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Profile of songs peaking at #30-40 on the charts?
- Thread starter tall_guy1
- Start date
Very few songs that only hit between 30 and 40 on charts like Billboard get any play at all on CHR stations. Most only have between 15 and 25 total currents, plus recurrents and gold.
As one well-known programmer in the 70's observed, there are never more than 15 real hits at any time.
That too, but I notice on Mainstream Top 40 charts, songs below 30 have kind of a spotty presence. Some stations never add them, a few play them regularly and some irregularly.
It depends. It's rare when a song debuts at #1 or even in the Top 10. They usually start out in the 30s or 40s.
Maybe you can be specific. As I look at Billboard's Hot 100, I see a lot of country songs by Luke Combs and Morgan Wallen in the 30s and 40s. Is that what you're talking about? The latest Macklemore song is getting 3 spins in the evening and overnight, but also gets 1 spin in AM, Mid, and PM on Z100.
Generally, it's a process. As a song increases in popularity and familiarity, it increases in spins, and therefore moves up the chart. Is something wrong with that? Rather than look at one week's chart, trace a song over the course of three months.
Maybe you can be specific. As I look at Billboard's Hot 100, I see a lot of country songs by Luke Combs and Morgan Wallen in the 30s and 40s. Is that what you're talking about? The latest Macklemore song is getting 3 spins in the evening and overnight, but also gets 1 spin in AM, Mid, and PM on Z100.
Generally, it's a process. As a song increases in popularity and familiarity, it increases in spins, and therefore moves up the chart. Is something wrong with that? Rather than look at one week's chart, trace a song over the course of three months.
For example, the song Miss You by Oliver Tree was played overnight here mainly, but notice it got spun more regularly in Joplin, but looks like it never "took off." It was probably too unusual sounding.
It did better in EDM circles
Back in 2014, the song Hideaway by Kiesza got a lot of airplay in coastal cities' CHR stations but hardly any in the flyover cities resulting in the song landing at number 17 on Mainstream Top 40 charts. I am guessing a lot of people in the middle of the country today would not be familiar with it, but coastal audiences would.
I checked the song out and like it, I’d never heard it before. Kind of reminds me of Kygo & Whitney Houston’s “Higher Love”
I assume you listened to CHR back then. I listened and didn't recall it, but ended up liking it.
Same goes for the country chart. I've heard songs that never get out of the 20s get airplay locally for months, but the ones that never hit the top 30 generally don't get played at all. There's one station here that takes chances on songs that wind up going nowhere, but only for a couple of weeks. I'd imagine there are scattered stations around the country that do that kind of thing, which is how those songs make the airplay chart at all.
As for the Combs and Wallen songs TheBigA mentions, some are tracks from their new albums that are getting airplay alongside those artists' current singles ("Going Going Gone" and "Thought You Should Know"), which top the chart.
One of the issues in country is that the chart has stalled. You have a group of artists who are able to leap-frog up the chart and get a #1 in 8 weeks. Luke Combs, Morgan Wallen, and the new artist Bailey Zimmerman. Then you have a group that stays in the 20s or 30s. They can stay there for months and never advance to the Top 10. They might move up a space, fall back a space, so there's movement, but not enough to get to the Top 10. At the same time, you have artists pushing out lots of new music that floods the chart when they release it. Tim McGraw just released a new single, and his goal is to get a first week debut in the Top 30. That pushes everyone else back a space. That's what happens in an active format when you have lots of hot artists releasing lots of new music. Not exactly the situation in CHR or other formats.
Yeah I did but never heard the song before
I just checked the new Tim McGraw single. It was officially released Friday, and one day later it's already at #34. How is that possible? Stations were likely playing it once every hour all day. So the song is on it's way to meeting it's goal of Top 30 by Monday. Then it will fall back into the 30s for a week or two. Then the research kicks in and we'll see what happens.
And it's hurting ratings as listeners tire of hearing the same songs month after month. It was the front page story in the Billboard Country Airplay update this week after having been a hot topic at a seminar. Yet when you go by streaming figures, concert attendance, mainstream star power, exciting new talent, etc., country music has hardly ever been hotter, even though network TV still won't touch its biggest star. CHR's problems, at least to me, are understandable. Country radio's problems just leave me scratching my head.
IHeart stations often give new singles by well-known artists a weekend push, playing the chosen track at the top of every other hour.
There are several campaigns, including iHeart, Cumulus, and Audacy. The Highway at Sirius also factors into this. I just looked at the Billboard airplay chart, and they have three Morgan Wallen songs in the Top 30. When they release the Hot Country chart on Monday (that includes streaming) it will include the McGraw. That will push out weaker songs in the bottom of the Top 30. The Luke Combs album will come out in two weeks, and by then his current single will be done, so there will be several Combs songs in the Top 30. This is why some songs never advance to the Top 10.
Here's a recent article on the Cumulus new music program:
Cumulus Media Launches ‘Your Music First’ Series.
Cumulus Media launched a new audio series called “Your Music First” on Monday, introducing it to the company’s 47 U.S. country stations with Thomas Rhett’s new single, “Angels (Don’t Always
Because they're in the chart, and they're running in order to stay in place, they're getting more spins than if they were a recurrent. I think what CHR is doing is replacing those songs with recurrents, but it has basically the same effect. There are songs that will never get out of the 20s and at some point they just wave the white flag. When you have a Top 30, there can only be so many songs in the chart at the same time.
There is a belief that, based on decades of studies, that you can't research a song until the average listener has heard it around 8 to 10 times. Initially, it's just a novelty and if it has a "nice sound" it is tolerated. Only after hearing it repeated times does a listener establish a true "like" or "love" for a song... or not... and only then can you research it.
So, in the past when a new song played 4 to 5 times a day, it took three weeks for the average listener to reach a researchable stage on a song. With high spins for several days, that speeds up´the ability to test the song by a week to 10 days, meaning that if the song is a stiff, you can kill it really fast.
KMXV plays the new song "Players" by Coi Leray every Friday at 5 (and usually gets introduced as such) I've noticed but the only other time they play it is nights/overnights. Kind of interesting I think.
Correct. It gets 13 spins in the evening, 13 spins in overnight, 1 spin in morning drive, 1 in PM drive. What's your question?
From what I see, it's already peaked and is a recurrent. Her next single is out, called Wasted.
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