I know I should be applauding the commercial stations that have popped up doing the smooth jazz format but the ones I have heard are doing the same thing that aged the format out and made it sound old timey. Yeah, the playlists aren't as cluttered with pop songs as the BA format was but the other elements are still the same as they were in 1987, 1997, and 2007. The music is still really slow, soprano sax heavy and mostly in minor keys (semi-dark to dark on the mood code scale), the personalities are still more "voicey" than conversational, and the playlists still focus on singles - which were picked and tested by a company that crashed the format so why replicate their strategy. The Oasis sounds extremely 55-64 and over and even too draggy for a lot of that demo that would be drawn in by a brighter, less draggy music. The Wolf HD isn't streaming so I can't tell with them, the Cleveland Station plays lots of G, Sade and Anita and is really vocal oriented, just like what was there before.
To me this is basically like pulling your leg out of a trap then sticking your leg back in the trap and closing it. To attract even the 45-54 crowd now the focus needs to shift from "smooth and relaxing" to entertaining and uplifting and all the MOR affections need to be dropped. As for music, we really don't know what is a true hit from the last 15 or so years because the process of picking songs and driving them up the chart was so disengaged from audience acceptance of the song. The audience knows and likes these artists so it is not that risky to trust ears and instinct - set up a few listener panels or something to test those instincts on, keep eyes and ears open at live events and start mining the real hits..which may be deeper tracks that the label never jumped on (for example "Silhouette" by Euge Groove was big on our brunch show..even though it was never a "single"..listeners loved it and they knew him and his sound so it wasn't a risky shot
To me this is basically like pulling your leg out of a trap then sticking your leg back in the trap and closing it. To attract even the 45-54 crowd now the focus needs to shift from "smooth and relaxing" to entertaining and uplifting and all the MOR affections need to be dropped. As for music, we really don't know what is a true hit from the last 15 or so years because the process of picking songs and driving them up the chart was so disengaged from audience acceptance of the song. The audience knows and likes these artists so it is not that risky to trust ears and instinct - set up a few listener panels or something to test those instincts on, keep eyes and ears open at live events and start mining the real hits..which may be deeper tracks that the label never jumped on (for example "Silhouette" by Euge Groove was big on our brunch show..even though it was never a "single"..listeners loved it and they knew him and his sound so it wasn't a risky shot
