mediabase request forms vs calling in

[popnroll]

any thougths on this?  which is more effective?

[JOJO SIWA DERANGEMENT SYNDROME]

Even if you call in a request, there is no guarantee that the station will play the song.

One thing I have noticed is that some of the stations that have the Mediabase form list certain songs that you could request but those stations never ever actually play those songs. They could hypothetically have those on the list and then maybe they might play them if one requested them.

There was a radio station in my market from 2004 to 2009 that played Dance music and they had certain songs on there that they would never play despite requests. I called them up and requested the same songs and they didn't play them. Occasionally they did some contest where they had to play a certain song that was requested, so I intentionally picked one they dropped and they played it that one time.

Eventually I called enough and engaged a certain DJ in conversation about it and they said that those pages and stuff are suggestions and can impact programming decisions, but more often than not, they don't take it into account because they know what tests well and they'll do what they have to do. A significant majority of the songs that were huge on the other stations that played the same genre/format were not getting played on this station and I asked why and they said it was because those just didn't test well here and they decided not to add those to their playlist. They were an independent station so they didn't program their stuff according to what would make the industry people happy or those with a certain cache happy, or do something that would be beneficial for the station.

A few years back, there was discussion in the CHR/Pop section about how in a few cases, certain tastemaker stations intentionally dropped or stopped playing a certain song because of fans banding together to request the song even more so that song would do better. I forget whether it was for a Britney Spears single that wasn't getting as much play as it should or it was another artist.