Are there songs that specifically bring back memories of DXing?

[vacuum tube]

The 45 single version of Kodachrome was edited the album cut was not.. At least that's what the stations got from the record company(Columbia).

 

[davideduardo]

I can't believe lack of variety is what the public seems to want.

What is at issue is whether a song is still a hit today, irrespective of how well it did originally. The songs that do not get played anymore are ones that a consensus of listeners do not give high scores to when stations test their music.

 

[gar hi]

I understand how they test for music as you mention, however that's done by only a select group of people used for those tests to determine what the entire country will hear.

These oldies/classic rock FM stations are now corporate owned and most no longer have that completely local flavor they had in the 60's and 70's.

I call them cookie cutter stations because no matter what city they are in, they all sound the same and play the same limited rotation of songs.

Sure, there are some exceptions in some markets and listeners there are lucky to have them but most of us are stuck with the same songs over and over again and that's why internet radio is so popular.

They actually play this taboo thing called 'variety' and people love it.

 

[davideduardo]

I understand how they test for music as you mention, however that's done by only a select group of people used for those tests to determine what the entire country will hear.

Music testing is done locally by individual stations. The people they recruit to participate are a focused cross section of each station's core audience.

Here are some pictures and a description of a local music test being done in Phoenix, AZ (today some stations do a mixture of on-site and online testing).

These oldies/classic rock FM stations are now corporate owned and most no longer have that completely local flavor they had in the 60's and 70's.

There were no oldies and classic rock stations in most of the 60's. The first oldies stations tried around 1968, and did not last (WEEL, WMOD, etc), with even the legendary KRTH (1972 start) changing to AC after a few years. Classic rock did not become a format until AOR morphed into it sometime in the mid to late 90's.

And those AOR stations from the 70's and 80's were local in terms of talent, but most were guided in music by Abrams, Pollack or Jacobs.

I call them cookie cutter stations because no matter what city they are in, they all sound the same and play the same limited rotation of songs.

We've been playing only the hits going back to the creation of Top 40 in 1952. Playlist size is determined by how many consensus "good" songs there are based on testing lots and lots of songs and weeding out the duds and stiffs. The weeding out is done by the listeners, not the programmers.

Sure, there are some exceptions in some markets and listeners there are lucky to have them but most of us are stuck with the same songs over and over again and that's why internet radio is so popular.

The Internet has reduced regionalization of taste to a large extent. The songs that are hits are generally the same from coast to coast. That trend started when TV gave broad acceptance to contemporary music, and then accelerated by MTV, VH1, CMT and the rest.

They actually play this taboo thing called 'variety' and people love it.

Variety is a perception. When you talk to listeners you find that Top 40 stations with perhaps 60 to 70 songs in regular rotation have the highest perception of variety. When stations go beyond the playing of strong consensus songs, the perception of variety goes down dramatically.

 

[dlf1]

In June of 1990, I caught KLOL from Houston on an E Skip up in Ohio: the five songs I heard were;

1) Just the Same Way by Journey
2) Baby It's Tonight - Jude Cole
3) Good Times Roll - The Cars
4) Sometimes She Cries - Warrant
5) Doubleback - ZZ Top

Today only Good Times Roll receives significant airplay on Classic Rock radio.

I have heard Just the Same Way on stations with wider playlists.

 

[gar hi]

Top 40 stations that play current music playing the same songs over and over is not a good comparison to why oldies stations do it.

But oldies and classic rock stations cover many past decades which is all the more reason why they should not only play the same limited ones over and over again.

It's hard to imagine that every oldies station does it's own individual survey to see what people like because, as I said, you hear the same exact worn out songs on all the corporate owned oldies stations wherever you are in the country.

If that's just a coincidence everyone likes the exact limited list of songs, I'd like to have those odds when I play the lottery.

And no, people don't like that. All you have to do is Google "why do oldies stations play the same songs over and over" and there's a virtually endless list of sites discussing how people don't like that and wonder why it is.

This pretty much says that the decision of what gets played on local stations is of a national origin...

If you’ve ever tuned into terrestrial radio in your car, at home or at the office, then you’re well aware that commercial radio stations tend to play the same songs in rotation over and over again. Is it because these songs are so hot that people are just demanding stations play them? Hardly. The sad truth of the matter is that only six companies control 90% of the media: GE, Newscorp, Disney, Viacom, and Time Warner (compared to 1983 when roughly 50 companies owned the media).

