CHRles said:
Besides, I'm sure plenty of Atlantans get exposed to certain national hits via Youtube, Pandora and other stations they can listen to online, or at the gazillion or so nightclubs scattered throughout the ATL.
But the problem with YouTube is that unless you're psychic, you cannot tell which songs on there are hits! Lets say you were locked in a room or a deserted island for three years and you only had access to food, water, and YouTube. You'd never be able to guess that most of the hit songs mixed up with a plethora of other stuff on youtube were actually hits! It all blends together as "stuff on YouTube".
Now lets say you were deserted on an island with all the things I listed above, but with free transportation to a few traditional nightclubs every now and then added to the list. You still couldn't really tell which songs were hits (although you may start to get a better idea of which ones could be) but you would know exactly which ones were CLUB hits!
I'm sure most people who listen online and hear unfamiliar songs probably just assume that... well, I'm not exactly sure what they assume, but I doubt they are like "OMG, it must be another hit I've never heard before!"
...But then again, maybe people are smarter now than I'm thinking based on the past.
I still remember back when I bought tapes and cd's and heard certain hits on the radio in one town. Then, I went to another city and discovered that my cd's/tapes actually had more hits on it than I thought! I never knew that stations in other states were playing other songs on that cd, so I just assumed that there was only one hit on it... and I thought that the other stations in the other town just decided to play extra stuff off the same cd! I also remember back when I never knew that Mighty Dub Kats, Max-A-Million or Outhere Brothers.. (I could go on longer with the list)...etc. existed. Imagine if we had YouTube or night clubs playing those hits back then but I never heard them on any station in my town. I'd still never know they were anything more than "club songs" (and that's if I went to nightclubs)!
As far as exposure... you can get exposed to a lot of things and never now it!
Oh, and if you flip around the dial and you only have ONE station on a weak signal playing certain songs out of a bunch of somewhat similar but different formats - on a new station called "WILD" that's delivering hits that many haven't heard on the radio before in a playlist fashion that they aren't used to, most non radio people are not going to assume that those certain songs must really be big songs everywhere else. They'd probably just assume that the station does wild and outrageous stuff. I wonder how many people in ATL. think "dancing in the dark" by Dev is really a hit? They probably just think the station might "be nuts" for playing it. Not to mention "back seat" by new Boys & Dev, which also only got played on WiLD. I'd love to be a fly on the wall in someone's room in ATL when "saxobeat" is played on WiLD 105.7.. I'm sure many people listen in awe and amazement just to see what other "peculiar & foreign" stuff like "where them girls at" they will play next! They're probably like "OMG I saw this song on YouTube and it was on the Nicki Minaj album with that Florida guy OMG so she does well with techno now?".
