How Much Influence Should You Tube Play In Music Decisions?

Jay Bedford, Program Director|Music Director|Morning Host at 1035 The Eagle/Sydney shared this fascinating factoid:

"So here are our five Power Currents for this week ... 5 of them ... and the corresponding number of views on YouTube ... plus one more song!

3.9 million views ... Blake Shelton ... Mine Would Be You
3.5 million views ... Chris Young ... Aw Naw
2.9 million views ... Tim McGraw ... Southern Girl
2.4 million views ... Robby Johnson ... South of Me1.2 million views ... Miranda Lambert ... All Kinds Of Kinds
1.1 million views ... Zac Brown Band ... Sweet Annie"

He asks:  "Should these figures have an influence? Those are amazing stats for an unknown guy from Quebec that is not play listed on any major radio stations. (Song is not Canadian content even though the artist is Canadian.)"

My reaction, after being intrigued, impressed and watching the video, is that streaming and downloads are a lot like sales figures.

I want to know more before deciding it's right for my radio station.  It would be interesting to see the location of the hits and views/listens to see how many are from your local area compared to the others.

Callout and online testing are still my major criteria for this reason, even over mScore tracking.

You know they are your heavy users, and even their age and gender cell, so you can target what we choose to play, but goodness knows this is certainly a great sign, among the many emerging stats that radio needs to stay aware of as listeners find new ways to discover new favorites.

A Face For Radio

Not surprisingly nearly every morning show I run into has a strong belief that their numbers would be even better if only the radio station put them in TV commercials.

Not necessarily so.

I know of one major market country morning show whose very successful ratings uptrend was reversed when perceptual research seemed indicate that the only thing holding them back was cume and endorsed TV advertising as a means to solve the problem.

The folks who listened to them loved them when given their names, but the majority of local radio users had no idea who they were.

In a few weeks, we were all at Filmhouse in Nashville where they produced some very funny TV spots. 

Not long after, local television was saturated during the next survey period with these excellent, professionally-produced spots.

The survey comes out.  Ratings are down.

A year later and another perceptual study indicates that once folks as seen them, even the ones who had liked them before didn't anymore.  Now, everyone knows their names, but based on their looks folks don't like them!

Some folks are simply more successful when heard or met in person.

Video is an art onto itself.  If you can do it well, of course do it.

But, if you have any doubts about your appearance on camera under lights, get savvy help, great maakeup and objective direction. 

Video, indeed, is capable of killing the radio star ... unless it's used very effectively.