I took a short trip in the car today and realized that I'd forgotten my phone, so I ended up listening to the regular old radio š± and I came across "Pink Pony Club" on Q102. I've never heard the song on any terrestrial station, just while streaming. It sounded very different and very...bad. I flipped away after about a minute. Are they playing a remix? Are they pitching up the music more aggressively than they used to?
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"Pink Pony Club" on Q102
- Thread starter Miguelito
- Start date
It gets played on several top 40 stations, but I'm not sure if they (q102 specifically) are playing a radio edit or a house-made pitched up mix. Why on earth any station in this day in age would feel the need to pitch up a cut like it's the 80s is beyond me. The song is already pop perfection as it is, and this coming from someone who usually listens to 60s-80s pop and alt exclusively. Gotta hand it to Chappell; that's one hell of a song.
I believe it is just a sped up version of the song. I agree itās odd they keep speeding up the music on Q. Especially with so many other sources to get music, like music services, smart speakers, etc., why not play songs the same way youād hear them elsewhere and emphasize whatās BETWEEN the songs as the way to stand out?
Do any other major market CHRs still pitch music? It makes the whole station sound āoff,ā but maybe their research says otherwiseā¦
Do any other major market CHRs still pitch music? It makes the whole station sound āoff,ā but maybe their research says otherwiseā¦
This is a 5 year old song that was revived because the artist, Chappell Roan, has become hot on streaming sites. It's not just this song. Her song "The Giver" was the #1 song last week on the Hot Country chart. Think about that. Chappell Roan is a very out gay woman and her music is being streamed on country channels. Currents formats are looking at streaming charts to see what's connecting with the younger demo. What we're finding is that music that tests well for Spotify does the opposite when tested on radio listeners. This may be one of those cases. Country radio is not playing The Giver. Yet Pink Pony Club, a song about a gay bar in LA, is Top 10 in the Billboard Hot 100, and is also charting on the airplay charts. It was #5 last week on American Top 40. All of this happening 5 years after initial release.
www.forbes.com
As far as being "sped up," there is an airplay version of Pink Pony Club that may be sped up. It may be coming from iHeart itself, not the local station. Or it may be sped up because that's what people do on TikTok. The concept of speeding up songs has become so popular on Tik Tok that record labels make stems (unmixed elements) of their songs available to influencers to remix in ways that get attention. That may have been what happened here.
Chappell Roan Sweeps The Country Charts, Owning (Almost) All Of Them
Chappell Roanās āThe Giverā debuts at No. 1 on three Billboard country charts, despite being her first release in the genreāand a massive Hot 100 entry at No. 5.
www.forbes.com
As far as being "sped up," there is an airplay version of Pink Pony Club that may be sped up. It may be coming from iHeart itself, not the local station. Or it may be sped up because that's what people do on TikTok. The concept of speeding up songs has become so popular on Tik Tok that record labels make stems (unmixed elements) of their songs available to influencers to remix in ways that get attention. That may have been what happened here.
Hey now, let's not rush things. Gotta schedule some music tests first, maybe a focus group or two. Break out those spreadsheets and analyze the data. Touch base with the label and see if they'll put her in the station's summer festival in exchange for some airplay. Radio be nimble, radio be quick, radio jump over the candlestick and get that song playlisted by Memorial Day with a big New Music sounder on the big day.
Country radio went through this already with Zach Bryan. He has a fan base, but they don't listen to country radio. That's likely the situation with Chappell Roan. Country radio doesn't need more pop stars crossing over. Post Malone is enough for now.
The bad part about streaming numbers is you don't really know who they are. We saw that with Beyonce last year. Texas Hold 'em got great streaming numbers, but there was no demand from country radio listeners. If fact there was resentment.
As far as Pink Pony Club, it looks like pop radio is on this song.
I know you are trying to be cute and clever with your exaggerated indictment of radio's procedures, but you are almost entirely wrong on all your points.
