How do radio decide on what songs to play?

[uncanny614]

1.How do FM radio stations decide on what songs to play, now that 98% of them, no longer have a request line number for people to request songs they want to hear?

2.Do record labels have to pay each radio station to get them to play a song?

3.Do the program & music director of each station get to pick and choose which songs they want to play?

4. If the Program, Music Director or both just hate a song and decide to under play a song, or not play it at all, does that mean the whole city is $ucked, if people (in the city) want to hear that song & do like it?

I am sure in each city, there are songs that have gone top 10 or 20 on the music radio charts & the
radio station act like the song does not exist at all.

5. How do radio stations know what songs are doing well & which ones are not? They can't get any feedback from people in the city or town because they have no request lines to get feedback from?

I can't find anything on these questions on Google, Yahoo or any other place online.

[SabrinaFan]

1. Often stations have playlists that determine how often to play certain songs. The most popular songs are often played in something called power rotation, which is usually about once an hour. Other songs are only played once every two hours, recurrents might be played once every three hours, and new music is frequently played during the evening or overnight. Every station is different, though. This article explains it in greater detail: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotation_(music)

2. No. Stations have free will to choose what songs they play and when.

3. Yes, but it is based on how well a song is performing on a station. A company named Mediabase tracks how many times each station plays a song, and the amount of audience listening to a song each time it is played, based on a sample size.

4. I am unsure of the answer to this question. I would assume underplay means it's not getting good ratings, but I am not sure what makes a station decide never to play a song, other than perhaps a past song by that artist didn't have strong audience metrics. And yes, the second part of your question does happen. My local CHR station is currently ignoring "Jaded" and "Baby Don't Hurt Me," and other ones they've ignored in the past off the top of my head are Charlie Puth's "Left and Right" and French Montana/Swae Lee's "Unforgettable," despite that both of those went top 10.

5. It's based off of audience metrics, similarly to Nielsen ratings for TV. I only skimmed this article as it's getting late here, but it appears like it has some further information on specifically how audience is measured for radio. live365.com/blog/radio-audience-measurement

[lasvegaskid]

Jun 19, 2023 20:46:11 GMT -5 uncanny614 said:

1.How do FM radio stations decide on what songs to play, now that 98% of them, no longer have a request line number for people to request songs they want to hear?

2.Do record labels have to pay each radio station to get them to play a song?

3.Do the program & music director of each station get to pick and choose which songs they want to play?

4. If the Program, Music Director or both just hate a song and decide to under play a song, or not play it at all, does that mean the whole city is $ucked, if people (in the city) want to hear that song & do like it?

I am sure in each city, there are songs that have gone top 10 or 20 on the music radio charts & the
radio station act like the song does not exist at all.

5. How do radio stations know what songs are doing well & which ones are not? They can't get any feedback from people in the city or town because they have no request lines to get feedback from?

I can't find anything on these questions on Google, Yahoo or any other place online.

www.liveabout.com/payola-influencing-the-charts-2460759#:~:text=As%20it%20stands%20today%2C%20payola

www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/pay-for-play-lawsuit-radio-1287139/

[lasvegaskid]

Jun 19, 2023 20:46:11 GMT -5 uncanny614 said:

1.How do FM radio stations decide on what songs to play, now that 98% of them, no longer have a request line number for people to request songs they want to hear?

2.Do record labels have to pay each radio station to get them to play a song?

3.Do the program & music director of each station get to pick and choose which songs they want to play?

4. If the Program, Music Director or both just hate a song and decide to under play a song, or not play it at all, does that mean the whole city is $ucked, if people (in the city) want to hear that song & do like it?

I am sure in each city, there are songs that have gone top 10 or 20 on the music radio charts & the
radio station act like the song does not exist at all.

5. How do radio stations know what songs are doing well & which ones are not? They can't get any feedback from people in the city or town because they have no request lines to get feedback from?

