Does anyone besides me think AC today is a joke?

[Susie Q]

But that's not why they listen to them or enjoy them. Their parents listen to them and enjoy them because those songs were hits when they were young. Very different motivation for millennials.

My parents grew up listening to the music of that era, and so did I. I was always surrounded by it. I really loved it from as long as I can remember.

 

[Unregistered]

The way I see it is that Big A is just very argumentative.

 

[Bob Eubanks]

Fair enough.

It also occurs to me, to Big A's point, that similar trends take place on TV, and we hear the equivalent complaining that program "X" doesn't meet whatever artificial construct from years ago they insist must apply in seeming perpituity.

 

[oldies76]

If they like Sweet Home Alabama, it's a current song to them. Not a classic hit. Because they have no knowledge or experience of the song in the context of its time.

Come on!! Do you really think millennials DON'T KNOW "Sweet Home Alabama" is a classic?? Current in the context that it's "new" to them, but they do know the difference between a classic and a current. They know it's from the 70's and not from 2015. Such millennial would have to be somewhat ignorant, to not know that. And we're not talking about the Kid Rock version!

 

[oldies76]

"Out of context" has become a favorite tool of those posters who are hell-bent on "proving" the radio professionals wrong.

Hey KM, no one's perfect. Professionals have been known to err too. We're all human, (Big A, Han Solo, myself and you included). If you're wrong, you're wrong.....it happens. If I'm wrong, then I'm wrong.

 

[landtuna]

Come on!! Do you really think millennials DON'T KNOW "Sweet Home Alabama" is a classic??

But I wonder how many of them understand the knock on Neil Young in the lyrics.

 

[TheBigA]

Come on!! Do you really think millennials DON'T KNOW "Sweet Home Alabama" is a classic??

I didn't say that. I think I explained what I meant very clearly in earlier posts. They are listening from a different point of view from someone who's heard it for over 40 years.

 

[boombox4]

Yep. We're seeing it already. Country stations are playing songs with elements of other genres. Boomers don't recognize them as country. The audience just thinks of them as music. Threads like this one, where boomers question why certain songs are being played on AC, but they resonate with the target audience, which is younger than boomers. So stations won't be classified by genre, but by lifestyle, by mix, and by presentation. I don't think ALL categories will go away, but many of them will.

In 2000 a radio consultant told me that radio demographics were soon going to be based on lifestyle as opposed to purely age-based demographics. The example he used was rock radio, but if I remember correctly he implied eventually it could apply to other genres as well.

So how would this 'lifestyle based' marketing affect target demographics? Right now all I see are age-based categories: "25-54", "18-35" etc. Do any of you foresee that changing?

 

[JeffM]

One other thing about millennials is they don't think of music in terms of when it was released. If they like Sweet Home Alabama, it's a current song to them. Not a classic hit. Because they have no knowledge or experience of the song in the context of its time.

I can't agree with that. Otherwise, "PLAY SOME SKYNYRD, MAN!!" wouldn't be a punchline for jokes about old stoners.

 

[Bob Eubanks]

Come on!! Do you really think millennials DON'T KNOW "Sweet Home Alabama" is a classic?? Current in the context that it's "new" to them, but they do know the difference between a classic and a current. They know it's from the 70's and not from 2015. Such millennial would have to be somewhat ignorant, to not know that. And we're not talking about the Kid Rock version!

Given the number of people who seemed to think Paul McCartney was a new artist discovered by Kanye West, I wouldn't say anything is universal via a vis knowledge of eras. But it's entirely beside the point Big A was making.

 

[TheBigA]

I can't agree with that. Otherwise, "PLAY SOME SKYNYRD, MAN!!" wouldn't be a punchline for jokes about old stoners.

Just last night, I was in a club, and when the band broke into that guitar lick from Sweet Home Alabama, the room went crazy. It got the biggest response all night. The smallest was when the band said, "Here's a song I wrote...." Yes it's the punchline for a joke, but it's also immensely popular 40 years later. Kid Rock took the riff and had a new hit with it a couple years ago. Google "All Summer Long" and tell me what it sounds like.

