Running a '00s only' station; I've got questions about this kind of format

[Wwzapper]

I'm the owner of three internet streams. Two of them, a summer/feel good station and a late 80s till mid 90s dance station, are doing quite well. I don't know if it's enough after 9 months (the ones who know Radionomy know what I'm talking about), but at least they are growing.

The third one, Only 00s (format: only music from 2000 till 2009, about 80 % mainstream pop/urban/dance and about 20 % less known stuff with a similar feel), isn't, sadly. 00s music seems to be a difficult format.

Current format characteristics: a mix of pop, urban and dance, mainstream but not too boring, sometimes on the edgy side but always accessible. Target audience: 25-40 years old, male and female. Mostly quite grown-up music. Some cheesy teen pop and eurodance from the first years of the decade (can be already nostalgic) but not much from the latter part of the decade (= not nostalgic enough yet, for 25-40 year olds most of such stuff is just childish music). General playlist hours are alternated with hours containing music from one specific year, to create some extra uniformity those hours. So, in fact the format is quite thought out. But maybe I've made some mistakes. It was my first station so I was totally green when starting it, a couple of months ago.

Is it possible to make a succes of a 00s station (I realize the 00s generation was way more fragmented and individual than the 90s generation, because of all internet technology)? Tips and tricks are welcome. Or am I just too early with this format?

To be honest: That kind of format was something I searched for by myself, before starting it. I saw a kind of a gap. But maybe there aren't much others who think so.

 

[GeneSavage]

I suspect there is just beginning to be an audience for '00s pop, although many have likely migrated to their local hot AC station.

I just now tuned in, so I can't yet give you opinions based on listening, but a couple of thoughts come to mind:

#1, I'd absolutely stack the decade so that the songs from 2000 rotate most, 2001 less, 2002 less than that, so that any songs from 2009 are just an occasional "spice" track. The 2000 tracks are the oldest, most likely to be off of other stations' playlists, and as you said, most likely to be memory-inducing.

#2, I have to wonder if you might be playing it TOO safe with the music (which you described as "very adult"); while modern listeners might find certain hits from a decade ago "cheezy," those who grow up will likely respond and respond BIG to hearing them again... as long as you don't burn them.

#3, I just heard J-Lo ft. Ja Rule - I'm Real and it is NOT safe for work... I suspect many potential listeners are listening in cubicles, and so having some guy shouting about *&^$ for his #$)*@ at the $&^@* party may not work in the work environment. Just a thought. It would be up to you if you would want to play the radio edit of songs like this, or just not play them at all.

Another option is to schedule them to play outside of the work day, so the odds of somebody in an office environment getting questioned by management is lessened.

...And here is "Sexyback," and it's the edited version. Hm!

With little / no rock or alt music, you are likely skewing female; you'd add more variety (less fatigue) if you mixed in some of the pop / rock hits of the decade... and attract a few more males in the process! (Remember, I've been listening for about 4 songs and going off of your description, so if you have these songs in rotation, ignore this comment.)

Another thing to potentially consider is the impact of the internet on those coming of age in the 00s. You might take a look through the following list and see if there are any 2000 - 2009 internet sensations you could conservatively sprinkle into rotation to more identify yourself with the decade & its fans: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_phenomena#Music

There are songs from the decade that "everybody" loves, that "everybody" dances to at wedding receptions... the challenge with the 00's is to figure out what those songs ARE.

I wish you well with your stations! It sounds like a very worth-while project.

 

[Wwzapper]

Thanks for your tips! I've got about 5 months left to attract enough listeners; if not, the station will be removed from Radionomy.

About work day hours: Because of a worldwide audience (I am European, but because of being listed in iTunes, there are also American listeners, so there is a 'time zone' issue) the format is the same all day long. Before being listed in iTunes, there were a couple of hours with frequently alternative music at night (European time). It's nice to hear at night. But Americans would hear those hours at work. Not a good idea. :-\

Good advice about the lyrics. I've not thought very much about that, maybe because English isn't my mother language. I just don't notice automatically all f***s and bi**hes in tracks. This is a hard one. Yeah, that's a difference with my other two stations. Those formats are build up in a way there's automatically no room for that kind of music. In family friendly summer music and oldschool dance, you simply won't hear such lyrics. On the other side: an oldschool dance station is automatically no 'at work' station.

