Billboard does have a recurrents chart though.
On the airplay chart songs below #20 after 20 wks get moved there.
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Z100, music adjustments?
- Thread starter deejaywestbrook
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On the airplay chart songs below #20 after 20 wks get moved there.
Sean Ross says even good songs don't always translate to good ratings for CHR:
But the Billboard recurrent criteria is, and of course has to be arbitrary. A station that made an early add of a song may be considered to be playing it as a current when, in fact, it is by now a recurrent. And a late add may show as a recurrent even if it is brand new at that station. My understanding is that the Billboard chart references the release date.
Here are the Billboard recurrent rules:
I follow this closely and I wouldn't describe it as arbitrary. If it was, the labels would scream about it.
It's not based on when a station added the song, but when the song first charted. I've seen situations where a song is released and doesn't chart for the first time for three weeks. Or a station adds a song early, but it doesn't chart.
The main issue for removing songs from the chart is to make room for more currents, which the labels want to promote.
On the country chart, though, it works to the detriment of "slow burners," songs that languish in the lower regions of the chart as other songs ascend, only to find their chart stays curtailed by the rule. Case in point: newcomer Morgan Wade's "Wilder Days," released last November, entered the chart early this year, yet only now is starting to break on radio. It's up to No. 27 in airplay now, but it has to get going in a hurry to avoid becoming a recurrent. I'm sure her label has another single on deck in case that happens, but "Wilder Days" is, IMO, a very strong song and represents her best chance to make a big impression right out of the box. The Brothers Osborne had that happen to "I'm Not For Everyone" just a couple of months back, but in that case, the label pulled its support for the song just as it seemed to be adding spins and stations.
My point is that stations don't all add a song on the day it is released. Sometimes if a song is not in the core sound of a station, they may wait considerably longer to add it. An example would be rock leaning songs on a rhythmic CHR. Or, even, a Mexican flavored pop song in a predominantly Puerto Rican and Dominican origin Latin market.
So a song may not be played at all for some time or it may be an early add, and the chart for recurrents is based on averages, not specific cases.
This can be like songs that become hits late in a year, and thus get annual "points" in two years and don't look particularly well in either year. Compared to a song released in, let's say, May, will get all its chart credits in one year.
This is often the case when "mid chart" songs get considerable gold play when they crossed year-end borders and people don't understand that the sum of the years makes the song very much stronger.
In fact, I have been in numerous situations where the label wants me to drop a highly researching song to make room for a new song by the same artist. There are only a finite number of positions for the same artist in any category if a station is to maintain adequate song-to-song separation.
Today, in some genres like hip hop and reggaetón, artists may drop a new release a month or less from the prior one. That works for them in the streaming world, but it does not fit the mechanics of current hits based radio stations. And that brings up the question of how radio can better handle this newer system of frequent singles releases.
One station I work with outside the US which programs reggaetón has category slots for hit artists, not hit songs. We may have two, three and once even four absolute currents in the slot, and they rotate. So the individual tunes play less often, but the artist plays faster than the single-song power rotation. In this case, you may hear a Bad Bunny every 35 minutes (!!!!) but each time the song is different. And, if one of the BB songs is significantly more powerful, we put it in the category twice.
Which is why I prefer the Mediabase recurrent rules to the Billboard recurrent rules. I think they promote chart movement without penalizing stations who want to stick with good testing songs.
But songs last long too.
Tims song is up to #11 in its 41st chart wk.
9 of the top 18 songs have a bullett & are on the chart 30+ wks.
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