Music City Math

Running Mediabase's "five day" chart on a Saturday is a weekly habit with me.

Seeing Monday-Friday spin rank without the distortions of weekend airplay can be a good indication of next week's label priorities. 



For example, it already appears that next week's #1 is going to be Carrie Underwood and then the likely chart-topper the following week will be Keith Urban.

With this week's #1, Brett Eldredge heading downward in spins after taking 44 weeks to top the spin charts, will Easton Corbin have the staying power to be all powered up the week of 9/2 for a #1 on 9/9?

You can be sure that his advocates are already battling for that place on the ranker.

As of this week, "All Over The Road" has been on the charts for 33 weeks (which seems like a youngster compared to the 56 weeks it took Lee Brice's 2010 debut "Love Like Crazy" to ultimately get only to #3.

Since radio power rotations are usually five to seven songs, the actual difference from radio's perspective between a #1 and a #7 is just a few spins per week on the average monitored station.

Don't tell that to a promotion person!

The best ones play the game weeks in advance, creating strategies and tactics designed to outrank competing artists, publishers and labels, all of whem have plenty of skin in the contest.

No one wants to end up at #2.

ITunes? MyTunes? WhoseTunes?

It was fascinating this morning to note who got credit for topping the week's country music charts.

• Country Aircheck gave credit to the promotion team working for Hunter Hayes' “Somebody’s Heartbreak," Chris Stacey, Kevin Herring, Kristen Williams and the rest of Atlantic/WMN team.
• Billboard's kudos went to the artist, as Hayes achieved his second—and fastest—No. 1 with “Somebody’s Heartbreak.

As much as I admire Hunter artistically on this day when Clear Channel radio stations are flogging The Band Perry and Cumulus is playing twice as much Kix Brooks as any other radio group thanks to lots of extra overnight spins you simply can't disregard the role of shadowy influence in what is being passed off as factual information today.

Research funded for radio by the music business (Zac Brown's "Colder Weather" was #1 in one out yesterday and Lee Brice "I Drive Your Truck" was #1 in a different one just the other day), download charts (Darius Rucker's "Wagon Wheel" was #1, up 23% from last week). MScore, AirplayIntel, streaming and album sales  charts are topped by different ones.

As with baseball, country radio has no shortage of stats with which to make music decisions and, like the national pastime, just because someone counts it doesn't mean it really counts.

Look at iTunes data rather like we used to view record sales back in the day when all of us used to call local record shops to check on sales figures.  It's certainly an indication of passion for something when a person is willing to plunk down their hard-earned money to buy something.

That seems more credible than playing a song that helps Clear Channel get another act for their IHeartRadio Music Festival or a monitored major market station get an artist for their NTR events. 

The challenge with any kind of retail data is knowing WHO bought it.

The #1 use of radio research is to TARGET what we play, to be sure we know that it appeals to the perfect mix of our core and lighter user prospects who might listen more to our station if we did more they liked.  And, of course, it's a mistake to reach too much in either direction.  Too much core focus, too much cume focus, too much male-appeal, female appeal, younger vs older, etc .. and we hurt ourselves.  No national chart can do that for you.

If you can't afford traditional callout and your local PPM music usage data, online testing at the very least is so crucial.  It's low in cost compared to traditional callout or auditorium testing and when you do it locally it provides a great snapshot of how our most loyal users feel about what we play and that feedback comes back in just a week or two so that we can look at every narrow demo we target, heavy users, light users, etc.   

It's the only data you absolutely know about the methodology behind it to be sure that it will affect your cume and usage.

A new source of "buzz" is YouTube and the fast-growing streaming audio portals.  In some ways, like with retail reports, they are also quite variable and manipulable -- how much did the track sell for, for example.  Is it fair to compare a $1.29 track download to a free fan club coupon offer?  This is a bit like the six track mini-LP vs full 12-14 track one's sales.  Certainly, it's more impressive if you sell 500,000 at $14.95 than it is if they cost $7.95.

