The Knowledge Base
The Knowledge Base
Pro Tip: Duplicate songs? Yes? No?
Pro Tip: Duplicate songs? Yes? No?
While in the middle of a project with a client, reviewing and cleaning up their database, there were a lot of duplicate songs for various reasons. What I mean is the same song, same title, same artist, and same automation number are visible in multiple categories and each one of those songs has a different song history.
Why Good Music Rotations are Critical to Ratings Success
Why Good Music Rotations are Critical to Ratings Success
In radio, solid music programming is vital to maintain or to grow your ratings. Many stations research their music to ensure their target audience is always hearing the best possible song. There are also stations that don’t have enough in the budget for research and typically they’ll check with Mediabase to compare what songs they’re playing to what some of the top stations around the country are playing. Realistically – a great music list is needed, but it’s critical that the songs are scheduled to optimize the impression of having an abundant, interesting library.
I do not want to pick on any “one” streaming service but if I ask my smart speaker to play a specific type of music - in many cases, the songs that play are in the same order every single time! Many times, I’ll ask for something like “90’s dance music” and the same song will play first-in-line each time I ask for that type of music. It is a great disappointment to me to think that someone up there in the algorithm world – thinks this is a good thing.
If a radio station did play the same song at the same time every day – the perception to the listener is “why do they always play the same song?” The listener quickly loses interest in the music and moves on to another station or checks out what is available on Pandora or some other music service.
Whether you have a stream or you’re in terrestrial radio… good music rotations are as important as the awesome library you have for your format.
Rotations: Your smallest categories which are typically “new hot currents” should take priority over all the other music categories you have and schedule 1st in line in your scheduling order. Drilling down, if you have 5 songs in the category (which is common) and you play 1 from this category every single hour – without exception… you would have a 5-hour rest between each song in that category if your clocks are set up consistently. If you hear the song at 7am today – tomorrow it will play at 8am and the next day at 9am so on and so forth, the listener wouldn't hear the same song in the same hour for 6 days!
Why is this important? People are creatures of habit. Most go to bed approximately the same time each night and wake up at the same time, drive to work, school and church each day or week. A book could be written about this subject. You may not play currents or new music at all – which is fine, but the same theory applies. Your listeners tune in during specific chunks of time. Make sure you’re rules and rotations are respecting that.
If you would like to optimize your library or learn how create clocks and format rules that will achieve great rotation results, contact us.
Increasing Time Spent Listening
Increasing Time Spent Listening
In my years in radio and then with Musicmaster as a Music Scheduling and Programming expert – I had many experiences with clients, from discussions about programming goals, target audience, format concept, to format build and then launch.
At the end of a project, when the clients new format sounds better than they expected, I feel a great sense of gratitude for the collaboration and the client’s success. A great sounding radio station or stream does not just happen. All the great music in the world, played back-to-back – will not sound right if it is not scheduled properly.
Often, especially with a new client, I will discuss the importance of what I term as “Station Dynamics and Flow”. My analogy is simple: Like sitting at the seashore and listening to the waves ebb and flow, the music should also ebb and flow. I want to see dynamic texture everywhere in my music logs!
The main reasoning behind my philosophy: Dynamics in music is critical to a song’s success or failure. It is a rare instance you will hear a song that does not have dynamic change near the bridge or chorus. If songs sounded the same all the way through – they would be like a monotonous public speaker… where you see the lips moving, but your mind goes elsewhere.
If songs require dynamics to be successful, wouldn’t you think an overall station dynamic would benefit your format? If you are listening to your station and it wears you out… you might have a dynamics issue. If you are listening to your station and you get bored, you might have a dynamics issue. If you are listening and it is interesting and easy to listen to, you are probably paying attention to dynamics.
The easiest way to get control of your library is to code your music. At minimum, utilize a tempo field, mood, gender and genre or “sound” field, indicating what type of song it is. Remember, “a song without a code is a like a free radical” …it cannot be controlled. So, get some control! If you have “normal sounding songs” code them with a Normal sound code and so you can break up the monotony of the normal sound to spice things up. Variety is the spice of life! Once each song is coded, you should be able to do a coding analysis with your scheduling software to see what is under the hood.
A wise mentor of mine always said “give me the full essence of your format every quarter hour. That has ALWAYS resulted in much higher Time Spent Listening.
If you have any questions or would like to discuss my philosophy or how to build a dynamically pleasing format – contact me: marianne@burkettmediaservices.com
