Dayparting Classic Hits (like in the old days)

[davideduardo]

OK, we know who pays for the tests. But who receives that money? The testers? The participants? Music royalty fees? The caterer? The hotel banquet room?

Generally, a station hires a research company that prices the project based on local costs, conducts the test and delivers a final report and consultation to the station.

The research company will often use a local recruiter to find qualified respondents based on a tiered recruit specification sheet. Some research companies have their own call centers where they recruit themselves. The fees for each respondent depend on how difficult the recruit specs are to fill, between as low as $50 to over $100 per person. Incentives paid to the respondents can also be in the same range.

Incentives to respondents vary by format and geography. While $50 may get you respondents in Midland / Odessa, it might take $225 to do a two night 1200 song AC test on Long Island.

Some companies test in batches, using a research center and having no more than 5 to 10 people at a time. Others do two half-sessions at different times. And some do a single session. Add to that the ability to now recruit and administer the test online, and there are many variable costs.

So the facilities can be a banquet or meeting room with coffee and cookies to a room at a research center with soft drinks and bags of chips.

There are no royalties or fees involved in testing music.

The rest of the cost goes to things like fees for the one-time use of software like Cornerstone's Analyst, cost of equipment (dials, computers, scanners for paper tests), travel and lodging for the person who conducts the test, cost of hook preparation (there are several "hook banks" that make the lists with the audio) and shipping of test equipment (or local rental of A/V gear).

I just bought eight in the last week. A movie soundtrack, the latest in the NOW series and six "oldies era" to add to my collection. Two of those were the artists' regular albums, the other four were the artists' greatest hits comps.

Every place I used to buy music in LA is now gone except for one collector's store. Even the "music department" at places like WalMart seems to be shrinking each time I pay any attention. In my circle of contacts, friends and associates, there was a migration to Amazon way back, and then to iTunes et. al. a bit more recently. Even the record labels no longer produce promo CD for most product. It seems like physical "albums" are becoming less viable.

 

[Robert Bass]

WHAT? No royalty fees for music tests? I find this hard to believe. Surely ASCAP, BMI, SESAC & the RIAA want a slice of that pie!

R

 

[Avid Listener]

I don't know anyone who buys CDs anymore.

That explains a lot. Clearly, you aren't in touch with very many people, or at least, you don't know a large cross-section of the public. That sounds like exactly what I'd expect from someone who limits his social contact to only those people who work in his industry and who agree with him on most things. Maybe if you got out more, and got to actually know real people instead of just absorbing digests of data about people, with the data compiled from massive, and grossly expensive, research and testing. Try just getting to know some real people who don't work in radio. I'm sure you'll learn some new and surprising things.

 

[oldies76]

That explains a lot. Clearly, you aren't in touch with very many people, or at least, you don't know a large cross-section of the public. That sounds like exactly what I'd expect from someone who limits his social contact to only those people who work in his industry and who agree with him on most things. Maybe if you got out more, and got to actually know real people instead of just absorbing digests of data about people, with the data compiled from massive, and grossly expensive, research and testing. Try just getting to know some real people who don't work in radio. I'm sure you'll learn some new and surprising things.

Sitting in a chair, with a laptop on all day long, debating our wonderful ideas, makes one out of touch with reality and that's been proven time again. There are plenty of them, who cannot even tell if it's sunny or raining outside, seriously!

Of course people buy CD's, or no one would be selling them.

And btw, Norwalk Records, in Southern California, still sells RECORDS and CD's.......in 2014.

 

[davideduardo]

That explains a lot. Clearly, you aren't in touch with very many people, or at least, you don't know a large cross-section of the public. That sounds like exactly what I'd expect from someone who limits his social contact to only those people who work in his industry and who agree with him on most things. Maybe if you got out more, and got to actually know real people instead of just absorbing digests of data about people, with the data compiled from massive, and grossly expensive, research and testing. Try just getting to know some real people who don't work in radio. I'm sure you'll learn some new and surprising things.

In reality, I've used music acquisition questions on research projects for decades. In the community I am most active in, people play CDs they have, but less than they used to. They acquire new music via iTunes and similar, and use their smartphone (71% penetration in that same large population group) and don't go to music retailers. Only a single digit percentage of that group, which covers 18 to 49, have bought a CD in the last 12 months in my most recent studies across markets that include 6 of the top 10 metros in the US. YouTube and Pandora are used daily by half the people... while less than 10% bought a CD in the last year.

I only go to an office once every few months, if that. I spend all my time "on the outside".

So much for "getting out". But that was not my point.

Back to finding out what people do: This kind of finding has been discovered in numerous other projects.

What is important to understand is that most professional projects are very proportional to the population or some subset and highly accurate. But, aside from your blasts at the cost and such, research is simply asking consumers what they do, like and dislike.

My point was to say that, anecdotally, I don't know anyone personally in my non-professional life who buys CDs any more. And since I spend a balanced amount of time in three different Southwest cities, there in no "local" bias there, either. In fact, a common conversation item is about getting smartphones to connect to the dashboard in the car for personal music collection access.

 

[davideduardo]

WHAT? No royalty fees for music tests? I find this hard to believe. Surely ASCAP, BMI, SESAC & the RIAA want a slice of that pie!

R

It's a research project to determine what to play on fully licensed radio stations. It's a one-time occurance and there is no financial gain and is part of the activities of a radio station. And full performances are not played.