SO, I do look at all of them, including Taste Of Country, The Boot and CMT views for example but sometimes - rather like Luke Bryan's spring break release, Kacey Musgraves album tracks or Old Crow Medicine show in the wake of Darius Rucker's success - you really have to listen and decide if it meets your needs and will draw your core closer or push them away. 
 
The top 30 on iTunes ranges from 75,000 sales in all of North America down to 25,000 fewer than that from #1 down to #2, and half that many by the time to get down to #10 and again half THAT many when you get down to #20, etc.  When you look at your LOCAL downloads, Soundscan or Hits, Street Pulse, Big Champagne streaming trends the numbers are very small for any one market.

Take it all with a grain of salt, but employ it to see if something very interesting is happening that you really like and believe might fit.  

Ultimately, adding anything new is a risk, so in spite of all the promotional tracker pressure to push you to go faster, go only as fast as your gut tells you your audience is ready for.  Then, test those things yourself with your audience as soon as you feel like 75-85% of your two hour a day listeners are familiar with it .. and learn from that, making your judgments better and better as you get to know "your" peeps better and better by age, gender and usage profile.

That should be the only #1 that really matters to you if your goal is to make sure your radio station will be a #1 too.

A Tale Of Two Non-Hits

It boggles my mind to think how much this guy's backers have spent on airplane tickets, as he has conducted his "Hometown Radio Handshake Tour" in recent months.

What did he get for all that effort and money?

The song is not listed anywhere on either the Billboard Country Hot 60 or Country Aircheck chart this morning.  In fact, during the last seven days, one station played his song 11 times, two played it 8-9 times and six spun it 1 or 2 times.

What to make of that?

It takes more than money and lots of face-to-face contact with local programmers to get yourself a hit.

Frankly, that restores my faith a bit in what we do and how it all works.

Then, there's Callout America's #5 testing song today, Phil Vassar's "Don't Miss Your Life."

This one has to be very perplexing to Vassar and his promotion team, since it moves down from 34 to 35 on the Country Aircheck chart with no bullet and is nowhere to be seen now on Billboard's Hot 60, having moved backward sufficient weeks to be dropped.

Meanwhile, one-third of the monitored panels seems to be ignoring the chart malaise and playing it very heavily.  Four stations played it more than 35 times in the last week.  18 spun it 20 times or more in the last seven days and 19 more still have it in a ten+ spin category.

Obviously, in spite of the national inactivity, it has been working for at least a few stations.

Hats off to these smart programmers who went with their local listener reaction to what has proven to be a good national tester.

It's sad to see so many chart reporters going with the herd, feeding back to the charts what the charts are telling them are the hits.

Small wonder new things things move so slowly in the country format right now.

The Lifespan Of A Country Current

How long does it take to find out if country radio listeners dislike a song? How many weeks of airplay does it take to make ‘em tired of a song? Is the fact that two or three country stations per market all play almost the same songs in nearly identical rotations hurting the appeal of country music on the radio?

To try to learn the answers to those questions, A&O tracks audience response to every current hit tested by our client stations year-round. Most weeks, that's between 35 and 45 titles.

Lately, I have been entering all of them - by the number of weeks a song has been played nationally (A&O AccuTest recommendations) - into a spreadsheet. The tracking of average scores is displayed by number of weeks the songs play.

Here is how the audience felt about - not the best, nor the worst, but - the average of all of the country songs played during the summer and fall of 2011:

% Positive %Burn %Dislike %Unfamiliar
After four weeks: 51.95 2.58 7.03 20.35

In most cases, this was the first week the song was tested. The tune had received 14 plays in its first week on the radio, 20 plays in its second, 27 plays in the third week and 29 plays in the week the song was initially researched. Half of the national sample (52% was already starting to like it, while one-fifth were unfamiliar with it (based on a :07-:10 hook).

The acceptance radio margin (positive:negative) was 5.41:1. In other words, the odds were 5.4 to one that by the time that UNfamiliar 20.35% of the sample became familiar with it, they would also like it.

After seven weeks: 46.9 2.7 7.32 23.9

I don’t have an explanation, just an observation. After three additional weeks of play - on average in secondary rotation - the changes in acceptance and rejection are significant statistically.

