Star vs. Lake

[vw86]

I don't know why everyone thinks stations are playing these single versions and/or pitching up songs to "play more commercials". There is no set number of songs they need to play an hour. If the goal is more spots, they can just play one or two less songs. They have no requirement or need to speed up/cut songs for spotload.

If a Classic Hits station opts for a single version of a song versus a 6-7 minute album version, it's much more likely to be a PPM thing. If a station is perceived as speeding up music, they are probably actually pitching it up for a brighter sound.

 

[Yabadabado1]

I don't know why everyone thinks stations are playing these single versions and/or pitching up songs to "play more commercials". There is no set number of songs they need to play an hour. If the goal is more spots, they can just play one or two less songs. They have no requirement or need to speed up/cut songs for spotload.

If a Classic Hits station opts for a single version of a song versus a 6-7 minute album version, it's much more likely to be a PPM thing. If a station is perceived as speeding up music, they are probably actually pitching it up for a brighter sound.

I play the shortest National Anthem I can find (1:14) seconds at sporting games and even then I have people say it's "Too long, can't you speed it up?" I tell them "yeah, I can, but then it sounds like an Alvin & The Chipmunks version" but in reality I could play it faster and make some adjustments so it would sound normal but not inclined to do so just for some impatient people.

 

[MarioMania]

I remember the Lake did all request lunch or something

In Vallejo in like 2010, I used too stream the Lake, when I requested a song

They don't do that no more

 

[davideduardo]

I don't know why everyone thinks stations are playing these single versions and/or pitching up songs to "play more commercials". There is no set number of songs they need to play an hour. If the goal is more spots, they can just play one or two less songs. They have no requirement or need to speed up/cut songs for spotload.

And speeding up each song by a few percent only gives an aggregate of a minute or so an hour in "found time". Not enough to be meaningful.

The original objective of speeding music up was a product of the earlier 70's when a little extra speed made songs a bit brighter on an AM music station. As most music moved to FM, that objective disappeared and there was really no reason to speed up records.

If a Classic Hits station opts for a single version of a song versus a 6-7 minute album version, it's much more likely to be a PPM thing. If a station is perceived as speeding up music, they are probably actually pitching it up for a brighter sound.

I never saw a PPM reason for speed-ups, and I was on the early Arbitron committees going back to 2001 during the Philly and Houston tests. If a listener hates a song, they usually tune out in the very first seconds if they are close to their radio or device... not after 3 or 4 minutes.

 

[davideduardo]

In the heyday of Top 40 "more music", WIXY used to speed up the 45 rpm records by wrapping friction tape around the turntable motor capstan so they could boast playing more songs an hour than WHK or WKYC. T

The "pros" found putting one of those thick Post Office rubber bands around the pressure roller that drove the turntable itself to be better! The advantage is that a rubber band has no "splice" that introduces rumble.

 

[johnbasalla]

I play the shortest National Anthem I can find (1:14) seconds at sporting games and even then I have people say it's "Too long, can't you speed it up?" I tell them "yeah, I can, but then it sounds like an Alvin & The Chipmunks version" but in reality I could play it faster and make some adjustments so it would sound normal but not inclined to do so just for some impatient people.

I applaud your decision not to speed up the National Anthem. Doing so could also be considered disrespectful to our National Anthem.

 

[Santa fe]

The "pros" found putting one of those thick Post Office rubber bands around the pressure roller that drove the turntable itself to be better! The advantage is that a rubber band has no "splice" that introduces rumble.

And then came the direct drive turntables, like the Sony that had the vari-speed slider, intended mostly for club DJs! One station actually pitched them in the trash when they went CD. I should have grabbed one.

 

[MediaLover]

Star needs to freshen up or expand its playlist. I keep hearing Luke Combs' Fast Car, Boyz II Men and Mariah Carey's One Sweet Day, and/or Magic's Rude every time I tune in to the station.

 

[MegaBlue]

Semi-related, as the thread pertains to 106.5: I was noodling around in the iHeart app looking for commercial-free streaming music to play at work, and I found one called "Pop Drive," which heralds itself as "pop variety hits, commercial-free." Sounds good, right?