Moderator Note: In editing my response, I accidentally edited out your link. Please replace it so everyone can see what you are referring to. My bad, and my apology. DE.

 

[davideduardo]

Top 40 stations that play current music playing the same songs over and over is not a good comparison to why oldies stations do it.

It's a perfect comparison. Top 40 stations play only the current hits over and over, and at any given time there are likely only about 20 real current hits plus another 30-50 recurrents that are still fresh enough.

Were there more currents that people liked, we'd have "Top 80" or "Top 120" or somesuch.

But oldies and classic rock stations cover many past decades which is all the more reason why they should not only play the same limited ones over and over again

Such stations play, with only special exceptions, all the songs that conform to the format that a consensus of listeners actually want to hear. Stations play all the songs that fit the format and which listener feedback tells them to be broadly acceptable. No station limits the list to just some of the playable songs... the listeners impose the limits.

It's hard to imagine that every oldies station does it's own individual survey to see what people like because, as I said, you hear the same exact worn out songs on all the corporate owned oldies stations wherever you are in the country.

You hear most of the same songs everywhere because there is a fairly consistent national consensus on any kind or genre of music, and over time regional differences are eliminated due to folks moving about.

But if you look at different classic hits stations (there are very few oldies stations left in major markets), you see differences in titles and frequency of play on each. But the biggest songs tend to be the same everywhere.

If that's just a coincidence everyone likes the exact limited list of songs, I'd like to have those odds when I play the lottery.

No, it's within a range. For each playable song, the individual reactions may range from moderate liking "it's OK" scores to absolute love "it's one of my very favorites". Sort of like the kid with a C- and the one with the A+ average both getting a diploma. But the rest don't graduate. Same with songs.

While the current economy and the state of radio have limited research budgets, I know of stations in really small markets like Reno that test twice a year in AC and Country formats, even though that costs nearly $30 k a pop.

And no, people don't like that. All you have to do is Google "why do oldies stations play the same songs over and over" and there's a virtually endless list of sites discussing how people don't like that and wonder why it is.

There will always be folks who think if a song charted 40 years ago, it should be played today.

But those complainers are few compared to the audience of the classic hits stations that are well programmed. KRTH in LA, with under 400 songs on the list, has 3,000,000 weekly listeners, week after week. How many complainers are there across the Internet?

Here is an example: I did a classic rock station in a market a bit bigger than LA a few years back. We had 450 titles. We went to #1 in a month that market which has over 200 metro area stations. A competitor saw our 22 share and "noticed" how few songs we played; they came at us with over a thousand songs and promoted variety. A year later, and never having gotten over a 1.8 share, they found another new format. Listeners in our research said, "for every song I like, they play lots that I hate". They were passing the "kids" with the F grades and incompletes.

This pretty much says that the decision of what gets played on local stations is of a national origin...

If you’ve ever tuned into terrestrial radio in your car, at home or at the office, then you’re well aware that commercial radio stations tend to play the same songs in rotation over and over again. Is it because these songs are so hot that people are just demanding stations play them? Hardly. The sad truth of the matter is that only six companies control 90% of the media: GE, Newscorp, Disney, Viacom, and Time Warner (compared to 1983 when roughly 50 companies owned the media).

Actually, that is a total lie and irrelevant to radio as GE, Newscorp, Viacom and Time Warner own no radio and Disney only owns a couple of ESPN radio stations and one Radio Disney station. That quote is very, very misleading and the facts are not a reflection of radio and music.

The big radio players do lots of research, market by market, for their larger market stations. And in the small markets, they use the research from comparable and often nearby larger markets to create custom playlists for each station.

 

[gar hi]

Here's the link that was edited out of my last post, the one you claim is not true.

Why Radio Plays Same 20 Songs: The Sad Truth Of Media

If you’ve ever tuned into terrestrial radio in your car, at home or at the office, then you’re well aware that commercial radio stations tend to play the same songs in rotation over and over again. Is it because these songs are so hot that people are just demanding stations play them? Hardly. The sad truth of the matter is that only six companies control 90% of the media: GE, Newscorp, Disney, Viacom, and Time Warner (compared to 1983 when roughly 50 companies owned the media).