Unfamiliarity grew by 17.4% and positives dropped by 9.7%.

Could it be that passionate fans, heavy-users, who are first to hear and recognize new music feel most positive about it right away? Then, their negatives begin to grow after this early positive response as they become more discerning?

Almost all songs in the sample received at least seven weeks’ airplay before being dropped (some were for poor research results, but most drops came as a result of slow chart momentum and not weak test scores). A small number of songs were dropped after three weeks’ play. The majority of songs tested in week four were still on the playlist by week eleven.

A dirty little "consultant secret:" our first national indication that perhaps a song isn't going to make it comes not from poor research scores, but when a number of influential clients simply stop testing it.

Eleven weeks: 65.98 3.65 8.75 6.08

The 41% increase in acceptance at this point was due to at least three possible factors: familiarity with the song had gotten up to almost 94% with (by now) an average of 35 plays per week, the lower-testing titles had been dropped from play at this point (which by and of itself improved the average score) and combined negatives had only increased from 10.02% to 12.4%, a 23.8% hike.

Positives seem to grow faster than negatives.

Fifteen weeks: 68.1 3.6 8.18 6.8

Now, familiarity has peaked and stabilized. Negatives are steady. Yet, at this point, almost all reporting stations are beginning to move the song from a 38+ play rotation to an average rotation of 22 plays, due to pressure from below the song on the chart to move on to other power records.

And, why not?

It begins to seem that if a PD or MD kept a song in power rotation until burn increased to extreme levels, almost nothing would ever go off that station:

Nineteen weeks: 72.75 5.2 5.53 4.2
Twenty-one weeks: 73.68 5.0 6.25 2.65

Normally, by that time, the song is starting to go off of all current trade charts - yet it’s clear that increased play does NOT appear to cause burn or dislike to grow.

Meanwhile, familiarity makes great drops in weeks 15 thru 21. Light and medium-users have now become familiar as well, and P-1 listeners are not yet growing tired of it.

Interestingly enough, all of the markets included in these averages have two, and in some cases, three country stations.

It certainly does not seem like fatigue with over-exposed music, or growing dislike for the burnt-out songs, is a problem for country radio today.

However: it must be remembered that callout/online test research respondents are screened for the fact that they listen to country radio regularly. It may be that the opinions of non-listeners or those who are listening less lately are simply not reflected here due to our testing methodology.

Have you noticed something I may have missed?

Making Sense Of The Senseless

I understand why record labels play both sides in major markets where all competitive stations are monitored reporters.

Makes sense. Support the station which supports your music and artists. If you don't add it, I'll try to get your competition to do so in hopes that forces you to add it.

What doesn’t make sense to me is in medium and small markets where there’s only one reporting station and as a result labels make sure they get everything and the non-reporter next to nothing.

Those stations may be on top for the required three books in a row and reporting status may change then. Or, the non-reporting programmers and music directors will be at reporting stations some day and they will remember.

Hopefully, the label executives who lobbied for the smaller number of reporters in hopes it would save money have now figured out that didn't work quite that way and some day they'll start to lobby for more stations in more markets to report too.

More reporters means fewer people with too much power and a more representative, credible chart.

Even less sensible: small markets where no one is a reporter and yet artist managers still try to enforce a standard rider in their contracts which says only reporting stations can welcome the show or appear on stage.

Often the only station in town which has partnered with the county fair or local casino for years finds that they are told the artist’s road manager wants it to be a “neutral show” with no welcoming station in spite of the fact that they are the only game in town.

#1's And Recurrents

As Kenny Chesney's monster single remains camped at the top of the charts for another week. Keith Urban and the Capitol Records/Nashville promo team will have to settle for a #2 peak.

One label exec last week pointed out that the Urban will probably end the week with somewhere around 35,000,000 audience and that would be enough for #1 on about 95% of the charts during the year, but not when you're parked behind 'a Sherman Tank of a song like "Somewhere With You".'

Luke Bryan appears to be lined up next for a two-week run at #1 and should he get it, it would be Luke's third consecutive chart topper.

