It's 2015! Time to get rid of the '70s.

[davideduardo]

And there's the nub of the whole problem. You all are so slavishly wedded to the concept of an ultra tight playlist that you'll start with a meager sampling of only 2,000 songs. And regardless of what various permutations of mathematical chicanery you go through to extract the "best" 400, you're stuck with inflicting a tight list of only 400 songs on us. So you test 2,000 and only play the top 20% of them. I submit that if you were to test 10,000, you could limit your playlist to only the top 10% (which means only the very highest testing songs) but we'd get to hear 1,000 different songs!

It does not work that way. Period.

Stations don't pick "400 songs" or "the top 10%" or have any other quota.

Stations test as many songs as they can afford... testing is expensive, and a large test can typically run around $50,000. From those songs, no matter how many, they play the ones that are broadly positive with minimal negatives against the target audience and all of its subsets.

So if a station comes up with 681 playable songs, that is the size of the library. It does not matter if you test 1000, 2000, or 10,000 songs because after a few years in a format, all the potential songs have been tested and the ones that always score negative are no longer tried again.

And if in a test we find that, due to changes in taste of the target demographic, there are only 542 viable songs, the playlist gets reduced. Or if we find that the same demographic likes more 80's songs, wet might find, over a several year period, 211 songs to play we were not playing before... but, of course, some of the older stuff will age off the list.

No quotas, no percentages, no desire to find just the top xx number of songs. Whatever number of tunes are positive testing get played.

 

[davideduardo]

Hey hey, one of the classic hits stations I listen to (and they have expanded their library a bit) is at an 8.0 and #2.

Not bad!

https://tlr.arbitron.com/tlr/public/market.do?method=loadAllMarket

Just select market: Pueblo

It's not #2. It's just one of the iHeart stations which are the only subscribed stations in the market. Most of the stations do not subscribe and are not listed.

 

[davideduardo]

That's what I said in an earlier post and you downplayed it. So basically, if a station keeps testing most songs over and over that have been played, then that's what we'll hear, the same songs, over and over, because nearly all will test positive again.

The whole point of testing is to find out if anything you are playing needs to change rotation or to be eliminated and to find out if any other songs might have a place on the playlist.

So you test the library, and every time you test a batch of songs that consist of "candidates" that just might work. But once you test a song, if it scores miserably low, you don't test it again unless it was "too young" previously and 4 or 5 years later it might move into your target. Or if it tested marginally, you might try it again just in case (but mediocre songs usually stay mediocre so if they fail twice they are not worth trying again).

Listeners have gotten used to most songs, so that's what they will like, effectively blocking other songs from entering the rotation.

Listeners "get used" to hearing their favorite familiar songs in the classic hits format.

And if a few more songs are found on a subsequent test, they are added. There is no quota other than "every song that tests positively with minimal or no negatives gets played".

If a station wants to rotate 400 or 600 songs, and the auditorium group "passes" the usual 400-600 songs, then there is really no room to add other lower-positives or simply stated.......the lesser played hits.

And if we found 900 or more positive songs with no defects, we'd play them, gladly. There is no set quota.

I believe a PD has a say in how many songs ultimately should be played.

The listeners determine how many songs there are.

On one station out west, they were playing about 800 songs. Then when a new PD took over recently, that suddenly dropped to around 400, with many 60's and early 70's being eliminated but with very few replacements for them. All that remained were the highly tested hits of the late 70's and 80's with no elbow room.

Because they changed target audience, aimed younger and did a new test. The results catapulted the station into very consistent high ratings.

 

[davideduardo]

That's the second half of the errant argument. The assumption that the only reason that people listen to a station that plays "vintage" music is nostalgia is just, plain wrong.

As someone who has done one-on-one interviews for "oldies" and "classic hits" stations many, many times, I can tell you you are inconceivably and totally wrong. Gold based format work on a combination of factors, but the all-pervasive one is that the songs are remembered (familiar) and bring back good memories or a good feeling (which essentially mean the same thing). The songs, together, form a comfort zone of familiar favorite music that is easy to listen to and makes the listeners feel nice when they listen.

