Better Listening Through AI?

What if the only goal of your radio station was to seamlessly negotiate a wide library? That’s the mission of Midtempo Radio, a UK-based online station brought to my attention by James Cridland.

https://twitter.com/JamesCridland/status/1590148171111567360

Midtempo Radio is well-explained on its own site by its creator. Its music doesn’t overlap with what what most Ross on Radio readers are dealing with on a regular basis. But any station promising better listening through AI certainly intrigues those of us who schedule music for a living, especially as stations look to do more through rule-setting and less through a human touch.

Because I write about Midtempo’s music inexpertly, I was listening mostly to see if it was as seamless an experience as intended. Here’s Midtempo Radio at 12:30 p.m., UK time, on November 15:

• Portishead, “Glory Box” (1994)
• Amor Tobin, “Nova” (1998) — ambient instrumental, one of the cleanest segues
• Junior Boys, “FM” (2006) — I knew them from their forays into dance; this was mellower; another clean segue
• Nick Mulvey, “Meet Me There” (2014) — Moody, electronic-flavored singer-songwriter music. This segue was more noticeable
• Peven Everett, “Ghetto” (2005 )— Neo-soul meets downtempo electronica. Best of set for me
• Four Brothers, “Siya Zviriko” (1988) — Zimbabwean band championed by the BBC’s John Peel
• Arabian Alien, “Romantic Encounter” (2020) — Lo-fi, lush
• Future Sound of London, “All This Has Happened Before” (2022) — Downtempo electronica with classical instrumentation
• Pretz, “Buzz Change” (2006) — Instrumental and the first truly seamless segue where I looked up and saw that the song had changed
• Lee “Scratch” Perry, “Lorna Skank” (1997) — reggae 

Here’s a shorter monitor from overnights on Nov. 10:

• Ruth Brown, “5-10-15 Hours” (1957) — jump blues/R&B with a similar feel to “The Wallflower”/“Work With Me Annie”
• Peter Holbozheimer, “These Boots are Made for Walking” (1978) — instrumental version of the Nancy Sinatra hit with a ’70s easy-listening feel
• Marconi Union, “Strata” (1921)
• Mos Def, “Lifetime” (2006) — by Mos Def, but with a jazzy ’70s/“Quiet Storm” feel
• Koop, “Koop Island” (2006) — mid-’00s chill with an abrupt ending that made it the least smooth segue of what I heard
• Keith Rowe, “Groovy Situation” — reggae, not the 1970 Gene Chandler hit (although if that’s what you’re now looking forward to, it’s easily found)

I’ve also had another stretch with Midtempo Radio in the car. After a few listens, I can confirm that it is a relatively seamless experience. There was only one occasion where I looked up at the player and realized that the song had changed, but there was also only one segue that I found jarring. 

The extremes of the songs I heard in my various listening sessions ranged from very placid to Benny Goodman’s famously energetic “Sing! Sing! Sing!” In general, however, as you’d expect from a station called Midtempo Radio, this was a station that felt like it dealt mainly with “2s and 3s” on the music scheduler’s 1-5 range of possible choices for tempo and energy. I’m facing the challenge of “Tears in Heaven” out of “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)” on a regular basis.

Seamless isn’t what a lot of programmers are going for these days. Over the last 20 years of Bob- and Jack-FM Adult Hits formats, we’ve taught listeners that the trainwreck segue that emphasizes variety isn’t a mistake. I also recently heard an afternoon host on a Classic Hits station do a particularly tight transition a month ago, and it only brought home how rarely somebody is behind the controls to make great segues happen. From the early days of AOR, some of the appeal of segues is that a person did them.

Because I’m more of a “4s and 5s” kind of guy, even when I’m working, listening to Midtempo Radio also sent me back to another station famous for wide variety, WWFD (The Gamut) Washington, D.C., which I first wrote about in 2015. Adult Hits variety is facilitated by taking songs that usually do well in research, but from a handful of different formats. The Gamut has always gone well beyond that in terms of mixing eras, styles, and familiarity level.

The person behind the Gamut is PD Dave Kolesar, whose primary job is senior engineer for sister all-news giant WTOP. There are radio stories of the CE broadcasting his own music during transmitter repairs or as a placeholder during a station sale. Kolesar made a format out of it.

If I had to describe the Gamut as sounding any way in particular, what sticks out is the non-comm Triple-A music I often hear. But there’s clearly a lot in this sample that doesn’t meet that description. “If you don’t know what you want, stop here,” declares one sweeper.

Here’s the Gamut at 7:10 a.m., November 16:

• Strawbs, “Lay Down”
• Rolling Stones, “Tell Me”
• Three Dog Night, “Feeling Alright” — the Traffic/Joe Cocker song
• Cher, “I Found Someone”
• Grouplove, “Good Morning”
• Luscious Jackson, “Love Is Here”
• Bill Baker, “Get Down” — neo-rockabilly
• Velvet Underground, “After Hours”
• Chubby Checker, “Dance the Mess Around”
• Tony Rice Unit, “Old Train”
• Bananarama, “Cruel Summer”
• Nellie McKay, “Ding Dong”
• Ava Della Pietra, “My Boyfriend”
• Nikola Vujicic, “SuperSwing” — similar dance feel to “Mr. Saxobeat” and other big-band era throwbacks
• Jeff Buckley, “By the Sea”
• Melanie S Jane, “Sense of Reality”
• Mungo Jerry, “Baby Jump” — No. 1 UK hit; chaotic boogie very different from “In the Summertime”
• Rugbys, “You, I”
• Strawberry Alarm Clock, “Incense and Peppermints”

(Update: After this story was published, I heard from Kolesar. I had asked him how the station handles its music mix. Was he sitting at the scheduler deciding to play Velvet Underground into Chubby Checker?

Kolesar wrote, “The Gamut doesn’t have a daily log that I create per se, and the ‘secret sauce’ is putting each song into a specific category. There are a lot of categories, sorted by time period, tempo and genre. The playlist is a random track from each category, in a certain order to maintain a smooth(ish) flow.

“The playlists are dayparted so there is a different feel for different parts of the day. Additionally, we have shows on the weekends, giving the station more personality. And finally, there are many times on special occasions that I change the playlist for a special event, or take the automation for a drive because I feel like it.”)