About the years: There's already not very much music from 2008 and 2009 in the database, most is from 2000-2005. A lot of the 2008 and especially the 2009 hits contain too much autotune, which isn't 'typically 00s', and besides that, it can be quite cheesy for my grown-up audience (and there's no nostalgy to make up for that). There are also less year specials broadcasted about the years 2006-2009. In the year specials from 2000 en 2001 are some teen pop and eurodance/eurotrance sections, btw.

 

[nd2023]

Take a listen to Pop2K on Sirius XM. I've always fancied a "Retro CHR" format.

The best way to get an idea for what to play is to listen to airchecks of CHR stations recorded in the 2000s.

 

[Wwzapper]

Checked... seems to be a 30 days trial instead of a regular online stream. And you have to fill in a little bit too much (creditcard stuff etc.) to get that trial. No, thanks.

I've done already something like you said, btw. The first month I didn't want to play very polished music like Kelly Clarkson and stuff like Nickelback, it sounded too much like typical office muzak to me. It's not music I play very often by myself, in my spare time. But after realising what was played to dead by Holland's two biggest chr stations (Radio 538, 3FM) in the 00s (the international hits, not the typical Dutch hits), and thinking about the fact those stations are very leading here, I've added such music finally. The combination with the more edgy music on the station prevents sounding too boring.

And a good station simply not only consists of your own favorites.

My ratings didn't change after the addition of more office friendly music, though.

About an earlier reply: Yesterday I've replaced about twenty doubt cases (I don't exacty know which songs in the database contained offencive lyrics, but I guess especially the Eminem songs were risky...) by SURELY clean edits/radio edits. And that Ja Rule song has also been replaced. I'm not finished yet, but I'm working on it.

 

[GeneSavage]

I've got about 5 months left to attract enough listeners; if not, the station will be removed from Radionomy.

I hope it survives! Internet radio is no easy road; I've been at this since 2000 (since 1996, if you count pre-recorded shows), & have attracted an audience but not advertisers. The industry is STILL so young; it will take another 10 years or so before most serious internet streamers will be able to make a living doing this.

About work day hours:

Points well-taken; that's one of the real challenges of internet radio! My primary audience is North America, so I have "only" four time zones to worry about... except that I also have listeners in the UK, Spain, France, Germany, Japan, Australia... so, as you described, it is tough to target specific blocks of music to a specific time of day. Noon here is midnight there, and visa-versa. Even "locally" in the USA I can't talk about the "lunch hour" since noon east coast is 9am west coast.

There's certainly nothing wrong with running an identical format 24/7; in fact, I think most broadcast professionals would recommend it! I also think running "clean" edits all the time isn't a bad idea. If it's clean at work, it's nice to know it will be clean at home with the kids listening or the parents over or whatever may be going on. There's only a handful of niche formats that seem to take offense at editing out offensive lyrics, including hip-hop / rap and some club / dance formats. If you're anything mainstream, I recommend clean edits... glad you're working in implementing that!

BTW, shamefully, it hadn't occurred to me English might not be your native language, or that you might not be in the United States... certainly, not speaking English natively would make so-called "cuss words" or "slang" not stand out like it would to someone who grew up being told from birth "you shouldn't say that!" It is the same challenge I have with accepting the word "bloody" as a cuss-word in the UK. I grew up with "bloody" meaning "consisting of or covered with blood." ;D

It sounds like you're smartly balancing the years in your mix; I think you're on the right road, and the only other thing you might look at is unique (or at least interesting) content between the songs. I've heard many program directors say while the songs certainly ARE the most important thing on a music-intensive station, it's what is BETWEEN the records that separates you from the other stations (or the listener's iPod, for that matter). Perhaps you can have brief announcements about the artists ("Her album 'The Emancipation of Mimi' would become the best selling album of the decade; here's Mariah Carey on Only 00s... Noughties Pop!") or clips from popular TV shows or even funny or shocking commercials from the decade.

...Whoops, just tuned in again, and you're playing "M.O.P. - Cold As Ice" which is using 'f\/@k,' 'n!99@r,' & '@$$' (although '@$$' has become more acceptable in US culture & is played pretty regularly on broadcast TV & broadcast radio). You then followed it up with "Nelly Furtado - $#!+ On The Radio." No, no no! In English-language countries, I would think this would keep you completely off of most office computers. Perhaps the UK & Australia are more lenient on slang in the office place, and certainly here in US as you move from so-called "white collar" jobs (like office / cubicle work) to "blue collar" jobs (like manufacturing, mechanics, etc) the language is less critical... but if a listener at work is exposed to the public they will NOT want that playing as a customer enters the office.