There are lots of us who enjoyed hearing new songs on the radio back in the day, as long as they were good songs and they fit the genre we wanted to hear at the time. Given the arbitrary selections by the suits in radio and the suits in the record industry of which songs at any given time are selected to be pushed and promoted into hits, and which ones were left to languish as album "deep cuts", there is a potentially huge inventory of music from the olden days that people would enjoy hearing mixed in amongst the familiar.

The one thing that listeners to gold based stations do not tune in for is unfamiliar music. They are very clear in specifying that "songs I know" or "songs I can sing along with" or "songs with memories" are the reason they got to a classic hits station.

 

[Music Lover]

The mix on that station is half mellow, half edgy. Besides some country, most of the current music I've heard so far is the guitar-driven (but still sort of quiet) sounds that were popular on Soft AC/AC/HAC in the early and mid 00's. Songs such as "You And Me" by Lifehouse, "Home" by Daughtry, "My Immortal" by Evanescence, "Here Without You" by 3 Doors Down, "I'm With You" by Avril Lavigne.

As I learned on page 3 of the following link, soft AC is a hybrid. It has elements of both the easy listening and adult contemporary formats. Not everything going to always sound "easy listening" in nature (i.e. similar to Neil Diamond, Barbra Streisand, Barry Manilow music).

http://www.radiodiscussions.com/showthread.php?680023-Looking-For-Internet-Soft-AC-Streams/page3&

 

[TheBigA]

They are at (drum roll......) stuck at #4, with a 4.5

And are there stations with bigger playlists ahead of it in the ratings?

 

[Music Lover]

This station has added "All About That Bass" to their playlist: http://www.softneasy.com/

Although it's one of my least favorite songs on the station, I do like the message of the song, which tells young girls that you don't have to be stick-thin to be a beautiful woman.

 

[vchimpanzee]

This station has added "All About That Bass" to their playlist: http://www.softneasy.com/

Although it's one of my least favorite songs on the station, I do like the message of the song, which tells young girls that you don't have to be stick-thin to be a beautiful woman.

I don't care about the message. I care about how the song sounds.

 

[Music Lover]

I don't care about the message. I care about how the song sounds.

For me, it has to be a combo of both to be a favorite song.

 

[vchimpanzee]

The mix on that station is half mellow, half edgy. Besides some country, most of the current music I've heard so far is the guitar-driven (but still sort of quiet) sounds that were popular on Soft AC/AC/HAC in the early and mid 00's. Songs such as "You And Me" by Lifehouse, "Home" by Daughtry, "My Immortal" by Evanescence, "Here Without You" by 3 Doors Down, "I'm With You" by Avril Lavigne.

Still sort of quiet?

I don't want these songs within a mile of any station calling itself "soft". Any station playing these and claiming to be "soft" is doing nothing less than false advertising.

 

[Music Lover]

Still sort of quiet?

I don't want these songs within a mile of any station calling itself "soft". Any station playing these and claiming to be "soft" is doing nothing less than false advertising.

LOL! Shows how extremely picky you are!

As Pass The Word explained to you in the following link, soft AC is a hybrid of easy listening and AC. It has elements of both the easy listening and AC formats. Not everything is going to always sound "easy listening" in nature (i.e. similar to Neil Diamond, Barbra Streisand, Barry Manilow music) on such stations. Those guitar-driven songs are perfectly acceptable on a soft AC station.

http://www.radiodiscussions.com/showthread.php?680023-Looking-For-Internet-Soft-AC-Streams/page3&

 

[vchimpanzee]

For me, it has to be a combo of both to be a favorite song.

I don't really listen to lyrics. I wouldn't want dirty lyrics.

But a message that I might like won't be heard if it's not a style of music I can enjoy.