Meanwhile, I just happened to be a part of a conversation between WAXX/Eau Claire MD/morning cohost Alex Edwards and CJJR/Vancouver Assistant PD and A&O associate Mark Patric on how meaningless that all is to radio, since all of those songs are already certain to live for many, many weeks more in recurrent categories.

Edwards pointed out that as his station celebrates another #1 in ARB as the Fall 2010 ratings came out - the #1 we all care about - he is considering moving Lady Antebellum, Eric Church and perhaps also Luke Bryan, in spite of the impending label run for number one, to recurrent given his local research on them.

All are extremely strong songs for the station, but he wonders aloud but what he needs be looking at in order to decide which to move at least temporarily from Power & Regular Recurrent?

• Final Call out?
• Total Pos?
• Spins?
• Weeks?

Patric and I agreed that simply looking at "weeks on" in a competitive situation can be a simplistic solution, since you might move out a stronger tune and leave a weaker one in.

Here's what we all agreed were three things that usually serve to be the best compromise in what has to be quite often a very subjective judgment call.

1. Highest spins in the category...or total library spins.
2. Lowest testing score in category (Patric says he gives each song moving to recurrent a seven week total favorite average score from it's last seven tests before it moves to recurrent)
3. Duplicate artists. If power recurrent or regular recurrent has more than two songs from one artist I'll USUALLY always move out that duplicate artist. When you have one artist with more than one song in recurrent it affects scheduling.

That's how I do it. And, even better, Alex and Mark agree.

What do you do? Would you ever move a recurrent back up to power current?

Hit "comment" below and join the discussion!

Is "The Dow Jones Of Pop" Music UP? Or, DOWN?

Chris Molanphy pens a great read that everyone who picks songs for radio airplay really needs to ponder.

"Like the Dow Jones Industrial Average — which signifies the health of the U.S. economy for millions of people who understand little about what the Dow means or how it works — the Hot 100 has been around long enough to become both a fixture and a shorthand for the current state of U.S. popular music."

I agree with him that "airplay-heavy charts are deadly. That’s the situation we had in the early 2000s, when iTunes hadn’t been invented yet and the labels had killed off the retail single."

Sadly, he needs to look deeper than his hypothesis of so-called "tyranny" that radio is "The Chief Executive" which undermines a good chart.

Too often it's promotional tactics manipulating radio in pursuit of album sales due to their higher profitability to the label which drives the chart and thus lacks "... checks and balances: the Congress that is the consumer.. (You also need a supply of good songs, obviously, but there’s not much a chart can do about that.)"

Stations (and labels) which ignore their own listener-driven research should not be surprised when the audience complains about too much repetition (aka too many songs I don't like) and looks to downloads for songs they simply like better than the chart hits being spun ad nauseam by radio in pursuit of #1 on the traditional trade magazine rankings.

Old habits are hard to break, but it's time we all rethink what we're doing and why.

How Long Should We Give 'Em?

Country Aircheck's chart doesn't list the number of weeks songs have been on their airplay ranker, but Billboard does, and I suspect that number may be very instructive.

Luke Bryan's "Do I" took 37 weeks to peak at #5 right after the New Year and remained in the top ten, trending from #5 to #7 last week, it's 38th chart week.

Country Aircheck no longer counts it as a current and instead makes it their second-ranking "Top Recurrent."

How many weeks does it take for a song to get to the point that it's no longer "current?"

Aside from Bryan, there are only three additional songs that have been charting for close to 30 weeks, Gary Allan/Today (alive for 29 weeks last week), Sarah Buxton/Outside My Window and Jason Michael Carroll/Hurry Home (28).

The oldest current ranking between #31 and 40 has been on the chart for 21 weeks (Lee Brice/Love Like Crazy) still had a bullet last week and between #41 and #50, 23 weeks (Mallory Hope/Love Lives On) had no bullet.

Is it that when your NAME is "Hope" you don't need a bullet to keep a few stations spinning your music for coming up on six months?

