If out of market internet listeners were counted in the ratings that fact would be addressed, wouldn't it?
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Where Oldies Music Still Lives
- Thread starter Dr Wayne
- Start date
If out of market internet listeners were counted in the ratings that fact would be addressed, wouldn't it?
Forced?? No. But I'd like a choice.
Let's face it, you big time radio guys. You suffer from "Ross Perot Syndrome". Every listener that listens to a small internet or OTA station is a listener that's sucked away from the big time station that you work for. And you don't like it.
I consider Pandora to be competition, but the hobby sites have never been of any concern to me.
The reason is that they so severely narrowcast that there is no way for broadcasters to satisfy the few listeners that they have. These are the people who always... whether in the 60's or the 90's or today... have listened to much less radio than the listeners who give us our bread-and-butter AQH levels.
One of the problems with Live365 is that they were having trouble monetizing the listening to that huge list of "stations" because they did not have enough listeners to make agencies go out of their way to add them to buys. In fact, they were looking for more financing when the revised digital rights rates went into effect.
Us "big time radio guys" like to be paid for what we do. We like to work for profitable, successful stations. There is not enough time in the day to be able to worry about streams that nationally have 50 to 100 active streams.
I'm concerned with stations that, to cite one example, have over 60,000 AQH persons in AMD in just one market. Not with the hobbyists who are, in any event, closing down faster than a baseball game in a thunderstorm.
Radio stations can't offer a choice that includes stiffs because they will lose listeners with every negative song. Menus are for choice. You can't pick which songs to skip on the radio.
But they are counted.
Out of market stations and out of market station streams are counted in each local market. However, they have to be at a level of 0.1 share points (0.05 to 0.14) to have sufficient reliability to be included. Otherwise, the low levels of listening can not be statistically projected into the universe.
In other words, Nielsen will report any station that gets listening in each market they measure, OTA or stream. But it has to have a "measurable" audience.
There are hundreds of stations that appear in markets other than the home market. Some appear in 6 to even 10 markets, even if they are not home to those markets. But they have enough listening to meet Minimum Reporting Standards. Hobby streams and most out of market streams are just not that interesting outside the home market and the surrounding areas.
Not me. Show me a small internet or OTA was successful, and it's one who's doing what we suggest. The rest, like this one, are bouncing around from format to format, hoping to catch a wave that'll work.
I take a different view from TheFonz. I worry about who is already my listener and keeping them happy. If I owned a store that sold business suits, I'd worry about keeping my customers and building my customer base from people who buy business suits. I would not be worried about the guy who does not need nor buy business suits. In other words the small micro streamer does not even register on my radar. Most all of these formats will only attract a handful of people, none of which would listen to my station that is charged with gaining as many listeners as I can get.
Another thing critics of radio people fail to remember: it is not about us. It is us doing the job we have been hired to do. By saying it is us to blame for a format, too many commercials, playing the same old songs and such is akin to saying the cook at McDonald's is responsible for the quality of meat purchased for hamburgers by McDonald's when the cook merely cooks the meat patty. In other words, we are doing a job dictated by those who employ us and the decisions we make are based on achieving the goals the employer wants.
And might I add, there is a place for that micro internet broadcaster that serves a handful of listeners. The best venue seems to be streaming. Radio cannot economically do such a format. I call myself a music explorer, always have been, but I'm in radio and that is my job. On my own time, it is fun to hear music I may not have heard before but I must agree that with each unfamiliar song, there is a big risk I will go to the next stream. In fact, it is so difficult to find many on the same page when you play new or unfamiliar material. I compare it to Christianity. I worked a Christian station and thumbed through a book of denominations in North America. It was like a White Pages directory for Los Angeles or New York City...so many, many groups with their own set of standards that don't mix with any other group entirely. I suppose the varied backgrounds create the human condition that means few are entirely on the same page on every aspect. These microcasters are fine tuned for their groups yet radio tries to find the common denominators that allow as many differing groups to come together to make a crowd so it can be economically viable.
Another thing critics of radio people fail to remember: it is not about us. It is us doing the job we have been hired to do. By saying it is us to blame for a format, too many commercials, playing the same old songs and such is akin to saying the cook at McDonald's is responsible for the quality of meat purchased for hamburgers by McDonald's when the cook merely cooks the meat patty. In other words, we are doing a job dictated by those who employ us and the decisions we make are based on achieving the goals the employer wants.
And might I add, there is a place for that micro internet broadcaster that serves a handful of listeners. The best venue seems to be streaming. Radio cannot economically do such a format. I call myself a music explorer, always have been, but I'm in radio and that is my job. On my own time, it is fun to hear music I may not have heard before but I must agree that with each unfamiliar song, there is a big risk I will go to the next stream. In fact, it is so difficult to find many on the same page when you play new or unfamiliar material. I compare it to Christianity. I worked a Christian station and thumbed through a book of denominations in North America. It was like a White Pages directory for Los Angeles or New York City...so many, many groups with their own set of standards that don't mix with any other group entirely. I suppose the varied backgrounds create the human condition that means few are entirely on the same page on every aspect. These microcasters are fine tuned for their groups yet radio tries to find the common denominators that allow as many differing groups to come together to make a crowd so it can be economically viable.
