At the moment, it’s Harry Styles. At various points over the last four years, it was Post Malone, Ed Sheeran, Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, Dua Lipa, Olivia Rodrigo or Doja Cat who all effectively had two or three viable currents at the same time, not counting guest appearances, and often with two songs in power rotation. For a few artists, it’s happened more than once. At Hip-Hop and Rhythmic radio, it’s been Drake for most of the last twelve years.
For a lot of the CHR format, the artist separation issue has long been decided. A few weeks ago, a follower tweeted an image of a station log where Styles accounted for two out of three songs. Whenever that happens, I can usually count on a programmer asking “why is anybody still clinging to artist separation?” By that, I know they mean “why are you still hung up on this issue?” Because most of their peers indeed stopped sweating the issue around the time of Post Malone’s “Rockstar”/”Psycho”/”Better Now” trifecta four years ago.
Many of our music scheduling gurus have moved on as well.
“Artist separation is the least important consideration,” says Music1’s Steve Warren. Although he adds, “If Harry Styles has three at once, I’d play the strongest one in full [power] and packet the other two [in a second power slot].”
“With streaming and more on-demand audio, why not have an artist separation of 12-20 minutes? Or less!” says RCS’s Nathan Mumford. “If there’s ‘all the Harry,’ it means the audience is OK with hearing ‘all the Harry.”
“If they’re hits and you’re here to play the hits, play them,” says MusicMaster’s Laurie Knapp.
So why even discuss artist separation now? For one thing, with the majority of Adult Contemporary and Hot AC music trickling down from CHR, it now affects formats that don’t have the same mission to overindulge current hot trends that Top 40 does. WJBR Wilmington, Del., PD Eric Johnson notes that “I’ve got two Biebers in A-rotation, two Eds in A and B, and two Duas in B.” Now he has Styles in A “and we’re soon to have a B. And we’re a slow-to-add Mainstream AC.” (As PowerGold’s Steve Silby notes, AC stations also may want to protect “As It Was” from “Blinding Lights” and “Take on Me.”)
There are a few holdouts. While it’s not unusual to see all three current Styles titles—“As It Was,” “Late Night Talking,” and “Music for a Sushi Restaurant”—come up in the same hour at major-market Top 40, successful CHR WKRZ Wilkes-Barre, Pa., has Styles at more like an hour’s interval at max, and sometimes more like 90 minutes. But that’s on a station whose powers turn over half as much as other CHRs.
Radio’s nine-minute average listening occasions have, throughout this discussion, become a rallying cry for speeding up rotations: don’t disappoint the audience in our short time with them by not giving them Harry right away, or in the case of a Classic Hits station, “Every Breath You Take.” But I still wonder if short listening spans are driven by lack of variety.
Radio needs Harry Styles now. “As It Was” is likely radio’s record-of-the-year. It arrived in April and put an end to the consumer press and trade magazine stories about the lack of new music in 2022. But is there some less scattershot-seeming way to take advantage of that than every other song?
Part of what brought this article to fruition was my wondering if CHR needed a series of clocks now that featured a separate Harry Styles category. Having a Styles category—the three currents plus “Watermelon Sugar,” “Adore You” (and, for some stations, “Golden”)—would allow a more systematic separation, even if only 20-30 minutes, and actually allow the gold titles to a play in a way that they aren’t now. Those clocks featuring a hot artist category would go on a grid that can be deactivated once Styles is between hit singles, although there will certainly be another similar artist by then.
Laurie Knapp notes that some stations specifically care only that a hot artist doesn’t play back-to-back. To me, Styles double-plays are a less random way of organizing his hits than “every other song,” and also allow some of the gold to play. RCS’ Mumford and MusicMaster’s Joe Knapp are both in favor of double-shots as a way of accommodating hot artists. Readers who recall the Beatlemania of winter/spring ’64 remember hearing a lot of double-shots (as well as entire nightly countdowns) devoted to the Beatles. At that time, Knapp remembers, “Everything that wasn’t a Beatles song was a tune-out.” (Except, perhaps, in New York, where there were also three songs by the Four Seasons happening at once.)
Remembering the time when the Beatles were “every other song” (as John Garabedian recalls) and impossible to overindulge raises the question of whether CHR is taking sufficient advantage of Styles or any hot artist. Styles owns Top 40 now, but beyond giving away Styles concert fly-aways, I’ve heard surprisingly little of Top 40 trying to own Styles. It sounds basic, but I haven’t heard “the No. 1 Harry Styles” station or “your station for Harry Styles.” A listener actuality associating Styles with your station would be more effective than the fake-sounding “your station is all I listen to”-type drops that punctuate stations sweepers. But I haven’t heard that yet.
Some other suggestions from RCS’ Mumford:
- Special Artist Overrides to protect artist separation for acts who aren’t Styles. (I’ve also recently had the experience of hearing artists who don’t have currents playing twice within an hour.)
- “If I was programming today, I would revert from my usual timing focus with Min Seps and revert to slotted scheduling and Hot Spots/Analysis. Essentially, let them all plot and identify any issues that are less than 8 minutes and then, based on the music sweeps and adjusting each position based on the current artist.
- For example, I would make the first song of the five-song music sweep one of their currents and kick off the next music sweep with another so that each music sweep features one of their currents, pending on the position. Typically, we wouldn’t schedule a ‘New Music’ earlier in the music sweep, but since it’s such a current artist, that ‘New Music’ [is effectively] promoted to ‘Subpower’ New Music.
- 12pm: Power in Position 1. Subpower in first song after stop set.
- 1pm: Power in Position 2 (for variation) and then the second song after the stop set (especially if there’s a jock talk in that position to help [a newer title].
- Rinse and repeat.”
- For example, I would make the first song of the five-song music sweep one of their currents and kick off the next music sweep with another so that each music sweep features one of their currents, pending on the position. Typically, we wouldn’t schedule a ‘New Music’ earlier in the music sweep, but since it’s such a current artist, that ‘New Music’ [is effectively] promoted to ‘Subpower’ New Music.
From MusicMaster’s Joe Knapp:
- “Make your own mix versions to combine 2-3 currents by the same artist.
- “Use Recombinant Scheduling for hot currents” to allow more flexibility in the order that titles come up.
- “Use the artist turnover wizard to see what the ideal and suggested separation settings would be.
- “Use Optimum Goal Separation for primary and secondary artists.
- “Make ‘short attention span’ edits.”
One of Joe Knapp’s suggestions is “tell the record companies to find more artists that can generate hits.” That might seem flippant, but one of the issues with overindulging a hot artist, especially when it involves a five-month power like “As It Was” is that hearing any one artist so much points out CHR’s other product issues as well.
Does artist separation still matter? Please leave a comment.
