In Choosing Music, Who Can You Trust?

Who can listeners trust to curate new music for them?

Who can radio trust to determine the hits when it’s curating music?

Both those questions came to the fore last week in the wake of a Wired magazine report on the hype of streaming DSP activity by a marketing firm, refocusing attention on something that many radio programmers long believe to have been a problem.

The Wired story prompted Strategic Solutions Research’s Hal Rood to, correctly, encourage radio to “do better on- and off-air leaning into human curation,” citing a similar opportunity to the concerns-about-AI that prompted iHeart’s “guaranteed human” positioning.  In his response to the Wired article, Rood also cited the manipulation as  “why programmers should not be overly reliant on streaming data.”

There are two questions here. What does leaning into curation mean for radio? It worked great for newly minted market-leader WXRT Chicago this week, but outside Triple-A, many stations have thrown their hands up after the realization that a “discover new music” sweeper in front of a six-month-old song isn’t enough. We’ve been encouraging PDs to protect the discovery franchise for nearly a decade. Next week, we’ll have more thoughts on that topic.

More immediately, though, the question is “who can radio trust?” Radio has been skeptical of streaming stories for both the right and wrong reasons. But the history of promoting music is the history of trying to game the system. In much of the data they look at, radio is allowing for a thumb on the scale somewhere. Some thoughts:

There is no real danger of today’s radio indiscriminately following streaming data — reliable or otherwise. For every PD such as Country KYGO Denver’s Brian Michel who has made streaming their secret weapon, there are dozens who still view the users of Spotify and other streaming services as “not our audience,” or believe that their data is too easily manipulable or not granular enough. 

Even if, as the Wired story suggests, the No. 21 Triple-A and No. 19 Alternative showings of Geese’s “Cobra” this winter were, well, goosed by streaming manipulation, the decisions by PDs to ignore streaming stories every week far overshadow them. Zach Bryan and Bad Bunny are proof. Nobody doubts Ella Langley’s numbers, but CHR is still resisting “Choosing Texas,” at a time when it should already be embracing “Be Her.”

The seemingly random nature of streaming success stories doesn’t help. Sometimes streaming launches a song easily recognized as a great radio record as well. More often, I have found myself asking, “The Marias? Really?” I knew there would be a point where “those damn kids” liked something that sounded like noise to me. I just didn’t know it would be so lo-fi. Understanding the old man’s tendency to dismiss any music you don’t like as hype — I’ve had commenters who think Britney Spears owes her career to payola —I’m trying to fight it.

Just as often, labels and radio are using streaming as an excuse to not promote or play songs. However often our industry may try to manipulate streaming, there is far less music in play at radio now because a label doesn’t choose to bring many songs to radio, usually citing a lack of streams. Each week brings a new swarm of mayflies unleashed to play out their short cycles by Tuesday. Some are songs you think would be worked — from major artists or new acts coming off their breakthrough hit. And some of the same PDs who won’t respond to a streaming story on a song they don’t like are just as happy to use lack of streams to declare a song a stiff.

Airplay charts, of course, have their own challenges. Many formats, particularly CHR, have fewer records worked to them, and the result is a soft chart where you can crack 100 spins or land in the mid-40s with airplay that is 75%-90% in overnights. With fewer songs, the No. 10-15 range on the charts is often occupied by songs propped up by overnights or small-market airplay; songs that I would have been fine with supporting for seven weeks, but are still inching toward the top 10. after four months. The impact of station concerts also remains an open secret, but, honestly, I’m happy if they provide radio with impetus to bolster careers, after a few years when stations were turning to early-’00s acts as their headliners, because of a lack of consistent new hitmaking artists.

There is not, at the moment, a single industry chart that measures the totality of what I would want to see as a programmer. On the Billboard Hot 100, some top 15 CHR airplay records barely exist. On the pop-airplay charts, the streaming success of “Choosing Texas” or “Baby Doll” counts for nothing. (At country, with its own chart controversies, “Texas” has already been classified a recurrent and removed. That’s also an issue.) What I want to look at — airplay in rated hours, augmented but not overwhelmed by streaming data — doesn’t exist in one place.

I trust callout, but it doesn’t solve everything. I don’t think there’s a thumb on the scale for callout, but as it slows down, it doesn’t always provide an answer for PDs who have to decide on “I Just Might” as a power even before callout has fully kicked in. It almost never provides an answer about those songs lingering just below the top 10, some of which do begin to call out just after radio and labels have moved on.

I trust requests again. As a programmer, I’ve found the request information from the syndicated Liveline show very useful, particularly in that time between an initial streaming story and ratification by callout, or the lack thereof. Often those requests add nuance when a song has streams but no callout (“Where Is My Husband!”) or after initial streams fade (“Abracadabara,” “Homewrecker”). Because I don’t always hear songs like “ILoveItILoveItILove It” or “Sailor Song,” seeing those songs motivate phone calls as well is helpful.

For the most part, radio’s request pipeline is dry, and PDs are happy to use Shazam as a proxy for curiosity calls. But if we want to be trusted curators again, having a place to discuss music with listeners is key. Requests were, for years, often hyped by labels or fan clubs; for the moment, because labels are more concerned with streaming, requests have become ironically more reliable.

I’d like to trust you. Outside Triple-A, the champions of music enterprise are a small handful who make frequent appearances in this column. Country WKDF Nashville is one of them. Rood cites ROR regular KMVQ (Now 99.7) San Francisco PD Jim Archer, one of the CHR PDs who probably most acknowledges streaming but uses it, correctly, as part of a very proactive music discovery process. I’m happy that since his arrival at KHTT (K-Hits) Tulsa, new PD Chris Ryan has been taking shots every few weeks — Holly Humberstone’s “To Love Somebody” last month, now it’s Sam Fender & Olivia Dean’s “Rein Me In,” also on Patti Marshall’s WKRQ (Q102) Cincinnati.

So why not trust yourself? At this moment, there is no such thing as playing the hits by merely following any set of data. A CHR PD playing a No. 14 airplay chart song that has no lateral support, and no other story, isn’t necessarily playing the hits either–but at least that person isn’t alone in their mistake. The success of Triple-A shows that even older listeners are willing to trust a radio station. When they go elsewhere to discover music, it’s often to family and friends, with trust built-in. Your choices might count more than ever, if you’re empowered to share them.

Next week, more about how to sell music curation.