Consolidation of media has lead to far less diversity in programming and ownership, with far fewer voices being heard.

http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2012/05/the-sad-truth-of-media-consolidation-infographic.html

The big radio players do lots of research, market by market, for their larger market stations. And in the small markets, they use the research from comparable and often nearby larger markets to create custom playlists for each station.

Like I keep saying, that contradicts the fact that the same exact songs are overplayed on the corporate owned oldies and classic rock stations from coast to coast and Hawaii.

Here's a perfect example of what I'm talking about....

40 Songs Ruined by American Classic Rock Radio


http://flashbak.com/40-songs-ruined-by-american-classic-rock-radio-28179/


When there's a mutual national agreement on the same exact songs being played, it's really hard to figure out how individual markets picking their own playlists fits into the picture.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

 

[davideduardo]

Like I keep saying, that contradicts the fact that the same exact songs are overplayed on the corporate owned oldies and classic rock stations from coast to coast and Hawaii.

If a song gets "overplayed" what happens is what in programming we call "burn" occurs. Listeners at music tests score it negatively, and radio stations either slow down its rotation if the burn is light or they stop playing it if it's totally toasty.

It does not matter if the station is owned by iHeart or Entercom or by a little local operator in the UP of Michigan or the High Desert of California. We try to play the songs our listeners will love the most and we throw out the stiffs.

Maybe, as programmers, we will be tempted once in our career to give depth to the playlist and create the great variety station everyone will want to hear for hours. We discover that we are either fired for horrible ratings or we lose, as owner/programmers, a lot of money. I've been through this, and most everyone I know who's a good programmer passed through that ring of fire and came out a better PD after the failure.

Todd Storz, just before his death, taught me to remember one thing: "Play the hits. And then play them again. And again." When I followed his advice, I won. When I though I knew more than the listener, I lost.

So if you keep hearing the song frequently then the P1 listeners to the format and the particular station still want to hear it often. A "P1" listener is the one who listens a lot and also listens to your station more than any other among the ones they use regularly. And what we know is that in a music test, listeners are asked to score songs based on "how much you'd like to hear the song on the radio today" so the context is about wanting to hear the song again... and again... and again.

Here's a perfect example of what I'm talking about....

40 Songs Ruined by American Classic Rock Radio

I've been in classic rock music tests, and an important function of the moderator and crew at a test is to observe the body language of the respondents. When they hear, for example, "Don't stop believing" or "Sweet Home Alabama" the energy in the room increases. When they hear the songs the blogger mentions as "should play" its a not-so-much moment. Some songs have shelf life, others do not.

Last year I heard Neil Young in concert... "Heart of Gold" got better response than most of his songs I think the blogger is imagining that radio might play. At the same concert, "Another brick in the wall" got much better response than any other song than Roger Waters did. You could tell which songs by The Who folks just adored, and knew you had to play the. Same with Sir Pauls's repertoire and that of the Stones, too.

My point is that the songs you hear the most on any format are the ones that the station's listeners have said they want to hear the most. Nobody in a corporate office is goosing the frequency of play as there is no endgame in doing that; the endgame in playing the songs listeners want to hear is greater audience size and that, in turn, means higher ad rates and bigger profits.

And it goes that way with any format. I was at a Garth Brooks concert a few weeks ago, and the biggest reactions were to "And the Thunder Rolls" and "The Dance". Go figure. You could measure the applause with a decibel meter and pretty much know which songs by an artist to rotate the most and which ones not so much... and you could observe which ones the artist does not do in concert; the artist knows which tunes get response and which don't. They don't sing the ones that have stiffed out any more. Just like radio does.

Radio Stations are not museums. We don't venerate songs that did not make it to the top. We laud those that exploded and sold millions of units and which our listeners could sing on the phone in the "Sing us a request" feature. We were under no pressure to play songs people did not want to hear, no matter how much the music critics and other-worldly bloggers who did not have to deliver audiences wanted us to.

When there's a mutual national agreement on the same exact songs being played, it's really hard to figure out how individual markets picking their own playlists fits into the picture.