 

[vchimpanzee]

LOL! Shows how extremely picky you are!

As Pass The Word explained to you in the following link, soft AC is a hybrid of easy listening and AC. It has elements of both the easy listening and AC formats. Not everything is going to always sound "easy listening" in nature (i.e. similar to Neil Diamond, Barbra Streisand, Barry Manilow music) on such stations. Those guitar-driven songs are perfectly acceptable on a soft AC station.

http://www.radiodiscussions.com/showthread.php?680023-Looking-For-Internet-Soft-AC-Streams/page3&

Not to me. The problem is they're trying to call it "soft" and therefore give me the idea that I can find what I want there.

So I can't count on terminology to tell me whether I am getting what I want.

Not everything has to be "soft" ("Leapfrog", "Sing! Sing! Sing!", "Bandstand Boogie") unless I am looking for soft, but it has to meet my high standards.

There are other examples in country music.

 

[Music Lover]

I don't really listen to lyrics. I wouldn't want dirty lyrics.

But a message that I might like won't be heard if it's not a style of music I can enjoy.

I can tolerate a variety of styles except for rap and heavy metal and today's teen pop.

 

[Music Lover]

LOL! I just sprayed coffee all over my computer screen.

 

[Avid Listener]

You're assuming that if a test was changed to suit you, that the results would also favor what you like.

No, I'm arguing that the since the resultant output of the testing process doesn't conform to what any reasonable person should expect, that is evidence that the testing methods or results evaluation parameters are flawed. In business, there's something often referred to as a "reality filter". You can test and test and test, but if something doesn't pass a simple reality filter, then that means that something is wrong with the test.

 

[Avid Listener]

I don't care about the message. I care about how the song sounds.

And that song sounds like shit.

 

[TheBigA]

You can test and test and test, but if something doesn't pass a simple reality filter, then that means that something is wrong with the test.

Unless you do a similar kind of test that comes out with different results, my "reality filter" views what you're saying as BS.

 

[Music Lover]

And that song sounds like shit.

While I like that the song promotes having a positive self-image, I just wish it were appropriate for my young daughter to have on her iPod. It's been apparently cleaned up for AC and Radio Disney (http://www.billboard.com/articles/c...c-radio-disney-are-all-about-that-edited-bass), however, the version available for download has cussing and other suggestive language in it.

I have yet to get a chance to hear it on the station, but I'm assuming that the Soft N Easy station is playing the AC edited version. I'll email them to find out.

 

[davideduardo]

No, I'm arguing that the since the resultant output of the testing process doesn't conform to what any reasonable person should expect, that is evidence that the testing methods or results evaluation parameters are flawed. In business, there's something often referred to as a "reality filter". You can test and test and test, but if something doesn't pass a simple reality filter, then that means that something is wrong with the test.

On one side of the equation, we have replication studies which have been done occasionally and which give essentially identical results. In a replication study, a second test is done, with the same specification and same materials simultaneously or in a narrow window around the original one.

Then we have the fact that everyone on the programming staff of stations I have worked with have seen the results and found them to be logical, reasonable and in accordance with everything they know from talking with listeners, meeting them at events and such.

Here is a "little" anecdote. A little over 10 years ago, I did a music test of 1600 titles for a station in a market of about 17 million population. The station was already #1 with format that we "invented" just for that market, but we needed to do some verification of the songs we were playing and the ones we might want to play.

So we did a very expensive in-home test. Respondents who were recruited by a random sample of actual listeners (easy to find as we were cuming over 5 million) and a person from the research company went to their home and administered the test in a one-on-one setting.

After the in-home testing ended, we ran the test on the air on a Sunday evening. We ran the "scorecard" in a full page ad in a newspaper that had about 1.25 million daily circulation, and we also distributed the forms at a large chain of convenience stores. We got back around 80,000 forms. We took a random sample of about 500 of them and tabulated the. The results were within +/- 2% of the "official test".

And how many songs out of the 1600 total were playable? About 550.