practices have led to a decline in the cultural variety of new music, and whether British bands such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones triggered the 1964 American music revolution [spoiler: no in both cases]."

A further report is https://medium.com/the-physics-arxi...-how-pop-music-evolved-in-the-us-48ad60bf495b and is titled "Genetic Data Tools Reveal How Pop Music Evolved In The US
…and show that The Beatles didn’t start the 1964 American music revolution after all"
 
DavidEduardo said:


The funny thing about aging is that it happens to everyone one year at a time. So there is no "generation shift"... there is a gradual evolution where stations remove a few older songs every year and replace them with newer ones so that their target age continues to match the actual listening age range.
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You're right about that. It took me 2 or 3 years of "dial surfing" to figure that out
 
TheBigA said:
Record players were invented 100 years ago.
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Well, believe it or not, DJs were a big part of '50s & '60s radio. I missed them as much as the music. I was so desperate I started collecting airchecks for a few years. Then internet radio was born. You radio guys just don't get how important radio was to the '50s & '60s generation back in the day.
 
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TheFonz said:
Well, believe it or not, DJs were a big part of '50s & '60s radio. I missed them as much as the music. I was so desperate I started collecting airchecks for a few years. Then internet radio was born. You radio guys just don't get how important radio was to the '50s & '60s generation back in the day.
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As a person who owned Top 40 stations in the 60's, I know how important that feeling of "connecting" was. But, just as some tired of the DJs, others have found their "community" in social media an neither want nor expect one way talking from the radio. We're not in Kansas any more.
 
The thing I don't get is why radio is the bad guy. The advertiser is the one that won't buy and the advertising agencies reflect the whims of the advertiser. The radio station is at the mercy of the advertising dollar. If we need to lay blame for the 55+ person not finding something they want on radio, follow the money. We're all reliant on the money.
 
DavidEduardo said:


The funny thing about aging is that it happens to everyone one year at a time. So there is no "generation shift"... there is a gradual evolution where stations remove a few older songs every year and replace them with newer ones so that their target age continues to match the actual listening age range.
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Well, you would think so but in 2004, Oldies stations suddenly removed virtually everything before 1964 AND many songs from the mid to late 60s, thus creating what became known as Classic Hits. There was some adjustment before that and many 50s songs had been dropped but nothing like what happened in 2004! I am not suggesting bringing them back at this late date, only making a point. I had for years, wondered why they didn't drop one year at a time.
 
semoochie said:
Well, you would think so but in 2004, Oldies stations suddenly removed virtually everything before 1964 AND many songs from the mid to late 60s, thus creating what became known as Classic Hits. There was some adjustment before that and many 50s songs had been dropped but nothing like what happened in 2004! I am not suggesting bringing them back at this late date, only making a point. I had for years, wondered why they didn't drop one year at a time.
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The updating happened much more gradually, with oldies stations making the transition to less 60's and more 70's at different points in different markets.

The likely cause for acceleration of the process was the knowledge of what the PPM was showing in Philly and the early results in Houston. Many companies that had representatives on the PPM test industry panel were aware of what was coming and started advance PPM planning as soon as they started seeing trends in the PPM in the two test markets.
 
b-turner said:
The thing I don't get is why radio is the bad guy.
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Because to the music fan, there is an underlying feeling of entitlement. They like the music, there are enough of them to constitute an audience, and therefore radio owes them at least one station, even if that station cannot hope to keep the bills paid by doing so.

Now that I have said that, they're all going to be upset with me, but my first two points -- "they like the music and there are enough of them" -- is cited constantly in their posts so they can't argue against those. The last point, about station financial viability, has been explained ad nauseum and is either challenged on a facts vs. emotions basis, or dismissed as if the advertising agencies had no say in the matter of who buys airtime.

Therefore, radio owes them their station ... which is the underlying topic to all of these "radio is at fault for us not being able to hear our music" threads and therefore proven the instant someone starts another thread on the subject.
 
K.M. Richards said:
Because to the music fan, there is an underlying feeling of entitlement. They like the music, there are enough of them to constitute an audience, and therefore radio owes them at least one station, even if that station cannot hope to keep the bills paid by doing so.

Now that I have said that, they're all going to be upset with me, but my first two points -- "they like the music and there are enough of them" -- is cited constantly in their posts so they can't argue against those. The last point, about station financial viability, has been explained ad nauseum and is either challenged on a facts vs. emotions basis, or dismissed as if the advertising agencies had no say in the matter of who buys airtime.

Therefore, radio owes them their station ... which is the underlying topic to all of these "radio is at fault for us not being able to hear our music" threads and therefore proven the instant someone starts another thread on the subject.
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I would say that was true for those of us who enjoyed listneing to '50s & '60s music on the radio. There were few options for us 10 or 12 years ago. I now realize that most of today's music radio listeners use radio as only one of several sources for their music. They are not or will not be shocked when radio stops programming to them. They will simply move to their other options.
 
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joebtsflk1 said:
Granted, this article deals with the process of adding currents at country radio, but it seems germane as it describes how corporate radio programming departments decide on what current listeners will hear (and later remember), and how the lack of time they're able to devote to music discovery is affecting the on-air product.
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I don't see how this article is indicative of anything except the three or four people they interviewed.

The reality is there are thousands of records released, and no one has the time to listen to them all and decide they'd be right for their audience. It's an impossible situation, becoming even more impossible every day. The music loving public is equally overwhelmed with all the choices. This is why they appreciate someone providing them some help.
 
TheBigA said:
You realize your parents went through the exact same thing. This isn't something new.
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Yep. My dad was (and still is) a classical music fan. He didn't lose his classical station; it just modernized its format and wasn't playing complete works anymore. He switched to recorded music.
 
DavidEduardo said:


The updating happened much more gradually, with oldies stations making the transition to less 60's and more 70's at different points in different markets.

The likely cause for acceleration of the process was the knowledge of what the PPM was showing in Philly and the early results in Houston. Many companies that had representatives on the PPM test industry panel were aware of what was coming and started advance PPM planning as soon as they started seeing trends in the PPM in the two test markets.
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All I know is there was report after report of stations dropping everything pre-Beatles and adding 70s songs. This happened to a lot of Oldies stations in 2004. I never heard anything about it before that. As I said, I acknowledge that most 50s songs had been dropped by this time but there was still a significant representation.
 
All I have is radio and I want my radio.

For now I have it and there seems to be no reason to be concerned. There are plenty of advertisers on one of the stations. Another station I hear sometimes in the car was able to raise funds from listeners to pay music royalties.

I watched a show called "The Last Man on Earth", and, getting back on topic, this show played a lot of songs I never heard. It is not just radio, but also movies and TV shows that can make a person aware of songs.
 
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