- Stations do not test songs before playing them. A listener has to hear it about 6 to 8 times before they have the ability to say if they like it or not. First impressions generally get a lot of "likes" even for kinda' bad songs. To get "Love" or "One of my Favorites" a listener has to hear a song many times. Record labels have, in the past, tried to test songs but found out what we in radio know: first impressions are incredibly inaccurate.
- Focus groups are not used to test music. The purpose of them is to ask generally "open" perceptual questions, not quantitative evaluations of songs or anything else. Focus groups can be used to test mixes of songs to get the impression of a blend. Some of us don't like focus groups at all because they always end up with an alpha person or two forcing the opinions of "followers". The solution is one-on-one personal interviews where the moderator can take each person's remarks and dig into interesting perceptions that a questionnaire or group can not produce.
- Adding a song generally has no trigger for label contact. The label will see the monitoring reports. It might be much later that a station says, "hey, we play a bunch of "The Dingbats" songs and I'm putting together an event and want to see if they could fit us in their tour schedule". Or something like that.
- The strange new FCC is not going to look kindly, it appears, at stations and labels doing the very traditional quid pro quo exchange of favors. So even hinting to a label that artist "favors" might be a contingency for airplay no ends up with a (expensive) call to the station's Washington counsel.
- Stations don't just add a whole lot of songs. Playlists have deeply reasoned-out numbers of songs and rotations. Sometimes a song that you'd like to add has no place on the list, so it waits. Or, sometimes, you get a great sounding song by a big artist and you have to push somebody else's also good song down to recurrent or some other category.
After he left, the PD and I almost said in unison, "instant add". We played it in the next sweep and called the Sony guy and said, "turn on your radio 'cause in about minutes you are going to hear 'A Puro Dolor" on the radio".
For more than two decades, that song by "Son by Cuatro" was the most played Spanish language contemporary song in the United States, replaced only by another tune from Puerto Rico, that one by Daddy Yankee and Luis Fonsi that now has over 8 billion YouTube views.
I even had a case at a little #1 station in Buenos AIres where the label rep came to drop off a new release by a rock band with all the band members along with him! We listened to the song, and said that it would be a definite add (not a usual thing to do when the label person is there) and asked if the group would sing it live a capella after which we would play the song itself. They agreed, and not only did we premiere the song, but we did it live.
This is like Baghdad Bob waving his arms saying, "nothing to see here," while the tanks roll by in the background.
I nearly forgot, the radio business operates with the utmost integrity right? I am joking of course. We all know it has a long history of outright payola scandals that resulted in large penalties on multiple occasions, some in the not-too-distant past. And while the "strange new FCC's" motives may be suspect, it has indicated it's planning to look at the issue again, suggesting there is something to see here
Which brings us to how radio definitely doesn't break the law now, or at least the letter of the law. Just ask the "label relations" teams at radio's corporate HQs. Baghdad Bob would say there's no quid pro quo when the artist plays the radio station's festival event for free, and what do you know, they just happen to get tons of airplay. Technically not payola and according to you, just a coincidence. OK, sure. The legal team has put together lots of official looking documentation that resembles your explanation and they insist the whole process is very organic with no coercion whatsoever. Mmhmm.
It's not what I'd like to add. I personally don't care. But it's the top ranked country song that debuted at #1 on multiple country charts, yet country radio isn't playing it. This is just typical for radio which acts like it's still 1980 and has repeatedly shown how it can't respond quickly or organically to trends. If the label didn't "work" the record to the format, it's a non-starter. And by "work," of course we mean negotiating with the label relations team that serves as gatekeeper at these monolithic, top-down, corporate broadcasting behemoths, to see what it would take to get that song played, if you know what I mean.
By the way, I didn't change the numbers on your ordered list, the board software did that when I split it up to reply.
It takes two sides to commit payola. The foreign owned record labels and artists are all complicit. Payola is legal as long as its disclosed. It's also legal in digital radio, including satellite and streaming.