...Oh, no! Here we go again; I was really enjoying "Robin Thicke - When I Get You Alone" and then he started the 2nd verse with "...baby girl you da $#!+, that makes you my equivalent..." Clearly this is going to take some work to truly get all of the language issues cleaned up.

(Isn't it ironic that in at least the United States, you can describe all kinds of violence or sexual content in song lyrics & it will likely be acceptable for in-office listening, yet a single "cuss word" is unacceptable? We're an odd group!) ;D

Now playing: "DMX - Party Up (Radio Edit)" EXCELLENT. Clean for office listening. (Unless you listen to the storyline... see my comment above! LOL.)

One other thing to consider (if you haven't already) is promotion. Where does your target audience spend their time on the web? Are their message boards for people who are fans of the 00s? Or, are there sites dedicated to the culture of the 00s who would be either interested in doing a blog post on you or perhaps trading links.

One VERY minor issue (and perhaps this should wait until other things are modified, unless this is easily solved) is, there seems to be a lot of "gibberish" in the text content sent to the media player. I'm listening via Winamp, for example, and I currently see the stream name as Only%2D00s?group=999. I'm suspecting there's something in either the keyboard language or something odd in your encoder that's adding all the extra content. You may want to try experimenting a little with characters to see what gives a "clean" output of "Only 2000s." This is a minor issue, of course... nobody's likely to stop listening because of a little meta-data issues. ;D

I've heard a couple of announcements today, informing us of the hour's special programming, that more specialty programming would be coming up in an hour, and that an hour of general music from the decade was coming up... I really liked them! The content was good, the voice sounded very good, clean and clear... voice announcements by internet radio station owners often are a weak point either due to poor equipment or poor voices, but you have neither problem. Great job!!!

I really think you've got something here; keep after it and let's see what happens! I think you're certainly on the right track.

 

[Wwzapper]

Things like 'Only%2D00s?group=999', that's a Radionomy problem. There's simply nothing to do about that. There are a lot of people complaining about that at the Radionomy board.

I will replace the 'adult lyrics tracks' you mentioned as soon as possible (sadly, there's something wrong with Radionomy at the moment, I can't do anything, and also can't listen to my stations).

Saying something between the tracks? I've got the worst radio voice possible; really. It would also take too much time to manage that in the right way, because of having THREE stations.

About promotion: I've done that as much as I can. The stream is at a huge amount of sites, in iTunes and in Windows Media Guide. The links below are also shown when I'm posting at the biggest Dutch board, with lost of people in their twenties and thirties. And also at the board Inthe00s.com.

Nice to hear you like the announcing voice; It's a free voice over I got by registering at a Dutch version of Radiodaddy (Voiceoverforum.nl). It's one of the best voices available there, also broadcasted at Good Vibrations, but you can't ask for a specific voice: It's a matter of luck of he's the one to record his voice, although in my request I emphasized 'must sound international'. I couldn't get him for my newest station 87-96; thank God the one who accepted the request was also very good (but some requesters at Voiceoverforum have less luck).

 

[Wwzapper]

Again some tracks replaced or even removed. And does somebody know if there's a list of songs with adult/offensive/curse words lyrics? Somewhere on the web?

I searched for it, but I can't find it.

 

[JeeperOne]

I've got about 5 months left to attract enough listeners; if not, the station will be removed from Radionomy.

I hope it survives! Internet radio is no easy road; I've been at this since 2000 (since 1996, if you count pre-recorded shows), & have attracted an audience but not advertisers. The industry is STILL so young; it will take another 10 years or so before most serious internet streamers will be able to make a living doing this.

Even longer than that considering the pro-wealthy economy

Cheers

 

[radiojomo]

You can listen to POP2K on SiriusXM by going to this link: siriusxm.com/freetrial

No credit card required!
How does Radionomy works? Seems like a good solution to maintain a station for free!

 

[Wwzapper]

I can't explain everything. But go to http://www.radionomy.com/en/static/aboutus for more info.