The Undeniable Reba

She sent her fans an email Saturday giving them credit for her record-breaking three weeks in a row at #1 on the spin charts (and, today, it looks like she could possibly even get a 4th, given the fact that most countdown shows start by playing last week's #1 song again, helping her maintain a 200 total weekly spin advantage over the other contenders for the top spot on Monday morning's national "advances" on next week's rankers).

Jason Aldean has the fastest-growing top five song, judged by increased spins in the last seven days, but it still appears that Dierks Bentley and Tim McGraw will be #2 and #3, giving #4 (as of this morning) Aldean next week's charts to be their battleground for #1.

As always, there are many moving parts like that to the timing of any success, but it's still very classy to share the achievement with her local and longtime street team members publicly instead of her very aggressive promotion people, (who no doubt will also get rewarded for their achievements, but more privately).

We could all learn a lot about humility, customer service, personal reinvention to stay relevant, relationships, branding, quality and relatability of product as well as very well-executed competitive marketing - driven by a desire to do what it takes to stay on top - from this very savvy superstar.

Spins And Spin

Spanish Broadcasting System sent out a press release last week announcing that it is finalizing plans to roll out a network-style, legal pay-for-play program in overnight hours at its 21 radio stations.

Chief revenue officer Frank Flores says the Musical Infomercial program is intended to monetize fringe dayparts and level the playing field for independent artists.

The bundled airplay has been approved by the company’s legal department, including one package of roughly 48 plays a week per station. Each song will be billboarded with an announcement that it is ”brought to you by” the sponsoring entity from 11 pm-6 am and Saturday-Sunday from 11 pm-10 am.

"Ideally this could serve as a launching pad for new artists.” Flores says that SBS hopes to gain more buy-in from indie labels and artists.

Decoded: 48 plays a week on enough stations means that it could be possible to "buy" a top ten chart hit, which actually could receive no airplay at all at times when the sun is shining and the majority of listeners could hear it. This will be a launching pad for new artists and indie labels whose bank accounts are larger than their talent.

The irony: this comes at the same time the music industry is pushing for radio stations to pay labels and artists a performance royalty for airing their music.

Decoded: we'll pay you lots of money to play the songs and artists whose quality won't justify airplay without the paid spins. If you want to play songs and artists your listeners like and enjoy, radio needs to pay us for that.

Premiere’s “After Midnight” is also after record label dollars. Blair Garner’s new web video feature “Fresh Catch” gives new and emerging artists a chance to promote their music.

Garner sees it more about helping break new artists. “This new web feature gives the public a chance to check out the best new talent, learn more about them and even buy their music online.”

Decoded: ... if they have the money to pay for it. The FCC has no pay-for-play rules online, just on air. I do have to say that since this approach won't distort airplay charts, it's more acceptable to me than paid "group" spins. If Blair's listeners like the new artist music online and the songs start to test well enough for broadcast airplay, that could prove to be a win for everyone.

ARB CEO Michael Skarzynski: “Over the past nine months, Arbitron has made significant advancements to improve sample quality,”

Decoded: Total installed persons in New York in September are at their lowest levels all year, down by over 300 meters since last December. Arbitron is having long-term difficulty with 35-44 year-olds. In another PPM market, for example, I just printed out a ranker on 35-44 and 45-54 women and out came five or more pages of stations with zeros in their audience estimates! What are buyers supposed to do with that information, just not buy any radio during the end-of-summer weeks and the Labor Day holiday?

H.R. 1147 (The Local Radio Community Act) directs the FCC to “ensure that licenses are available to both FM translator stations and Low Power FM stations. And that such decisions are made on the needs of the local community.”

Decoded: interference is acceptable to lawmakers if it comes from schools, churches and other community-based organizations? Sounds like another Docket 80-90.

Data

18 = the average number of weeks the top ten chart songs has been played on country radio this week.
16.8 = the average number of weeks the number 11 through 20 songs has been played this week.
17.3 = the average number of weeks the number 21 through 30 charting songs has been played this week.
9.5 = the average number of weeks the number 31 through 40 songs on the chart has been played this week.

How many more weeks should radio keep playing songs ranking between 21 and 30 before recognizing that they won't go any higher on the national charts, making room for faster-growing songs?