In the USA, since the time that Ed Sullivan first presented Elvis to a mostly adult audience, there has been a national scope to music. This was furthered by American Bandstand, American Top 40, MTV and now YouTube and Pandora. The biggest hits are big hits in every radio market from Boston to Bakersfield. There may be slight regional differences due to influences such as market lifestyle, ethnic composition and such, but there is such a high percentage of listeners that were not born in the city they live in that this blending of experiences means that what people want to hear are those big songs that everyone knows and want to hear still.

Yet if you have a full subscription to BDS or MediaBase, you see that the rotations are different from station to station, and from market to market, the second and third tier of playable songs may have marked differences from station to station and market to market. The classic hits station in New York is nothing like the one in Philly, and neither is like the one in Cleveland. And none of the three is anything like LA's big classic hits station because each finds out, locally, what their listeners want to hear and how much.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

The problem is that you think there is collusion (illegal) and "national agreement" between competitors when the fact is that competitors spend big money to try to do a better job of playing what their listeners want than the other stations they compete with.

I've been doing music tests for the last thirty-some years. First I was the client, and later I conducted or moderated or managed well over 1000 tests myself. The reason I spent or caused to be spent so many millions of dollars was to find out what local listeners wanted to hear so that the stations paying for the tests could get the most listeners possible.

 

[Steve Green NEPA]

@ Vacuum Tube -- ha ! : I recall Dan Ingram once talking up that tune and giving it the title 'Kodacrap'.

I'd forgotten to list a peculiar station/song association. As I'd suggested, there were so many songs and so many stations.

WDRC 1360 Hartford (with their partial simulcast on 102.9) seemed to be the home office for nighttime songs.
You don't get more 'nighttime' than
Me and Mrs Jones
Take A Walk On The Wild Side
Mistake # 3
and the long version of In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed (played on the great Barry Grant's overnight show).

'DRC seemed to go out of its way to find and play those songs.

 

[cyberdad]

Unscientific, but perhaps to David's point. I used to deejay a few times a year for not for profit events. I never took money for it. I didn't want to take gigs away from people who were working as deejays for income. Pay me? Hah...just buy me a beer.

Anyway, I'd bring in several "milk crate-type" containers of oldies on vinyl. Along with a red metal box containing about 50-60 45s. Those of you of a certain vintage probbly have had or seen one just like it. I'd take requests, and what I found was that about 90% of them for what I had in the red box. Which of course, were all mega-hits that stood up through the years. It never varied....church group, charity fundraiser, whatever. That little red box I kept at my side was what covered me for most of the evening.

 

[CTListener]

Unscientific, but perhaps to David's point. I used to deejay a few times a year for not for profit events. I never took money for it. I didn't want to take gigs away from people who were working as deejays for income. Pay me? Hah...just buy me a beer.

Anyway, I'd bring in several "milk crate-type" containers of oldies on vinyl. Along with a red metal box containing about 50-60 45s. Those of you of a certain vintage probbly have had or seen one just like it. I'd take requests, and what I found was that about 90% of them for what I had in the red box. Which of course, were all mega-hits that stood up through the years. It never varied....church group, charity fundraiser, whatever. That little red box I kept at my side was what covered me for most of the evening.

Same with my favorite oldies station (now a classic rocker), WDRC-FM Hartford, which had a request show on Saturday nights for years. There might be a few oddball requests -- which got played, since the station let the jock pretty much play what he wanted -- but you could count on "Brown Eyed Girl," "Unchained Melody," "Satisfaction," "Sweet Caroline," "Oh, Pretty Woman" and "Old Time Rock and Roll" being asked for every single week. The chart geeks, the genre completists and the repetition-sensitive folks who consider exposure to a song more than twice a week as "burnout" ... they are a tiny minority, as ratings invariably show.

 

[davideduardo]

Unscientific, but perhaps to David's point. I used to deejay a few times a year for not for profit events. I never took money for it. I didn't want to take gigs away from people who were working as deejays for income. Pay me? Hah...just buy me a beer.

Anyway, I'd bring in several "milk crate-type" containers of oldies on vinyl. Along with a red metal box containing about 50-60 45s. Those of you of a certain vintage probbly have had or seen one just like it. I'd take requests, and what I found was that about 90% of them for what I had in the red box. Which of course, were all mega-hits that stood up through the years. It never varied....church group, charity fundraiser, whatever. That little red box I kept at my side was what covered me for most of the evening.

