How do radio people commonly evaluate whether a song was a hit or stiff from its initial run? For example, if a song makes top 10 then starts getting low fallout numbers, is that song a hit or stiff? But songs like Chandelier by Sia hit number 11 in 2014, but still gets some airplay today. The song Hate Me by Blue October was number 17 on mainstream pop, but got airplay years later, which I know is due to callout scores.
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Differentiating a hit or stiff after its chart run?
- Thread starter tall_guy1
- Start date
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Research, research, research. Just as you surmise at the end. The "callout scores" (which is a pretty good description of the process today, since the "auditorium test" has become obsolete) are the same basis for recurrents as for gold.
(You weren't expecting a different answer, I hope?)
(You weren't expecting a different answer, I hope?)
Stations will often continue to play songs heavily as recurrents after their chart run. Some songs may even continue to get as many spins a full year after their peak as they did as a current.
But I'm often amazed at how quickly some songs drop off the face of the earth once their chart run is over. It's usually because either of awful research (that was the case with the latest Lainey Wilson song), or because the artist has another new song coming up behind it that's even stronger (as is the case now with Post Malone).
The other thing that happens with songs is a current event makes a song that was previously a stiff into a newfound hit simply because the audience is reminded of it and they change their view of it. One example is the Drew Baldridge song "She's Somebody's Daughter." He wrote that song in 2019, didn't release it then because there was another song with the same title. Then he released it but it didn't go anywhere. It sat on the shelf for a couple years. He got married and posted a video of his wife dancing to the song with her father on TikTok. The video somehow received millions of views. That was enough to make him decide to release the song, and it went to #1.
Another thing I'll see in the classic formats is a song will get revived because it's used in a TV commercial. That's the case now with the old Fleetwood Mac song Everywhere. Or perhaps an old song is used in a reality TV show.
But yes, the simple answer is research, and there are many ways to do research to determine the response of the audience to a song. The thing you don't do is play a song just because it was once a #1 or because it won a Grammy. Neither have any impact on the audience.
But I'm often amazed at how quickly some songs drop off the face of the earth once their chart run is over. It's usually because either of awful research (that was the case with the latest Lainey Wilson song), or because the artist has another new song coming up behind it that's even stronger (as is the case now with Post Malone).
The other thing that happens with songs is a current event makes a song that was previously a stiff into a newfound hit simply because the audience is reminded of it and they change their view of it. One example is the Drew Baldridge song "She's Somebody's Daughter." He wrote that song in 2019, didn't release it then because there was another song with the same title. Then he released it but it didn't go anywhere. It sat on the shelf for a couple years. He got married and posted a video of his wife dancing to the song with her father on TikTok. The video somehow received millions of views. That was enough to make him decide to release the song, and it went to #1.
Another thing I'll see in the classic formats is a song will get revived because it's used in a TV commercial. That's the case now with the old Fleetwood Mac song Everywhere. Or perhaps an old song is used in a reality TV show.
But yes, the simple answer is research, and there are many ways to do research to determine the response of the audience to a song. The thing you don't do is play a song just because it was once a #1 or because it won a Grammy. Neither have any impact on the audience.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Or in the movies: "I Melt With You" by Modern English comes to mind as an example; it peaked at #76 in April 1983, then its y=use in the movie Valley Girl later that year brought it back as a recurrent, and it has tested well ever since.
I always like to point out that "We Are The World" was #1 for a full month, but do you hear it on the radio today?
The AMT (Auditorium Music Test) is now the OMT, the Online Music Test. Same thing, but done from one's home using a smartphone or tablet. You listen, score and the next hook plays. Recruiting is the same, but more often the incentive is some kind of cash card or gift certificate.
And a lot of broadcasters use one test for multiple or many markets. Some will do multiple tests, grouping stations in similar markets for each. And some research companies offer a national test option which they can buy.
Oh, maybe they visit record stores and ask which singles are selling...
I wasn't. But, are there discrepancies between songs which qualify as hits or stiff, even if they have similar chart positions? There are songs like Chandelier I don't hear referred to as a stiff, but other songs outside the top 10 which are referred to as stiffs.
