You can believe that if it makes you feel good. But if you simply look at what they download and stream, it says the opposite. Just because a kid is his parents car listening to classic rock, that doesn't mean that kid likes it and will listen to it when the parents aren't around. My mom loves Broadway show tunes, and subjected me to them all the time when I was a kid. I have never spent a dime of my money on a Broadway show. Sure there is a small percentage of kids who will listen to older music. But typically it's less than 10%. And that percentage is about the same as it was 40 years ago.
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Beatles - 50th Anniversary
- Thread starter oldies76
- Start date
You can believe that if it makes you feel good. But if you simply look at what they download and stream, it says the opposite. Just because a kid is his parents car listening to classic rock, that doesn't mean that kid likes it and will listen to it when the parents aren't around. My mom loves Broadway show tunes, and subjected me to them all the time when I was a kid. I have never spent a dime of my money on a Broadway show. Sure there is a small percentage of kids who will listen to older music. But typically it's less than 10%. And that percentage is about the same as it was 40 years ago.
A
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I'm talking about teenagers and 20-somethings. You keep mentioning "kids". If you're talking about children, then I agree with you. If you're talking about younger adult demographics, then I disagree with you. I'm also talking about what radio station someone might tune into in order to listen for free. I'm not talking about what people will plunk down extra money for. Since this is a radio forum, talking about broadcast radio, the related issues I've brought up were only illustrations to make the point that a station that plays "60'/70'80's Classic Hits" might be able to expand its audience to include more younger demographics if they'd loosen up a little, and present their content as simply "good music" not as "nostalgia for yesteryear". Part of that would be to include covers of older songs by modern artists.
By way of another illustration, this song on YouTube is from a series of covers that one of the top European bands, Within Temptation, did for a European radio station. The original song is common on both "60'/70'80's Classic Hits" and "Classic Rock" stations. I submit that throwing songs like this into the playlist occasionally, as a little extra treat, would help ratings. As with everything, doing it too much or too little might not work very well. But a good programmer should be able to find the Goldilocks zone of a "just right" amount of little extras like that to keep things interesting.
This special was ill-conceived right from the start. It may be "this" generation's "stars" (save for the regurgitated reunited Eurythmics) but they were singing (or trying to sing, in some cases) Beatles classics. The current generation (for the most part) couldn't do them justice, and Beatles fans really didn't appreciate these lame attempts at cover versions. And again, the special was just too long!
I have said this for years. I grew up in the '70s, but the station that I grew up listening to typically played '50s, '60s, and '70s at the time, particularly on weekends. So I grew up listening to all of it. Nowadays, programmers claim that they can't play that older music for "my" generation because we supposedly don't "remember" it! That is pure b.s.! Of course, we remember it, we grew up listening to it! Did it ever occur to them to ASK us what we were listening to? Following their "logic," I would not be a Beatles fan.
But that's the point. What is a better judge of what people actually want? Forcing them to listen to it on the radio or TV, or observing what they spend their money on when given a choice? My point is that when given a choice, it's very clear that this generation of adults acts as previous generations, and, for the most part, prefers music that is made by people of their own generation. Including classic music, or music based on classic hits, into CHR formats is radio suicide. People of this generation like what they like. Sure they'll sit through their parents' music if they have to. They're polite and won't throw tomatoes at The Beatles. They're familiar with those songs because at some point in their life they heard them. But when given the choice, and they're downloading songs on their phones or building stations on Pandora, those are not the songs you'll typically see on their playlists. Just because they KNOW older songs, because they've heard them at some point in their life, doesn't mean they LIKE them. Familiarity doesn't equal passion.
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A
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Exactly!
That's not why they don't play music for your generation.
If they would ASK me what I want, they might be surprised. I can attest that purchases of music (at least when I was a teenager) was limited by having a limited allowance. I only bought what I could afford. Might have bought more, had I had a larger allowance at the time.
Again, don't assume what I want to hear. ASK me first! You might be surprised!
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That's correct! But there's even more to it than that. I don't know for sure about other people, but I tended to shell out money for music that I knew I had to buy a copy of in order to hear it. I knew I could hear the Top 40 for free on the radio, and by the time they stopped playing a given song, it was burned out and i was bored with it. But the stuff I liked that they didn't play on the radio, that's what I had to buy my own copy of.
Then there's another factor about buying music in the 60'/70'/80's. You couldn't buy a single song. Even on a 45, there was always a B side. I suspect most of us who had any singles back in the day listened to the B sides, even if they weren't on the radio, and now a few decades later, we still might like those B side songs. Or, in the later 60 and into the 70's, even if we liked a song we heard on the radio, we'd buy the whole album because it had even more music on it, and it was usually in stereo while stereo singles didn't really hit the market until around 68-69. And, a lot of the really good songs were longer and better than the cut-down versions played on Top-40 radio. (Anyone remember "Light My Fire"?) When we got those big, 12" vinyl discs home, we'd listen to the ENTIRE RECORDING. Amazing, isn't it? And (surprise, surprise), we'd often find songs on those albums that we liked just as much (or more) than the people who decided which album cuts got to be played on the radio. Now, speaking only for myself, I have trouble remembering when I listen to one of my old vinyl albums, or my CD's from the 80's, which songs were radio hits and which songs were just songs I liked when I played the album or CD. I suspect that a lot of people who liked the music of the 60'/70'/80's find the same thing happening to them. When I shell out for concert tickets to hear the bands of the 60'/70'/80's play live, I tend to like ALL of the songs they play. That includes songs from albums I didn't buy at the time, and am therefore hearing for the first time even though the songs are many decades old.