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I agree, except the catch 22 is the streaming royalties. The bad news for the music industry is they've created a situation where the system that makes them the most money is also the system that hurts these kinds of micro-genres.
But I've read elsewhere that the big six (I think) multinationals that control most of the music sent to radio these days don't really care about discovery, just as long as they can keep moving superstar product. And there don't have to be many superstars around to generate sufficient sales -- at least not before the I-want-it-for-nothing mentality took root among the consumers -- so artist development can be taken care of through TV talent competitions, artist managers with "ins" with influential record company executives, buzz from the club scene, YouTube viral status, etc. So will the major labels now cut loose any act that doesn't fall into the narrow list of radio genres that advertisers will support?
So true. I suspect many of these small internet streamers aren't in it for the money, so are hobby streamers. It seems if they get more than a handful of listeners, they can't afford it because nobody has figured out how to get the internet stream to pay for itself.
No telling how things will evolve in the future. Strange things have happened over the years. Who would have thought people would pay for a bottle of water 30-40 years ago. Who would have figured 40 years ago that people would pay to watch TV (cable/Dish, etc.) in a city with several over the air choices? For that matter, how many imagined the internet 30 or 40 years ago? If you suggested that, folks might have thought you were crazy. My point, what seems like it might never work or be possible might very well work in time. Perhaps a day will come that listeners will pay to hear that hobby streamer after a nice sample is heard free. If that day comes, it won't be too soon!
No telling how things will evolve in the future. Strange things have happened over the years. Who would have thought people would pay for a bottle of water 30-40 years ago. Who would have figured 40 years ago that people would pay to watch TV (cable/Dish, etc.) in a city with several over the air choices? For that matter, how many imagined the internet 30 or 40 years ago? If you suggested that, folks might have thought you were crazy. My point, what seems like it might never work or be possible might very well work in time. Perhaps a day will come that listeners will pay to hear that hobby streamer after a nice sample is heard free. If that day comes, it won't be too soon!
I haven't read that from any major label. Their big focus is breaking new acts. They're signing more artists than any radio can play. They haven't slowed down. So I think they're trying to do both: Make money from the superstar acts, and also glom onto some of their non-sales revenue streams like touring or publishing. While at the same time signing and supporting new artists, once again taking a share of merch, touring, or publishing.
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K.M. Richards
Guest
They are counted, to the degree possible (see post #86 for an explanation of how difficult it is to "show up" in an out-of-market book, then consider how it will never happen with only one -- maybe two -- listeners in any given outside market), but online listening is such a small percentage of any station's listening -- rated or unrated -- that those listeners are not considered in any music research done by a station, which is going to only include people in their home broadcast market.
And I see no evidence that WKCE has done any standard music research anyway. They don't seem to be in a financial position to do so ...
They're counted in normal online traffic reports. Probably very easy to access.
The station knows the number, and they have to report it to SoundExchange when they pay the royalties.
The bad news is the higher the number, the higher the royalty rate. So they don't benefit from lots of out of market listeners. In fact they're penalized.
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K.M. Richards
Guest
I don't believe he means counted for royalties (having specifically said "ratings") but is instead rebutting David's statement about the lack of any reason to believe that songs automatically should be played based on making the charts as currents.
This is just another case of someone not accepting that the choice of gold today is based not upon previous chart position but on whether or not today's listeners want to still hear the song in question ... in sufficient numbers, and without larger numbers of listeners who do not want to hear same.
And not just "today's listeners" but rather today's listeners who are in the station's target demographic. That's a more specific group. Because while I'm sure there's a percentage of people in their 60s who may want to hear certain songs, they're not the ones most advertisers want to reach. So that group is best suited for a subscriber service that doesn't care about advertisers.
You are correct about "today's" listener. The audience for formats like that of WKCE left commercial radio long ago to find other sources for their music. It will be difficult for WKCE to get that audience back.
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All ten of them.
"Regular" people build their Spotify or ITunes playlists based on their moods and activities. May be "excercise", "work", whatever. It's only people who post on boards like this who have "everything that was ever recorded since the beginning of time". The idea that if you only merged 10,000 people's personal playlists together into one giant playlist, rotated 10-50,000 songs that you would please everyone all the time is nuts. In the Knoxville market, we have a non-com with an Americana format which does well, and a AAA format which gets little in the way of ratings. WKCE reached an area roughly from the South Knoxville Wal-Mart to the Sevierville city limits. How many 45 collectors would there even be in an area like that? Wos, 10 people are listening to obscure music streams. Lucrative audience to be sure
If those 10 people happen to be Warren Buffett, William Soros, Donald Trump, Bill Gates, Paul Allen, the Koch Brothers and the Kardashian Sisters, that might be all the audience you need!
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