This goes to the very creation of the Top 40 format at KOWH in Omaha in 1952. The short version is that the owner and the PD would go in the morning and afternoon to a diner for a coffee break. The noticed that the waitress would spend a bit of every tip on the juke box. But at any given time, she would play the same song each time, over and over. For days. Then she'd move on to another. They got the idea of playing only the hottest songs, over and over, all day. They were quickly number one, even though the station was a daytimer.

 

[gar hi]

Same with my favorite oldies station (now a classic rocker), WDRC-FM Hartford, which had a request show on Saturday nights for years. There might be a few oddball requests -- which got played, since the station let the jock pretty much play what he wanted -- but you could count on "Brown Eyed Girl," "Unchained Melody," "Satisfaction," "Sweet Caroline," "Oh, Pretty Woman" and "Old Time Rock and Roll" being asked for every single week. The chart geeks, the genre completists and the repetition-sensitive folks who consider exposure to a song more than twice a week as "burnout" ... they are a tiny minority, as ratings invariably show.

The reason people request those songs you mention is because that's all they hear and that only supports my point even more.

And those songs are played a lot more than twice a week.

'Brown Eyed Girl' has to be the most overplayed oldie of all time.

Every oldies station I've ever heard thinks we like hearing that song as much as possible.

Whenever I listen to these all request shows and hear people call in wanting to hear the same old worn out songs, I think "My God! You get to hear those songs all the time all week! Don't you want to hear something you haven't heard in a long time?"

I guess I'm crazy wanting variety and liking that great feeling of hearing songs I haven't heard in years bring back nice memories.

Shame on me.

 

[CTListener]

The reason people request those songs you mention is because that's all they hear and that only supports my point even more.

And those songs are played a lot more than twice a week.

'Brown Eyed Girl' has to be the most overplayed oldie of all time.

Every oldies station I've ever heard thinks we like hearing that song as much as possible.

Whenever I listen to these all request shows and hear people call in wanting to hear the same old worn out songs, I think "My God! You get to hear those songs all the time all week! Don't you want to hear something you haven't heard in a long time?"

I guess I'm crazy wanting variety and liking that great feeling of hearing songs I haven't heard in years bring back nice memories.

Shame on me.

You're not crazy. You are just not an average radio listener. Most radio listeners are not that deeply involved in their favorite music and are perfectly happy hearing songs that make them feel good, nostalgic, whatever day after day for the rest of their lives. Why do you begrudge them that pleasure, especially since broadcast radio is a mass medium and those listeners represent the masses?

Incidentally, DRC-FM went deeper than most when it was doing oldies. It would regularly play deep Motown like the Temptations' "All I Need" and the Four Tops' "7-Rooms of Gloom." But come Saturday night, guess what the callers wanted to hear? You got it: "My Girl" and "Reach Out I'll Be There."

 

[Ai4i]

Some of us also DX TV,
so let us not leave this one out.

 

[gar hi]

You're not crazy. You are just not an average radio listener. Most radio listeners are not that deeply involved in their favorite music and are perfectly happy hearing songs that make them feel good, nostalgic, whatever day after day for the rest of their lives. Why do you begrudge them that pleasure, especially since broadcast radio is a mass medium and those listeners represent the masses?

This is getting into a whole different topic but the masses can be conditioned as to what they like.

When something is pushed on the public and they have no other real choices, they come to accept that which they are bombarded with.

For example, just look at how we've been conditioned to accept the two party political system as the only way to go even though we are seeing more and more how neither party has been the solution to Americas deep rooted problems.

And every 4 years, we are given the 'choice' between Tweedledee and Tweedledum which has simply become a choice between the lesser of two evils and voters even admit that. But then these same people scoff at 3rd party candidates because they've been taught by the media that the only real choice is between the big 2.

They stick with the two party system just because it's familiar, not because it's necessarily the best thing. The public has been made to settle for mediocrity. Generally speaking, of course. And there are examples in many other areas too.

So I don't 'begrudge' people for listening to the same songs over and over, I just don't think that's a choice they really make for themselves. The reason we listen to old music is to bring back good specific memories and it's only logical we should want to experience as many of those good memories as possible, not just relive the same few select ones day after day.