Could it be that in this second decade of the third millenium, the conventional wisdom about people only liking "hits" is slowing becoming wrong? Could it be possible that peoples' tastes have been influenced by the media so much that they have changed a little?
Radio is not a personal music service. You want radio people to ask 350 million individuals which songs they want to hear, and then cater their programming to suit all 350 million. That's impractical. So researchers speak with a representative group in the desired demo. That's how it's done. But at no time does anyone say they can't play older music because you don't remember it. That's a ridiculous statement, and no one has ever said it.
Back to The Beatles, Paul McCartney was on tour last year. Take a look at his set list. He could pull from the entire range of Beatles/Wings/McCartney music covering 55 years. He could play songs that weren't hits. He could play B-sides. He could play songs that never were released or played on the radio. But that's not what he does. He sticks to the hits. "Let It Be," "Get Back," "Hey Jude." Why? Why doesn't Paul ask everybody in his audience and ask each one of them which song he'd like to do? You tell me.
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Once again, look at what the vast majority of people DO. Take a look at the vast majority of playlists on personal music devices. Take a look at the majority of songs downloaded or streamed. That's what Big Champagne does. It measure the songs people like. That's also what the new Billboard chart takes into account. And amazingly, the songs on these charts almost mirror the songs radio is currently playing. Now that doesn't apply to the very small minority of music fans. The people will hundreds of thousands of records in their personal collections. But radio doesn't program to those people. Those people will NEVER be happy with a mass music system, no matter how it's programmed. And this doesn't come from assumptions. It comes from actual practice. There are radio stations that have tried to play wider ranges of music, just as you suggest, and none of them have had any ratings success. Radio is not in the music business. Radio is in attracting large audiences for advertisers. That's the system. You want a specific personalized service? There are lots of choices for you. But that's not the business radio is in.
Now that people have the ability to download songs, and don't have to buy entire albums, we see even more of an emphasis on hits. If anything, it's the 60s once more.
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Believe what you will. But you are programming to the current generation, so you have competition from ipads, ipods, iphones, ithis, ithat, etc. We didn't have all that competition. When you see someone out jogging, and he/she has something plugged into his/her ears, if you were to stop that person and ask if he/she were listening to the radio, my guess is that the answer would be a resounding NO! Why? Radio's programming is inflexible. You have proven that. You assume that you know what I want. You don't. You have proven that as well. Ask yourself when was the last time a NEW song was written about the joys of listening to the radio. The last one that I remember was from just a couple of years ago ("Thank God for the Radio"), but that was by the Beach Boys. They are from MY generation, so that doesn't really count. I am guessing that the current generation doesn't really compose songs about listening to the radio. It just doesn't give them that same warm feeling that it once gave us. I wouldn't want to be a radio programmer. He has to ignore the most loyal generation (us!) in favor of kids who have a LOT more competition for their ears than we ever had!
With country music, it is even worse. Their favorite medium for music appears to be the juke box. When I was a country dj, it seemed like every week there was a new song coming out about the joys of listening to the juke box. The juke box is a much more flexible medium for music listening than the radio.
Pandora works the same way. You program what you like into their system, and it tells you new songs you should like. But over and over, I hear from people who point out the flaws in the "genome" and the mistakes it makes. So here's a system that was built to respond to individual music taste, and it doesn't work. Now I read Pandora is making assumptions about your politics based on your music and zip code. Why can't they get this right? They assume they know what you want, but they don't.
Sure, people have lots of personalized music devices. If cheap and easy personal music devices existed in the 60s, radio would have been in trouble then. The minute portable cassette players were available, that's when radio TSL started to drop. So this isn't a new problem. Give people a choice between personalized and one-size-fits-all, and they choose personalized. That doesn't mean they have the time to deal with all the programming and downloading to create a personal music system with all the variety and information available on the radio.
By the way, the Country Radio Seminar just wrapped up in Nashville. I don't know where you got the idea that the jukebox is the way country music fans get new music. It's not. First of all, not many clubs actually have jukeboxes any more. Those that do are usually filled with classic hits, not new releases.
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rbrucecarter5
Guest
Everybody but CBS knows that Big Time Rush does amazing Beatles covers – not trying to be clones, but duplicating and updating the feel of the songs:
http://www.bopandtigerbeat.com/2012/03/listen-to-btr-cover-the-beatles-for-big-time-movie/
Full length songs in links at the bottom. MUCH better than Maroon 5!
http://www.bopandtigerbeat.com/2012/03/listen-to-btr-cover-the-beatles-for-big-time-movie/
Full length songs in links at the bottom. MUCH better than Maroon 5!
FYI Big Time Rush was on Nickelodeon, which is a CBS property.
Sounds kinda like social security.
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Thomps2525
Guest
Advertisers don't want people over age 55. That is because people over 55 never buy cars or clothing or furniture or electronics, never invest in stocks or bonds, never go on cruises, never travel or stay in hotels and motels, never attend plays or concerts or sporting events, and never have need of banking services.
Wait...what?
Wait...what?
As you know, it's not that they don't spend money or buy products, but rather when they do, they aren't as influenced by advertising. We also notice that they tend to be more motivated by visual ads than audio ads.
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Avid Listener
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Perhaps a more accurate, albeit less sarcastic, statement might be mass-market advertisers selling commodity products find advertising to those over 55 to not be profitable. Those advertisers who have products likely to be purchased by those over 55 are more likely to use targeted media than mass-market media. To reach the over 55 consumer, underwriting an NPR program might be a better use of advertising revenue than buying airtime on a pop music format station. Or, perhaps a space ad in a printed magazine that appeals to the right target audience. Speaking only for myself and my own personal tastes in entertainment, as someone in the over 55 demographic, you have an excellent chance of reaching me with a TV commercial on the History Channel.
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