"ARM" Yourself With A Windsock

(he looks so innocent!) Would you play an untested song by this man?

Some country programmers who waited too long to add Jaron and The Long Road to Love's I Pray For You due to their policy of playing no untested music, may have missed the boat on the highly positive song because by the time they got test results back, the tune had already started to build very high negatives.

As a result, many are now placing such potentially high demand titles in callout research as soon as they begin playing them. The question is: can you trust scores on titles where fewer than 85% of the sample is familiar with a song? The answer, of course, is NO.

However, there is a very simple formula that I learned three decades ago from researcher Bob Lowry of Phoenix that can highlight and often very reliably predict potential success of unfamiliar music. Lowry, who used it when he was with Frank Magid & Associates, termed it "Acceptance Ratio Margin."

Sum all positive scores (favorite, like a lot, like some). Add all negative scores (burn, dislike, etc). Disregard neutral and unfamiliar responses. Divide the total positives by the total negatives.

This yields a ratio you can use to estimate what the odds are that once the unfamiliars start to become familiar with a title whether they'll like or NOT. Track this ratio over time, each week you test a song. The rate of conversion from unfamiliar/neutral to positive or negative can also be predictive of which direction a new song is going -- UP to heavy rotations or OFF the playlist completely.

This ratio can be especially helpful in evaluating national research, such as Callout America and Rate The Music scores printed in national trades.

This data isn't designed to substitute for local research and local market gut knowledge. But, it can be an excellent indication of which songs are working for average country fans across the continent and which aren't.

"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!