I can't find anything on these questions on Google, Yahoo or any other place online.

Another thing in the era of corporate radio, the local program/ music director might have limited leeway in what they can play. Most of the playlist is decided by a honcho in an office 1000 miles away.

[drspongejr]

From what I decipher, they look at streaming and past performance to determine what to and not play.

[uncanny614]

Thanks for the replys back.

1. How do FM radio stations know when to put a song into heavy rotation (50 or more times a week) and when to put it into light rotation (20 or less times a week)?

Radio stations no longer take requests from people in like 99% of citys.

2. How does FM radio know when to keep playing a song & when to drop it?

3. Can record labels force radio stations to play a song? 

4. Can radio stations manipulates Mediabase audiences Impressions?  

Example:
If the Music or Program directors don't like a song in the top 10, 20, 30, or 40 on their format music chart, just play it overnight when most people don't listen to radio and say the song is not testing well at the station? 

[SabrinaFan]

Oct 29, 2023 22:00:18 GMT -5 uncanny614 said:

Thanks for the replys back.

1. How do FM radio stations know when to put a song into heavy rotation (50 or more times a week) and when to put it into light rotation (20 or less times a week)?

Radio stations no longer take requests from people in like 99% of citys.

2. How does FM radio know when to keep playing a song & when to drop it?

3. Can record labels force radio stations to play a song? 

4. Can radio stations manipulates Mediabase audiences Impressions?  

Example:
If the Music or Program directors don't like a song in the top 10, 20, 30, or 40 on their format music chart, just play it overnight when most people don't listen to radio and say the song is not testing well at the station? 

1. See #5 of my last reply, it is based on audience metrics and callouts - which are audience surveys that determine how audiences are responding to a given song. If a song is doing well and getting good metrics, it will likely be put into heavy rotation. Stations may put new songs in light rotation to test out if audience is liking a song or not. They may also put songs in light rotation if a song is still popular enough to play, but not getting good ratings on that particular station.

2. Again, station decisions are often driven by audience metrics. The callouts (audience surveys) mentioned above specifically ask questions about how audiences are responding to a song, as well as burnout (in other words, how tired people are getting of the song). If the callout surveys show a heavy burn rate or bad audience reception, the station may drop the song. There are overall callout surveys, which I believe combine all the individual station surveys, that can determine whether a large amount of radio stations decide to drop the song at the same time.

3. Not usually, although the one way around this would be world premiere deals. These usually happen with larger radio companies (iHeartRadio) and not individual stations, where a label will strike a deal with the company to have some of their stations play a new song at the beginning of every hour on release day. For example, Taylor Swift’s most recent album 1989 (Taylor’s Version) got a deal where iHeartRadio played a new song from the album every hour.

The one other example I can think of is Alexa’s “Wonderland,” which won the American Song Competition and got an iHeartRadio deal to be played a certain amount of times on all their stations. This deal only lasted two weeks and the song quickly plummeted off the charts without the support of the deal. This is not common, though.

4. It’s doubtful that a station would do this, as they are always going to want to play songs that are going to get listeners to tune into their station. Even if the program director doesn’t like it, the audience might enjoy it, so it would be silly of a program director to purposefully sabotage a song like that simply because they don’t like it. Many program directors don’t have full-time shifts as DJs anyway - for example, the program director of my local station is only on-air for four hours per week during a weekend shift - so they would have no reason to purposely sabotage a song like that just so they don’t have to hear it.

[uncanny614]

(Audience metrics and callouts - which are audience surveys that determine how audiences are responding to a given song)?

1. Who are doing the audience surveys for callouts?

No one has ever call me or anyone I know for any radio surveys.


2. What if the audience survey people are wrong?

They say a song is not good & testing poorly, but does well with sales and streaming? We have all seem this before with radio stations not wanting to play certain songs.

3. So if a song comes on the radio & people turn from the station, or the radio off, the audience impressions goes down? That is how radio decides people don't like a song?