Stations don't use "chart positions". Most CHR and similar formats only have two or three current music "chart positions": power, hot and the rest.
You might have 3 to 5 powers, 5 to 7 hot and around 10 in the third category in this kind of organization, but each station may be a little different.
So there is no difference between song #6 and song #12. They all have the hot rotation.
A stiff is a song that fails research and is no longer played. As in "it stiffed out".
Another was Build Me Up Buttercup by the Foundations that became a bigger hit when it was used in the credits for There's Something About Mary.
I got someone who responded to me in one thread that said anything not in the top 10 is a stiff. If the callouts are bad when a song approaches the top 10, Does that make a song a stiff if it was able to go pretty far?
When you are programming hits, often your mission is to avoid mid-charters, songs that take off and then stall. As too many of those will make your station sound weak and, non hit sounding...
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Do these "someones" have any programming experience? It doesn't sound like it to me.
Songs falter in the callouts all the time as they move upward. This was the case even in the day when we relied on the Hot 100. A song would show upward motion for weeks, then stall and drop before even getting close to the upper stratosphere.
That's a simplification but essentially correct. Whether using Mediabase, callouts, or other research on currents, you need to see that upward movement in terms of whether or not to add a song, but you also need to move quickly to drop a song when it stalls.
Of course, the methodology is different for gold, where I've been focused for the past 30 years or so, but for CHRs and Hot ACs in particular you do need to watch song movement carefully to avoid the continued playing of songs where rigor mortis is starting to set in.
It depends on how fast the song moves. In the case of the Lainey song I mentioned, the song moved faster than the research. Stations jumped on it early because of the strength of the artist, and the research came in just as it broke Top 10.
But once again, just because a song reached Top 10 means nothing for Gold airplay. Those lists are pretty tight.
Honestly, it was probably me. I'm sure somewhere in here, referencing the pre-research past, I posted the broad notion that, while it was hard to dispute the hit status of a top ten record, there are plenty of records from #11 on down (Royal Scots Dragoon Guards' "Amazing Grace", anyone?) that are open to debate.
And then, there are some absolute hits that peaked at #11, too:
11 Hot 100 No. 11s For ’11
<p>Chart Beat wraps ringing in the new year by celebrating evergreen hits, despite their peaks one spot shy of the Billboard Hot 100 top 10.</p>
www.billboard.com
But as has been said here many times---wisdom that should override that notion---chart positions are irrelevant. What matters is whether the audience wants to hear a record now. And if they do, then it could have missed the chart entirely.
What A Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong remained a stiff for a couple decades before it was played on Good Morning Vietnam.
Yes, but I am referring to a song "was" a hit or stiff.
For the first several weeks of airplay, we don't know if a song is really going to be a hit. We added it because it sounded like a hit. It got extra points if it was by a big artist. But we just don't know.
We used to say that it took 100 plays to be able to research a song and find out if it was going to make it. Today, with so many audio sources to hear new music, that is just a vague guideline.
In any case, if we see a song score as neither positive or negative, we may leave it another week or two. If it is highly negative, it is gone. That is a stiff.
Sometimes a huge song, particularly ones that are novelties or have lyrics that wear thin, will be very positive and, suddenly, stiff out. They go from "great" to "dreadful" in one week at times. We kill them.
And different songs will decline in appeal as people get tired of them. Some are faster than others. And some continue to be positive, but we get scores that are "tired of but still like" and we rest the song or slow it way down.
Every PD has their own style and system. There are no rules.
But a "stiff" is a song that most listeners do not want to hear or no longer want to hear or never wanted to hear.
A song can stiff out after a long time of being positive. "Macarena syndrome".
And that is why testing asks "how much do you want to hear that song today?"
And that is because it is useless to research a song before it has been on the station in at least a 40 play a week rotation for between two and three full weeks.
Phil Collins was an example. For years his songs with Genesis and his solo records were everywhere on Radio. Somewhere along the way, burnout set in and some made him a pariah. It wasn't his fault...
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