Songs in power for a long time now?

[tall_guy1]

There's several Sabrina Carpenter songs which are still currents on CHR/Hot AC (outside of Bad Chem) which have been there a lot longer than hits of the past and Jelly Roll too has songs at least 6 months Ole still as a current. Does anyone else notice this?

 

[radiofan2023]

Longer than what hits of the past?

 

[ted chittenden]

There's several Sabrina Carpenter songs which are still currents on CHR/Hot AC (outside of Bad Chem) which have been there a lot longer than hits of the past and Jelly Roll too has songs at least 6 months Ole still as a current. Does anyone else notice this?

Though I don't follow current CHR, I think a couple of things should be pointed out.

1) During the early 1950s prior to the rock and roll eera, songs stayed on the Billboard charts (even though there were only twenty-five listings) for many months at a time. This gradually changed with the advent of rock and roll so that by the mid- and late 1960s, somgs were moving up and down the charts very fast, with some #1s being on the hot 100 less than three months. That began to change in the 1970s, and then really changed, after Billboard started using SoundScan for its hot 100 listings in December 1991. You now had songs in the hot 100 for six months or longer and that hasn't changed despite some tweaking of the SoundScan system to add more rock tracks in 1998 or 1999. So I'm not really surprised by songs staying around for a long time on the Billboard charts now.

2) How do you know that the stations involved have listed these songs as currents instead of recurrents. There was a time when recurrents were being played less than currents but I don't know if that's the case anymore.

 

[b-turner]

For reference: A CHR I was with rotated their Hot Currents every 4 hours and 15 minutes. Our 'Medium" was every 5 hours and 15 or 30 minutes. The newest songs once every 7 hours and one could be dropped on a busy commercial day.

Our recurrents, limited to the past 12 months, rotated every 25 hours and were refreshed with 1 or 3 drops each week.

 

[TexasTom]

Though I don't follow current CHR, I think a couple of things should be pointed out.

1) During the early 1950s prior to the rock and roll eera, songs stayed on the Billboard charts (even though there were only twenty-five listings) for many months at a time. This gradually changed with the advent of rock and roll so that by the mid- and late 1960s, somgs were moving up and down the charts very fast, with some #1s being on the hot 100 less than three months. That began to change in the 1970s, and then really changed, after Billboard started using SoundScan for its hot 100 listings in December 1991. You now had songs in the hot 100 for six months or longer and that hasn't changed despite some tweaking of the SoundScan system to add more rock tracks in 1998 or 1999. So I'm not really surprised by songs staying around for a long time on the Billboard charts now.

2) How do you know that the stations involved have listed these songs as currents instead of recurrents. There was a time when recurrents were being played less than currents but I don't know if that's the case anymore.

I do remember that the charts slowed down with the advent of SoundScan -- in essence, it turned out that measured sales were not quite the same as reported sales. Specifically, after a record peaked and began dropping, apparently retailers would quit reporting sales for that record. I think that there was a similar phenomenon when airplay switched from being reported to being measured.

But I can't help but wonder if the switch from music sales being dominated by physical media and digital downloads to being dominated by streams is further slowing the charts. Because if we rewind to the old days of people buying physical records or CDs, Once a particular listener had bought their copy of that CD, that was it. Whether someone listened to that CD a single time then stuck it on a shelf or listened to it hundreds of times over the next six months made absolutely no difference when it came to chart performance. In contrast, with streaming the charts reflect every single time a song gets listened to -- and that's a very different metric since it reflects ongoing listening rather than a point-in-time sale.

 

[Oldbones]

For reference: A CHR I was with rotated their Hot Currents every 4 hours and 15 minutes. Our 'Medium" was every 5 hours and 15 or 30 minutes. The newest songs once every 7 hours and one could be dropped on a busy commercial day.

How long ago was this? Any CHRs I've ever worked at had a much faster rotation than that.

 

[b-turner]

This was mid-1980s. It was a long rotation but with only 2 choices in town for CHR, 2 for country and 1 each for AC and Christian, we realized we had long TSLs. Always came out #1 the 3.5 years I was there.