Once again, I bring up the Beyonce example. Just because it showed up in country streaming charts doesn't mean the country music audience wanted to hear it. This song had the power of Sony behind it, and country radio saw that this song didn't get acceptance from actual country music listeners. Same so far with The Gift. It's getting some airplay. But not enough to go Top 30. The record labels are trying to homogenize music by releasing songs in multiple formats. That's what's happening here.
I've heard that...be curious to hear the more pitched up Pink Pony Club on q102
No, it is not. Radio revenue still supports stations and groups that are not encumbered with horrible, high past multiple based debt.
Well, I have been in the business since 1959 and don't find that joke funny.
There have really only been a small handful of actual indictments about payola. Remember, the correct definition of payola involves employees of an FCC licensed facility taking bribes for airplay. It does not involve management except for the fact that playing stiffs by an employee hurts a station's revenue and ratings.
Stations are not penalized for payola unless they sanctioned an employee taking something for airplay without management approval or knowledge.
The ignorant new people at the FCC don't understand the legal definition of payola: the acceptance of something of value by a station employee without management's consent and knowledge for the playing of a record or promotion of a business.
Technically, an air personality who says "I had a great dinner last night at Bob's on Main Street" after being comped with the meal is also payola because management did not have an ad contract or know about the arrangement with Bob's.
If a station does a "like kind" deal to promote an artist in exchange for an artist appearance, that is not payola because the station management did the deal.
That is no different, in fact, from a station saying "I'll have my DJs promote the County Fair if you put our banners over all the entrances.
Or... no different than a restaurant having on their menu "we get all our fresh vegetables from Bob's Market". This is simply a modern era application of what people in villages have done for centuries: trading some kind of goods or services for a different kind of goods or services. No different than the barber cutting the mechanic's hair in exchange for a tune-up of his car.
Because, and listen closely, countless country stations tested the song and core P1 country listeners overwhelmingly scored it below the playability level. The fact that a song sounds like country does not mean that country listeners will like it. In this case, the artist's fans liked it but country radio listeners did not.
Radio has responded to all kinds of trends, going back to Top 40 in 1961, rock 'n' roll around 4 years later, the British invasion in the mid-60's. Motown almost at the same time, hard rock in the later 60's, disco around '75, and so on.
Not true at all. I know of hundreds if not more of cases where a station has played a song that is not being promoted by the artist's label, often resulting in a rush release by the label. And there are plenty of formats that don't mess with the labels at all, including those that play no current music.
The station I administered in (then) market #12 had a sign in the PD's office that said, "The record promoter is not your friend. The record promoter will do you harm". That station was overwhelmingly #1 for the 25 years I was involved with it.
No, I don't know what you mean. And, because ignorant fools at the FCC are looking at label and station relationships, every agreement goes through horrible attorney reviews on both sides. And that is for agreements that benefit both a station (or group) and an artist and their label equally.
Payola, by the historical legal definition, only occurs when a station employee promotes something... a record, a product, a restaurant... in exchange for something of value... without an agreement with management and without management's knowledge
Trading airtime for something is barter. Perfectly legal, as long as sponsor identification is done. But the ignorant newbies at the FCC are trying to redefine payola.
And stations and groups do research among their own listeners and have seen that these examples have not appeal with their own listeners.
Does it happen often where a PD gives spins for a song in return for a concert appearance or something?
Two different businesses. Spins of songs are for record labels. Concert bookings are handled by the artist's agent. So no.
The thing people don't understand is that an artist is a multi-platform business. Record label, publisher, concert agent, publicist, and manager all work for the artist. They are all distinct businesses.
Radio has broken so many songs the record company wasn't working at the time. Everyone here can probably think of at least one example. Pretty sure that's how Paula Abdul became a radio superstar. Virgin was working "The Way That You Love Me"--and planning to dump the album if it performed as poorly as the first single--but a DJ somewhere started playing "Straight Up" instead.
The famous one recently was Luke Combs version of Fast Car. The label was working a different song, but radio started playing this one. Both songs went to #1 within a few weeks of each other. In fact, Fast Car jumped the official single and went #1 first.
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