Well, I listened to it, and the music went all over the place, in terms of genres, like a particular station I could mention. The branding also sounded very much like a particular station, right down to "the totally '80s Time Warp Lunch."

POP DRIVE IS 106.5 THE LAKE.

I always had a feeling that iHeart just took an existing stream, slapped some new branding and commercials on it, and called it a station, but good grief, I never thought it was actually the case. Oddly enough, Pop Drive is more fun to listen to than the branded counterpart, mostly because it doesn't have any commercials.

Oh, and to further illustrate my point: The national contest is back in full effect, and Pop Drive openly includes the keywords to text in with, calling it "a boatload of bucks." Sounds a lot like "a shipload of cash," doesn't it?

(Also, an unrelated side note, speaking of streaming stations: Pride Radio Flashback is quite the diverse assortment of music, and while I missed the call letters, I did hear that the iHeart app's stream comes out of Cleveland! Yay, us!)

 

[radiofollower]

Semi-related, as the thread pertains to 106.5: I was noodling around in the iHeart app looking for commercial-free streaming music to play at work, and I found one called "Pop Drive," which heralds itself as "pop variety hits, commercial-free." Sounds good, right?

Well, I listened to it, and the music went all over the place, in terms of genres, like a particular station I could mention. The branding also sounded very much like a particular station, right down to "the totally '80s Time Warp Lunch."

POP DRIVE IS 106.5 THE LAKE.

I always had a feeling that iHeart just took an existing stream, slapped some new branding and commercials on it, and called it a station, but good grief, I never thought it was actually the case. Oddly enough, Pop Drive is more fun to listen to than the branded counterpart, mostly because it doesn't have any commercials.

Oh, and to further illustrate my point: The national contest is back in full effect, and Pop Drive openly includes the keywords to text in with, calling it "a boatload of bucks." Sounds a lot like "a shipload of cash," doesn't it?

(Also, an unrelated side note, speaking of streaming stations: Pride Radio Flashback is quite the diverse assortment of music, and while I missed the call letters, I did hear that the iHeart app's stream comes out of Cleveland! Yay, us!)

The Wal-Mart of radio. It does not matter what city you go to, they all look the same.

 

[snowdog88]

POP DRIVE IS 106.5 THE LAKE.

I always had a feeling that iHeart just took an existing stream, slapped some new branding and commercials on it, and called it a station, but good grief, I never thought it was actually the case. Oddly enough, Pop Drive is more fun to listen to than the branded counterpart, mostly because it doesn't have any commercials.

It wouldn't surprise me if there are several, if not a 100 or so iHeart stations out there that use the same exact playlists heard locally here in Cleveland. It's no different compared to when WMJI, WHOF & WMXY all flip to Christmas music, relaying off the same piped in playlist that is 3 minutes behind or ahead of the other, with the station's own inserts and commercials being the only thing different between the three. And yes, one station may go to a commercial break, while the other continues to play the songs that would have been heard on the other. Now you see why iHeart Cleveland no longer needed those studios/offices in Independence, and moved to a building in Downtown Cleveland, which is most likely smaller and probably consists mainly of network servers along with a few studios. Makes me wonder how much longer it will be until iHeart starts creating 24/7 networks for each format for national distribution with no local personality or identity, much like a typical Sirius XM station, but with local commercials and the required public affairs on Sunday mornings.

 

[Rusty Muck]

The Wal-Mart of radio. It does not matter what city you go to, they all look the same.

At least Wal-Mart has uniform branding. The current setup is more akin to a series of stores with the previous mom-and-pop exterior of decades ago that all sell the same white-label products. (I might be dating myself but it'd be like the Rego's / Rini's / Fazio's grocery chains only selling the Stop-n-Shop in-house Seaway brand and nothing else.)

If iHeartMedia adopted uniform branding for the vast majority of their music stations nationwide, I doubt the majority of listeners would care?

 

[thenetwork]

The Wal-Mart of radio. It does not matter what city you go to, they all look the same.

Don't compare iHeart to Walmart... At least Walmart has "Walmart Radio" piped into most of their stores with LIVE JOCKS who TAKE REQUESTS and the music selection has a bit more variety.