 

[TheBigA]

So how would this 'lifestyle based' marketing affect target demographics? Right now all I see are age-based categories: "25-54", "18-35" etc. Do any of you foresee that changing?

I do. It will become much more complicated and narrowly targeted. Advertisers are already talking in that language, and a lot of it already takes place in web-based ads.

 

[davideduardo]

Come on!! Do you really think millennials DON'T KNOW "Sweet Home Alabama" is a classic??

Some, if they are in a rock lifestyle group, know "Sweet Home". And, for the most part, they know it is not a new song... it's a throwback.

Other than that, they don't generally know it is "classic rock" or a classic. They just know if they like it.

Think binary. Millenials do. Good/bad. All from a personal point of view.

Particularly, Millenials don't thing in Boomer time frames like decades. And they don't classify music the way geezers do. And they don't use it the same way, either.

 

[oldies76]

And, for the most part, they know it is not a new song... it's a throwback.

Perfectly said.

 

[Sally Ann]

My parents grew up listening to the music of that era, and so did I. I was always surrounded by it. I really loved it from as long as I can remember.

Same with me.

 

[Han Solo]

In 2000 a radio consultant told me that radio demographics were soon going to be based on lifestyle as opposed to purely age-based demographics.

I'm guessing that would be categories like laid-back, etc.?

 

[Unregistered]

They are listening from a different point of view from someone who's heard it for over 40 years.

Would that be a perspective like Susie Q's?

My parents grew up listening to the music of that era, and so did I. I was always surrounded by it. I really loved it from as long as I can remember.

 

[Han Solo]

Given the number of people who seemed to think Paul McCartney was a new artist discovered by Kanye West,

LOL! I would consider anyone who thinks that ignorant.

 

[michael hagerty]

Well, I seem to have gotten one lengthy thread back on topic today...let's try for two.

AC is whatever women between 25 and 54, or 18 and 49, depending on the station and market, want to hear.

It's not a type of music. It is contemporary music for adults.

It has gone back to what it was in the beginnings of the format (the late 60s/early 70s)...Top 40 with the five or six hardest records (rock then, hip-hop now) left out.

When Top 40 became CHR in the early 1980s, there was a corresponding shift in music. Air Supply, Kenny Rogers and Juice Newton were replaced at the top of the charts by The Police, David Bowie and Duran Duran.

Jhani Kaye then crafted a soft, emotional music mix for KOST in Los Angeles that was a huge hit with adult women. And other Adult Contemporary stations followed his lead.

As I've said before, demographics are like archery. Aim for the center of the target and the ripples will spread. We're talking about 39-year-old women in 25-54, 33-year-olds in 18-49.

When Jhani launched his "Continuous Soft Hits" approach at KOST, he was pitching to...and hitting...39-year-old women. In 1983, that meant women born in 1944. They liked Neil Diamond and Barbara Streisand and Lionel Richie.

Those women are 71 today.

The change to what AC is now seems jarring because, like Oldies (the format, not the poster), programmers afraid to upset the applecart let it go too long and the demographics got very top-heavy on them.

A 39-year-old woman today? She was born in 1976. She graduated high school in 1994. College in 1998. She was raised almost entirely on 90s music. And since CHR has entered one of its cyclical periods where there are mostly mass-appeal, hook-laden tunes (we've had "Blurred Lines" in 2013, followed by "Happy" in 2014 and now "Uptown Funk"), she's very likely to be listening to CHR, as well.

So we're back to AC being a format where that listener is just as likely to hear her favorite music as she is on CHR, without having to hear Flo Rida's "GDFR" (but some of them may like that).

Tempus has done fugited, gang.

 

[TheBigA]

AC is whatever women between 25 and 54, or 18 and 49, depending on the station and market, want to hear.

It's not a type of music. It is contemporary music for adults.

Except if those women are black or prefer country music. Because there are urban and country formats that target that same demographic. Which is why the sample age demos are in need of reinvention. AC is just one of the formats in the arsenal. Music is becoming much more complicated than it was. Those who grew up in the 90s had more formats than their parents. Now that they're in the money demo, reaching them is going to be more challenging. Which is why I said earlier in this thread that the current formats, organized around genres or simple demos, will be replaced soon.