Foreign Chart Mining…

[Lotus503]

I have a question for all of you programmers out there: Has anyone ever done chart mining for new music using top 100 lists from foreign countries?

From late 2009 to early 2011, the PD from a station that a friend of mine owns and me did a little experiment, tinkering with his stations’ AC format.

What I did, since the PD didn’t have the time to search for them, was to look at the weekly top music surveys in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and English-speaking parts of Africa. I’d listen to the different songs on each chart, looking for English language songs that had a similar sound to pop music that was being played from the late 1950s to the early 1990s, when most of the classic pop music that you hear today on oldies stations and commercials was being broadcast.

We also kept an eye on the indie charts where we found a few gems…but not too many.

What we found was, there were at least 7-8 songs, and as many as 12-25 songs per week that fit the bill, and of those, 4-12 were good enough for on-air play.

So, with the blessing of the station owner, we started introducing some of those songs into their play list.

And, you know what? People liked it! The ratings numbers started to increase once people started to notice that the station was playing fun and unique new music that wasn’t being broadcast anywhere else.

The unfortunate part is that the PD that I was working with passed away in mid-2011 (stomach cancer). So, we had to stop the experiment…and the new PD wasn’t really interested in continuing with it.

So, has anyone ever tried that before? If so, did they have any success, like we did? Does anyone have any thoughts or observations?

Thanks!

 

[cd637299]

I am not in the radio business, but this intrigues me, because as a teen I dreamed of programming a whole radio station with nothing but foreign hits.

I'm just curious----are you saying that you played overseas tunes on a local radio station? Wouldn't that cause a problem with ASCAP/RIAA etc, plus the fact that the overseas label may not get their piece of the pie?

Now that I am older, I figure that my pipe dream would only be that, a pipe dream, because of the legal hassles.

Anyway, I'd like to know myself about adding out-of-country tunes on a radio station. (This does not, of course, include "specialty" shows, usually syndicated, that feature such music.)

Sorry to hear about that PD.

cd

 

[Lotus503]

Well...we've never had any problems with licensing issues. Most of the labels in Europe and Australia and New Zealand are still owned by one of the big three recording companies with a few independent ones, so it's reported to ASCAP, BMI and SESAC like all of music that's played through the station. I understand that SESAC represents a large chunk of music artists outside the U. S. (they're big in Europe). I was on their website last year doing some research on another project I'm working on...

As far as searching for music, it's not that difficult. I was using World Charts to find the music (http://www.worldcharts.co.uk/) and use a combination of Google video search, Myspace and Facebook to track down the songs. It's a bit time consuming, but I got to the point where I could listen to the first minute or so of the song to see if it would work over here. And, in countries like France and Germany, there are usually only about half English-language songs...many that are already popular over here, so it doesn't take too long to review.

Some of (in my humble opinion) best songs that we've never heard in this country come out of England, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, New Zealand and Australia. There are some really great artists in those countries. People in this country are really missing out.

It's really funny...a number of the songs that we were finding over there became popular over here about six months to a year or more later after we had been broadcasting them. We REALLY got the jump on the competition...lol!

Thank you for your sympathy, CD...Cody was a great guy. Everyone misses him.