If you have an old photo album of your family with 100 pictures, would you just want to keep looking at the same 5 or 10 pictures on the first couple of pages or would you like to look at the whole album?

Plenty of people I know have the same complaint about radio and their very limited music selection as I do. There used to be a station that played all 80's music but only the same few songs and the running joke among us was 'If you wanted to tune to that station, you'd already know what song they'd be playing.'

Like the old saying goes .... Just because something is popular doesn't necessarily mean it's good.

That's about all I can say on this subject, I guess.

 

[davideduardo]

When something is pushed on the public and they have no other real choices, they come to accept that which they are bombarded with.

Here are points to consider:

For the last nearly 20 years people have been able to access in increasing numbers a growing quantity of internet streams and alternate music sources. If there was that much discontent, FM classic hits stations would have few listeners.

And there is plenty of evidence that stations that play larger, deeper libraries do not win against stations that play just the songs "everybody" can agree on as being ones they really want to hear on the radio.

By the way, stations don't just test the songs they know will play. They play "what if" with loads of songs that they don't play on the chance that they may be usable.

So I don't 'begrudge' people for listening to the same songs over and over, I just don't think that's a choice they really make for themselves. The reason we listen to old music is to bring back good specific memories and it's only logical we should want to experience as many of those good memories as possible, not just relive the same few select ones day after day.

Classic hits stations may trigger memories, but that is an added benefit. They tune to a station that does that format because they like the songs. And they don't want to hear songs that they no longer like.

Plenty of people I know have the same complaint about radio and their very limited music selection as I do. There used to be a station that played all 80's music but only the same few songs and the running joke among us was 'If you wanted to tune to that station, you'd already know what song they'd be playing.'

Those of us who have spent loads of time talking to listeners in perceptual studies (not the same as a music test) have heard over and over from listeners who say that stations that play songs they no longer like... even if they once liked them... are stations they don't enjoy listening to.

We also know that "lack of variety" actually means "they frequently play songs I don't like."

 

[davideduardo]

And those songs are played a lot more than twice a week.

The average listener uses 6 radio stations each week, for different amounts of time. They listen on the average about 11 hours a week to radio. The average for the core listeners to a classic hits station might be 8 hours, while secondary users might listen 2 or 3 hours and so on.

So if a station plays a song 10 times a week (the top rotation on CBS-FM in New York), the heavy listeners might hear it once or twice every two weeks. For a "favorite song" that is not too often.

'Brown Eyed Girl' has to be the most overplayed oldie of all time.

The song was not overplayed. It simply moved away from appealing to the 35-54 target of classic hits stations. It became "too old" for the target, and was eliminated. If you researched 45-64, it would still be very near the top of the "I want to hear that on the radio today" list.

Every oldies station I've ever heard thinks we like hearing that song as much as possible.

Other than near-zero-audience AMs and suburban FMs, there are no "oldies" stations left. And classic hits stations like CBS-FM and KLUV (Dallas) and most others don't even play the song any more. And even older leaning (but "under rebuilding") WOGL in Philly only plays it a couple of times a week as it tries to go for a sales friendly audience.

Whenever I listen to these all request shows and hear people call in wanting to hear the same old worn out songs, I think "My God! You get to hear those songs all the time all week! Don't you want to hear something you haven't heard in a long time?"

No, the listener says, I want to hear the songs I love. And since I may only hear many of them every month or two regularly, I want to hear one of them now.

I guess I'm crazy wanting variety and liking that great feeling of hearing songs I haven't heard in years bring back nice memories.

More songs reduces the perception of variety as stations that have tried to play larger lists have had, disastrously, proven to them by Arbitron/Nielsen.

 

[gar hi]

This is funny .....

Which of these is the most overplayed song on US radio?

"Brown Eyed Girl" definitely. That song is on the radio every time I turn it on.

This list looks like a nightmare of my workplace. I hear these songs almost every single day! Auuggghhh!!!! I can't seem to get away from that Black Magic Woman!

Endless playings of Brown Eyed Girl was enough to drive my wife to allow me to get XM...

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/which-of-these-is-the-most-overplayed-song-on-us-radio.154789/