I've conducted or managed around 2000 tests, and there are no additional music licensing fees.

Just as there is no licensing fee charged for station promotional appearances where whole songs are often played.

 

[PirateJohnny]

...They acquire new music via iTunes and similar, and use their smartphone (71% penetration in that same large population group) and don't go to music retailers. Only a single digit percentage of that group, which covers 18 to 49, have bought a CD in the last 12 months in my most recent studies across markets that include 6 of the top 10 metros in the US. YouTube and Pandora are used daily by half the people... while less than 10% bought a CD in the last year....

And when their hard drives crash or their devices get stolen and they lose thousands of dollars worth of music, they will wish they had bought CDs in the first place, to have the original to copy again. That's why I buy CDs, and always will.

 

[davideduardo]

And when their hard drives crash or their devices get stolen and they lose thousands of dollars worth of music, they will wish they had bought CDs in the first place, to have the original to copy again. That's why I buy CDs, and always will.

Smartphones and tablets use solid state drive technology... and the originals of purchased songs can be kept in the cloud. They are accessible by any device you register, anywhere you have it.

Even most laptops, particularly the lighter ones, use SSDs, generally mSata drives. Even my big 17" laptop has SSDs... 3 x 1tb... and, while I keep songs on it, I also keep the purchases in cloud storage.

Amazon's music store defaults to the cloud. You have to take extra steps to actually get the mp3.

 

[oldies76]

and the originals of purchased songs can be kept in the cloud. They are accessible by any device you register, anywhere you have it.

Amazon's music store defaults to the cloud. You have to take extra steps to actually get the mp3.

And.......you trust that to store a life's worth of a music collection??

Having a hard copy (records, CD's) sounds far more secure. Computers, digital storage, clouds....too much risk associated with that.

Yes, I download my music, but I also backup every single song on CD's with a Phillips CD recorder / burner.

 

[TheBigA]

And.......you trust that to store a life's worth of a music collection??

There are a lot of people today who don't value their music that way. For them, music is disposable. The music industry has been dealing with this for the past 10-15 years.

 

[davideduardo]

And.......you trust that to store a life's worth of a music collection??

If Amazon's or Apple's clouds are permanently zonked, I think we have a lot of vastly more important things to worry about than where my copy of "Legs" and "Tush" have gone. Things like learning Korean or Farsi.

 

[Unregistered]

Well, that's very racist of you David.

 

[davideduardo]

Well, that's very racist of you David.

No, it simply means that if Apple's and Amazon's servers are "wasted" it would indicate that our entire infrastructure has been destroyed.

Now, quickly, name the world's #1 and #2 rogue nations.

 

[Avid Listener]

Now, quickly, name the world's #1 and #2 rogue nations.

Russia and China.

To be #1 as a rogue nation, or to be #1 as a radio station, you need to be both unpredictable and powerful. The two rogue nations you alluded to are the international equivalent of 1,000 watt day-time stations on AM. They might try hard, but they're pretty puny. High wattage FM stations are the ones with the capability of being truly dangerous rogues.

 

[davideduardo]

Russia and China.

To be #1 as a rogue nation, or to be #1 as a radio station, you need to be both unpredictable and powerful. The two rogue nations you alluded to are the international equivalent of 1,000 watt day-time stations on AM. They might try hard, but they're pretty puny. High wattage FM stations are the ones with the capability of being truly dangerous rogues.

That's a different view of geopolitics where a bully nation and one that has trillions invested in our economy are considered to be nations that behave in an aberrant, faulty, or unpredictable manners.

In any event, my point was that cloud storage is probably safer than "hard copy" and that any situation where the better known cloud storage providers catastrophically fail is likely to be a bi-product of an immensely greater disaster, making the whereabouts of our tunes and videos quite irrelevant.

 

[oldies76]

In any event, my point was that cloud storage is probably safer than "hard copy"

Right, having an original 45, an LP, or a store bought CD or burned CD-R is less safe than storing your music in the "cloud".

Good one. Sure....I'll take your "words of wisdom", when 2 + 2 equals 5.

Ever hear, just because it's technological new, does it mean it's better??

 

[TheBigA]

Ever hear, just because it's technological new, does it mean it's better??

Let me know when you throw away your cell phone and laptop.

 

[Avid Listener]

Let me know when you throw away your cell phone and laptop.

I have a cell phone. It works great for making phone calls. As a computer or for e-mail or other internet applications, it works. But not nearly as well as a real computer. I'm not going to throw away my cell phone, because I need if for what it does really well, makes phone calls. I'm not going to throw away my laptop either, though I mostly use it on my desk, plugged into a docking port, with a larger monitor, a real keyboard, and a real mouse.

 

[oldies76]

Let me know when you throw away your cell phone and laptop.

Don't have neither. I use my wife's cellphone and use a desktop PC.

Btw, the Akai X-200D RR deck is still working great! And it has lasted 44 years, vs. some of today's junk that can't even last 5. There ya go!

 

[davideduardo]

Ever hear, just because it's technological new, does it mean it's better??

It's not new. Offsite storage is relatively mature. The interfaces have improved, and the degree of redundancy is better than ever.

My data is safer on a RAID array, particularly if the data is spread across not just multiple storage devices but also across multiple locations. It's accessible from anywhere, and much of it is device independent.

(I kept data on remote servers via FTP going back nearly 15 years).