One More Surprise (Thanks To RateTheMusic.com)

And, it's a good thing (I think).

It its screener, RateTheMusic.com asks respondents how much they listen to country music radio every day.  The folks who say they listen two or more hours daily are 79% of this particular week's sample and the ones who report listening less than two hours are the remaining 21% (talk about a perfect example of the Pareto principle!).

This is important because high performing stations have a higher proportion of “P1” listeners than other stations (P1 is defined as the station that earns the most time from a listener).

• Lighter users like the very best testing songs a bit more than the core listeners do.  This tells me at least one reason why the format is growing now. 
• The two groups appear to agree on five potential "power" songs, but disagree on others.
• The non-core "likes" the Darius and Band Perry but doesn't seem to "love" them like the heaviest users do.  
• Meanwhile, they "love" Kip, Brad, Easton and Brantley more than the two-hour-a-day users.
• Among what might be "medium rotation" testers in the 60's, Keith Urban and Billy Currington perform better with the lighter users vs the core.
• Those in the bottom third of the test ranker by core positives that rank higher with the lighter users:  Lee Brice and Kacey Musgraves.

The decisions being made each week by smart programmers on factors like these show why programming music is both an "art" and a "science."

It starts with understanding the differences in the many subsets within your audience and then making intelligent decisions based on them.

For more on programming to P-1 tastes, click on Coleman Research, ARB's Bill Rose, Gary Marince, Mark Ramsey, Roger Wimmer, Arbitron Training Handbook (pdf)

Are You Dating Yourself?

What you play and choose not to expose sends a message to your target about how old you are and how old you think they are.

A few generalizations just to get the conversation started:

• The top-rated song with 25-39 scores higher than the highest one with 40-54.
• 25-39 rates nine currents high enough to be powers.  40-54 rates 4-6 that highly.
• If you call 60% positive or higher strong enough to be a secondary or power, both age groups give 20 tunes that level of acceptance. 
• Artists doing better on this test with younger listeners:  Luke Bryan, Randy Houser, Tim & Taylor, Easton, Hunter, Brett Eldredge, Justin Moore, LA and Tyler Farr.
• Stronger with the older end of the target this time:  Blake, Darius, Carrie, Gary Allan, Keith Urban, Sheryl Crow, Henningsens and Lee Brice

Music testing is as much about proper targeting for maximum impact as it is to check familiarity, burn, negatives and positives.

- thanks to RateTheMusic.com for sharing this data from last week's national test, 25-54