Does radio still decide which classic hits are now “lost”?
After two years of determining the Lost Factor of hits from 1960 to 1999, I have sometimes wondered whether large-market broadcast-radio airplay will remain a fair representation of how much listeners still care about a hit song. Broadcast radio’s status as the gatekeeper for new music is already long diminished. But is radio still the leader of the past if syncs and streaming can return a “Running Up That Hill” or “Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)” to pop culture on a regular basis?
Last week, we updated our Lost Factor computations for Billboard’s Top 100 songs of 1983 and found those numbers to have changed glacially since we first calculated them two years ago. Running those numbers was a precursor to looking at Lost Factor if weekly on-demand streams, rather than airplay, was the determinant.
The Lost Factor formula was to divide year-end points as determined by placement on the year-end chart (100 points for No. 1, etc.) by BDSradio-monitored radio spins for the U.S. and Canada. Any song above a 1.0 could be said to be lost — measuring not just its lack of airplay now, but its trajectory to obscurity as well.
With none of the top 100 songs of 1983 receiving fewer than 100 streams last week — even Eddy Grant’s “Electric Avenue,” which is not available in Spotify — a threshold isn’t as neatly determined with chart points vs. weekly streams. Other than Grant, the highest streaming LF is 0.0037. The lowest is 0.000001547. In addition, the Luminate streaming numbers shown by BDSradio are rounded rather than exact over the 1-million-stream threshold. But certain patterns do emerge.
It is possible to see that with one prominent recent example, there aren’t many examples of low-airplay/high-streaming songs. It also happens that when Lost Factor/Airplay and Lost Factor/Streaming differ, some of the great “radio records” of 1983 are even more lost when it comes to streaming. Frida’s “I Know There’s Something Going On” might not get a lot of radio airplay now, but it’s even more “lost” when you look at streaming. The “turntable hit” that listeners didn’t buy in 1983 is now the song that ISP subscribers don’t stream in 2022, even when there’s no additional charge involved.
That doesn’t mean that lost hits don’t find some audience. Just as writing about Lost Factor meant I could count on almost any song finding a champion among readers, even the least-streamed of 1983’s Top 100 songs, “Fall in Love With Me” by Earth, Wind & Fire, got 23,000 streams in the week measured. That’s negligible in the streaming world, but it’s a suburb’s worth of listeners. But “Pass the Dutchie” by Musical Youth, powered — like Kate Bush — by Stranger Things, got upward of 5 million spins that week, making it the only song from the 1983 Top 100 in the same neighborhood as a current hit.
These are the top 15 Lost Factor/Streaming songs, with their Lost Factor/Airplay rank shown in parentheses.
1 – Laura Branigan, “Solitaire” (4)
2 – Culture Club, “Time (Clock of the Heart)” (40)
3 – Laura Branigan, “How Am I Supposed to Live Without You” (5)
4 – Eric Clapton, “I’ve Got a Rock ‘n’ Roll Heart” (49)
5 – Frida, “I Know There’s Something Going On” (14)
6 – Shalamar, “Dead Giveaway” (3)
7 – Quarterflash, “Take Me to Heart” (2)
8 – Stray Cats, “(She’s) Sexy + 17” (22)
9 – Styx, “Don’t Let It End” (1)
10 – Greg Kihn Band, “Jeopardy” (35)
11 – Rick Springfield, “Affair of the Heart” (8)
12 – Moving Pictures, “What About Me” (18)
13 – Sergio Mendes, “Never Gonna Let You Go” (31)
14 – Eddie Rabbitt & Crystal Gayle, “You and I” (20)
15 – Human League, “(Keep Feelin’) Fascination” (26)
When you look at Lost Factor/Airplay, there are also a few interesting differentials that emerge, mostly in the soft-rock/soft-pop area. It’s important to note that songs are being compared here by their two Lost Factor ranks, so that “I Won’t Hold You Back” is not the No. 51 streaming song of the year, it’s just No. 51 in proportionality between 1983 year-end points and last week’s streaming number. But that ratio isn’t as extreme as its year-end-then to airplay-now ratio.
7 – Toto, “I Won’t Hold You Back” (No. 51, Lost Factor/Streaming)
9 – Frank Stallone, “Far From Over” (25)
10 – Bob Seger, “Shame on the Moon” (37)
11 – Lionel Richie, “Truly” (36)
15 – Kenny Rogers & Sheena Easton, “We’ve Got Tonight” (43)
16 – Kenny Loggins, “Heart to Heart” (56)
When you look at the most-streamed songs in 1983’s Top 100, they mostly line up with what you’d expect to hear on the radio. After “Pass the Dutchie,” last week’s next five-most-streamed songs were “Billie Jean,” “Africa,” “Every Breath You Take,” “Beat It,” and “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This).” Only 16 of the Top 100 songs received more than a million streams for the week measured. But among those that stood out as songs not typically considered hits by AC and Classic Hits radio were these:
- Marvin Gaye, “Sexual Healing” — it’s lost ground at radio both as a ballad and because it’s by an artist from a previous era, but it’s still No. 16 with more than 1.1 million streams.
- Toni Basil, “Mickey” — it does get some airplay now, but it’s worth noting that “Mickey” is still No. 23 with more than 615,000 streams, even though only a rerecorded version is currently available.
- Air Supply, “Making Love Out of Nothing at All” (No. 24, more than 600,000 streams)
- Stevie Nicks, “Stand Back” (No. 30, more than 470,000 streams)
- Michael Jackson & Paul McCartney, “The Girl is Mine” (No. 34, it was sought out more than 316,000 times — or at least allowed to play through when people were streaming Thriller)
- Bob Seger, “Shame on the Moon” (No. 38, although his hit from 1983 is really “Old Time Rock & Roll,” which was reissued that year due to Risky Business, and which does top the million-stream mark.
If there aren’t so many streaming-only hits, should radio programmers not remain alert for those songs returned to pop culture by Stranger Things or in stranger ways? I stand by the recent suggestion that PDs remain alert for those songs. I recently read a discussion group suggestion that Classic Hits listeners had already long made up their mind about “Running Up That Hill” and that all the streaming activity was coming from their kids. But that’s like saying everybody had made up their mind about “Old Time Rock & Roll” before 1983.
