New music sucks. The experts agree. Legendary programmer Guy Zapoleon, inventor of CHR’s Music Cycle, said it’s the worst doldrums he’s ever seen. Coleman Insights’ Contemporary Music Superstudy found that North America’s favorite songs in 2021 were mostly the same songs they loved most in 2020. Luminate, purveyors of BDS radio, observed that on-demand streaming … Continue reading Why New Music Won’t Suck Forever
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Streaming data ought to be the best music popularity measurement ever created. After all, it shows us which songs people play when they’re in control of their music. That data comes from every single streaming user—not just a paucity of PPM panelists as MScore shows. Unlike library tests and callout, streaming data reflects every song … Continue reading How to Spot the Real Hits in Streaming Data
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When you started your programming career—if you were lucky—you had a mentor who bestowed upon you a way to figure out when your listeners should know a new song and when they were likely getting sick of it. The time-honored benchmarks that you received were your own station’s spin counts. “Don’t test a song in … Continue reading Why Your Spin Counts Don’t Count Anymore (And Why They Never Really Did)
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Chubby Checker’s “The Twist” was always the #1 song of all time, according to Billboard. It first hit #1 on the Hot 100 in September 1960, thanks to a teen-led Twist craze, then reached #1 again in early 1962 when twisting belatedly caught on with celebrities and well-heeled fashionable adults who typically never touched teenybopper … Continue reading How The Weeknd Defeated a 61-Year Chart Record (And Why it Matters For How You Use Streaming Data)
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A teenager turns a bitter breakup into an entire album. An Italian Eurovision winner has a U.S. hit with an old-school rock banger. A Canadian R&B singer breaks the GOAT chart record of a 61-year-old song by a Philadelphia R&B singer. An Applebee’s commercial is a hit. These oddities mark our memories of 2021’s music. … Continue reading Three Lessons Radio Can Learn From 2021’s Music Trends
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Disney’s latest animated movie spawns a surprise and massive hit song It blew up on TikTok. It hit #1 on every major streaming platform. It’s #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 (at the time of this post’s release) between Glass Animals and Ed Sheeran. The album from which it came bumped Adele’s 30 out … Continue reading Should We Talk About Bruno?
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One of my favorite weekend pastimes is tuning in to classic American Top 40 countdown shows with Casey Kasem, which our local Classic Hits station rebroadcasts each weekend. My favorite part is hearing songs that vanished after they were currents. Even huge artists with hits people still play today had some big hits that only … Continue reading What Adele and AC/DC (Might) Have In Common
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Like large sunglasses and the McRib, Adele has once again returned. Her new album “30” drops on November 19th. The first single, “Easy On Me”, is already breaking records: On Spotify, the song debuted as the #1 most-streamed song in the U.S. for the week, with over 20 million streams—more than twice as many plays … Continue reading Three Branding Concepts You Can Steal from Adele
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Our 3rd post in our 3-part series exploring differences in the most popular songs on streaming platforms. In our post examining a snapshot of the Top 20 songs on each of the five major streaming music services and in our review of Coleman Insights’ Contemporary Music SuperStudy3 data, we clearly saw differences in music tastes … Continue reading How should you use individual streaming service charts?
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The second post in our series explores differences in the most popular songs on streaming platforms. In our previous post, we examined how vastly different the Top 20 most-played songs on each of the five most popular streaming services are. We found: Country is huge on Amazon Music and Pandora, but non-existent among Apple Music’s … Continue reading Are Streaming Services Really That Different?
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