Now if you want to compare iHeart with Dollar General, with skeletal staffs and disheveled aisles, then fire away!!!

 

[MegaBlue]

It wouldn't surprise me if there are several, if not a 100 or so iHeart stations out there that use the same exact playlists heard locally here in Cleveland. It's no different compared to when WMJI, WHOF & WMXY all flip to Christmas music, relaying off the same piped in playlist that is 3 minutes behind or ahead of the other, with the station's own inserts and commercials being the only thing different between the three. And yes, one station may go to a commercial break, while the other continues to play the songs that would have been heard on the other. Now you see why iHeart Cleveland no longer needed those studios/offices in Independence, and moved to a building in Downtown Cleveland, which is most likely smaller and probably consists mainly of network servers along with a few studios. Makes me wonder how much longer it will be until iHeart starts creating 24/7 networks for each format for national distribution with no local personality or identity, much like a typical Sirius XM station, but with local commercials and the required public affairs on Sunday mornings.

I'd love it if stations went 100% original for Christmas music and actually played a variety of music instead of the same batch of songs across every station, but I understand that it's a business move to just mandate "you're going to play iHeart Christmas Classics for the next month and a half" instead of having to license a bunch of new music for hundreds of stations across the country. That's why I have my own Christmas music iPod playlists, haha!

As far as playlists go, my issue wasn't that 106.5 used a standardized playlist. My issue was that 106.5 is a standardized playlist, but with different branding. If you listen to Pop Drive (which, I'm sure, every iHeartRadio "variety hits" station uses as a source), they have programmed-in cutaways now for the keyword of the day, including commercial break lead-outs and lead-ins right after the other, so the stations that use it can program in their own commercial breaks and whatnot down to the second. I'm sure it's not a live 1:1 take on the playlist, rather it's delayed a bit so stations can choose which songs to play and where to put the commercial breaks, which makes sense why some stations will play the keyword at the top of the hour, 20 minutes in, 30 minutes in, etc.

iHeart also already has different 24/7 networks for different formats, everything from doo-wop and 50s music to iHeart 2010s. I think there's a KISS-FM standardized playlist, as well. My only concern with streaming the different playlists in a workplace setting is explicit language in songs. I don't know enough about the playlists to know which ones censor content and which ones are just streams that play music, regardless of language. I know Pop Drive is safe, and I'm fairly certain the iHeart 90s/2010s/etc lists are safe, but I don't know enough about all of them to know what's safe and what's not. Are they all safe and I'm just being paranoid, or are there some that aren't?

 

[vw86]

It's not like the old satellite formats that were dependent on network cues, timed stopsets and exact timing to the top of the hour. The music logs are programmed at the national level and then stations have the option to use those logs rather than a PD/MD creating their own.

Big Classic Hits = Lots of classic hits stations in the cluster
Cool Oldies = some of the classic hits stations that trend older
iHeart60s/70s/80s/90s = stations that do an occasional holiday with a decade themed weekend or a daily lunch hour will pull from here (WKDD's 90s weekends over holiday weekends match with iHeart 90s, for example. If The Lake does an 80s weekend it will match with iHeart80s)

They also have Rock Drive which is very similar to Pop Drive and is used for several Variety Hits stations in the company. I also enjoy 70s Rock Ride and 80s Rock Ride but I'm not sure if those are used for any terrestrial stations.

 

[MegaBlue]

I did also check out Pop Rewind, and it shares the same ID cues with WKDD, but they do play the hip-hop/rap tunes that KDD doesn't, so it's not a 1:1 match, but I'd be willing to bet that's where they draw their music library from. As for KDD's 90s weekends, I love checking them out, and iHeart 90s is the one decade station that I turn to for at-work streaming when I want something different from Pop Drive/Rewind.

One thing I did notice, in checking out the corporate streaming apps, is that Audacy dropped those fun playlists like "Girl, You Know It's The Mall" at some point. I'm curious to check out Bru's station, but idk if the music is work-safe there or not. I know the iHeart stations are largely work-friendly, being that they're pulled from OTA broadcasts (Pride Radio Flashback is 106.5-3, iHeart 90s is from Sacramento, etc), but I'm not sure about the Audacy ones.