Researching Music: Ages And Stages

This week's Billboard Top 40 Midweek Update had a fascinating Rich Appel overview of SoundOut, HitPredictor, RateTheMusic and Mscore, spotlighting the many research tools available to programmers these days.

• CBS Radio VP of research and audience measurement Gary Heller: “It wasn’t long ago when all radio had was callout, requests, sales and gut to help determine a song’s potential.”
   
• Mediabase/Clear Channel executive VP of integrated music marketing worldwide Alyssa Pollack, who oversees the service used by 200 stations, “Rate TheMusic is usually four to six weeks ahead of the curve. If PDs want to know what songs work with women 25-34 listening in afternoon drive, we can get that deep.”

Thanks to Bullseye Research and Billboard, the country format gets a weekly look at both callout and listener database online test data and, due to the format's high proportion of heavy users compared to the pop formats, the differences between the two doesn't seem to be driven by the age of tunes.

The newest titles on the database online test were eight (Florida Georgia Line) and nine (Lady Antebellum and Chris Young) weeks.  The callout test's newest song was only four weeks old (Taylor).  Swift didn't make the top 20 with the database members.

The #1 song in the callout is 15 weeks old (Carrie Underwood), whereas the top one in the online poll was 27 weeks (Jake Owen).

Average age of the top 5:  callout = 24 weeks, email databases = 25 weeks
# 6-10:  26 vs 22 weeks
# 11-15:  10 (driven by Taylor) vs 20 weeks of airplay
# 16-20:  17 vs 12

The average number of weeks of national airplay of both top 20 rankers is practically identical.  Callout = 19.25 weeks vs database = 19.75 weeks.

There are differences between the two music test methodologies, but I think they reflect more the nature of country station loyal listener club members compared to the more random characteristics of country radio users reached by phone and their preferences than merely how long a typical song has been exposed.

Conclusion:  there are more research tools available today and a programmer would be getting only a part of the picture if she or he didn't look at all of them.

"Just OK," Huh?

A&O sees plenty of callout, auditorium testing and online music research every week, and if I have a bias that drives "record" promoters crazy it's that I pay a lot of attention to it all, trying to read between the lines of it, understand what the audience is trying to tell us.

A new song comes in, I like it at first impression and review it favorably. Then, five or six weeks later, the listener feedback starts to arrive and reminds me quite often how little I know about the typical country radio listener.

As a result, I look at every bit of research I can get my hands on, so I have to say that I am addicted to Bullseye "Callout America" and love that Billboard's Country Update includes it weekly. The more different surveys that replicate similar results, the more confident you can be that you're seeing "truth," not just random estimates. I also check out the national tracking of RateTheMusic.com too, don't you?

In spite of all that, every once in awhile, I wish I could call all the listeners and ask what the heck they meant when they rated a song.

"Love/Hate" and "Passion/Dislike/Tired Of/Play Less" I usually get. The stat that drives me crazy is "neutral."

(It's a little like having your date for the evening tell you as you bid goodnight at their front door that they had an "OK" time, not exactly a glowing review.)

Three songs this week were "neutral" for more than four in ten listeners sampled, Danny Gokey, James Otto and one which really confuses me - "I Pray for You" by Jaron and The Long Road to Love - which was rated "neutral" by 40.7% of the national sample.

Love it, hate it, tired of it, I'd never guess that more than a third of country listeners would simply say that it's "just OK." Are they really familiar with the song? Or, are they just rating the hook?

That's what addiction is all about. I can't wait to see how it - and each of the others - does next week!