Numbers

1 = The number of female solos (Carrie Underwood/Last Name) in this week's Billboard/R&R Country Top 10 singles

2 = The number of female solos (Miranda Lambert/Gunpowder & Lead) in the Top 15.

If you add Lady Antebellum/Love Don't Live Here and Josh Turner w/Trisha Yearwood/Another Try, that makes four of the top 15 (27%) songs this week which have female voices on them.

6 = 30% of the top 20 are by female voices, when you add Sugarland/All I Want To Do and Reba McEntire w/Kenny Chesney/Every Other Weekend.

7 = The number of female voices in the top 25 (28%), as Taylor Swift/Should've Said No moves up this week.

8 = The number of songs by female voices in the 15 chart number slots between #26 and #40 (53%).

4 out of 5 = 80% of the songs which rank between #36 and #40 are by female voices.

i.e.: If you tune into the first hour of any of the weekly countdown shows, you're going to hear a lot of female voices in a row. The closer you get to #1 on the spin charts, the more male voices, it seems.

Judging from these stats, of the 11 songs ranking between #16 and 40 which include female artists, most likely only four of them will make it to the Top 15 in the coming weeks.

If you have any theories, please post them below.

Mine: you can get into medium or light rotation with a song and a personna which we programmers like, but you can't get into the Top 15 without also demonstrating strong and balanced listener appeal in research as well. And, with our listeners - even when you make the sample 60/40 female/male - the majority of women seem to have a harder time than men do.

But, not always: the very best year for females of the last decade was 2005, when 26% of the highest-testing songs of the year were by women artists in A&O's annual year-end music research rewind. Since then, the percentage by women in the best of the best has fallen to 21% (2006) and 20% (2007).

VOA: Country Music 2007 Rewind

Mary Morningstar created this year's annual look back by Voice Of America at the country format in the year just past.  (click to read her written recap or to listen to the podcast)

Can There Possibly Be 48 of 60 Songs Worthy Of Bullets?

This is a campaign that Regent VP/Programming Bob Moody has been on for many years: make the chart bullet more meaningful.

Now it looks like Phil Sweetland has joined the fray in his latest missive:

This week's Billboard Hot Country Songs features 60 tunes; of those 60 singles, by our count 48 have a bullet indicating increased airplay. But how do we know if the difference is 1 additional spin at Country Radio or 1,000? We don't. The bullet designation thus becomes essentially useless. We propose two or three bullets - maybe one round, one square, and one diamond-shaped - indicating different levels of spincrease. The current system is badly out of date.

WHO CARES?

I am about to make it all simple for you by giving you "Albright's guide to reading the charts."

In 25 words or less: bullets indicate the songs which labels are still spending promotional money to prop up/push forward. When the bullet goes away, that means it's no longer a priority to the label, the publisher or the artist so the $$ spiggot gets turned off.

If you want to know which songs Nashville's marketing machine wants you to play, look at the charts. If you want to know which ones your listeners want you to play, ask 'em, systematically and regularly.

R&R Updates Its Reporting/Monitored Panels

And, it gets 'curiouser and curiouser:'

"Ratings leaders in each local market will not be eligible to report if they aren’t compliant with the R&R minimum current-music-usage policy. In cases where a lower-rated station in this market-size frame is the lone reporter in the market and a higher-rated format competitor returns to compliance with the minimum current-music policy during a given quarter, the higher-rated station will take the place of the lower-rated reporter at the end of that particular calendar quarter. In such cases, the lower rated competitor is typically eligible to move to the R&R Country Indicator panel."

-- Wade Jessen/Director of Charts & Operations, Nashville, 615-321-4291

I remember when we looked at the trade charts as an indication of what the most successful stations were playing. Now that it's more important that a station play 60% currents than if it's winning in the ratings, I'm not sure what the charts are supposed to be used for.

Note to GM's: In case there's any doubt where my priorities are, if your PD or MD is more concerned about retaining your reporting status than being the higher-rated station, I'd say it's time for a new PD or MD.