CHR/Top 40 is moving record slow. Following HAC/AC route?

[iHype.]

Top 40 radio is now in the slowest pace it has ever been in history at this point pretty much. The stations are putting hits the listeners are familiar with in untouched rotation rather than trying out new music.

What I noticed that is even more shocking is, across the board Top 40 stations are putting hits from last Summer back into top rotation. This is something you'd expect from an HAC/AC station, not Top 40 stations!

Z100:


11. Jonas Brothers - Only Human (released July 2019)
14. Ed Sheeran & Justin Bieber - I Don't Care (released May 2019)


New York's 2nd Top 40 station:


10. Shawn Mendes - If I Can't Have You (released May 2019)


LA's KIIS-FM:


13. DJ Snake - Loco Contigo (released June 2019) [was #5 last week!!!]
15. Khalid - Love Lies (released February 2019)


DC'S WIHT-FM:


11. Ed Sheeran - Beautiful People (released June 2019)
15. Ed Sheeran - I Don't Care (released May 2019)

Atlanta's WWWQ-FM:


7. Jonas Brothers - Only Human (released July 2019)
10. Shawn Mendes - If I Can't Have You (released May 2019)
11. Sam Smith - Dancing With a Stranger (released January 2019)

Detroit's WKQI-FM:


13. Ed Sheeran - Beautiful People (released June 2019) 
14. Khalid - Better (released September 2018)


In addition, you can clearly see on almost all these playlists songs like 'Circles', 'Hot Girl Bummer', 'Heartless', 'everything i wanted', 'Don't Start Now' which peaked well over 3 months ago on Top 40 still as high as top 5 & #1!


How do you feel about this? Is this a short-term dry period or indicative of a changing trend at Top 40 in the streaming era? 

I personally don't understand how anyone can tolerate these playlists anymore in the car.

[Deleted]

I guess its partially attributed to the combined factors of covid on the industry and pop radio's natural tendency to keep hit songs on heavy rotation for ages

Even though artists are still releasing music, maybe the lack of promo is what's making them hold back even more?

[Fire]

i might be completely wrong, but i feel that because of covid there are less people going in their cars and turning on the radio, so the radio wants listeners to tune in again by playing bigger hits. obviously with less people listening to the radio, there are less people listening to the same songs over and over again, making the burn rate for these songs a lot lower

i'm thinking that over on hot ac that if we didn't have this covid situation, someone you loved and the bones wouldn't be able to be the first songs to surpass a full year on since the recurrent rule change.

[Arnold]

Jul 3, 2020 23:22:09 GMT -5 iHype. said:

Top 40 radio is now in the slowest pace it has ever been in history at this point pretty much. The stations are putting hits the listeners are familiar with in untouched rotation rather than trying out new music.

What I noticed that is even more shocking is, across the board Top 40 stations are putting hits from last Summer back into top rotation. This is something you'd expect from an HAC/AC station, not Top 40 stations!


How do you feel about this? Is this a short-term dry period or indicative of a changing trend at Top 40 in the streaming era? 

I personally don't understand how anyone can tolerate these playlists anymore in the car.

I hate it!  This started long before the corona virus came along.

  In my day (1950's and 1960's) music turnover was very fast.  By 4 months almost every song was different.

[iHype.]

Jul 4, 2020 0:50:04 GMT -5 Arnold said:

Jul 3, 2020 23:22:09 GMT -5 iHype. said:

Top 40 radio is now in the slowest pace it has ever been in history at this point pretty much. The stations are putting hits the listeners are familiar with in untouched rotation rather than trying out new music.

What I noticed that is even more shocking is, across the board Top 40 stations are putting hits from last Summer back into top rotation. This is something you'd expect from an HAC/AC station, not Top 40 stations!


How do you feel about this? Is this a short-term dry period or indicative of a changing trend at Top 40 in the streaming era? 

I personally don't understand how anyone can tolerate these playlists anymore in the car.

I hate it!  This started long before the corona virus came along.

  In my day (1950's and 1960's) music turnover was very fast.  By 4 months almost every song was different.

Yep, Top 40 has been treading to record slow pace before the virus (songs like Love Lies, Eastside, Lights Down Low, Shape of You, Closer, etc had all broken longevity records or longest climb records). 

However it seems like COVID somehow made it even worse. Half the top 10 on Pop radio was released in 2019. All years prior didn't have this much old songs still top 10 by July. 

Personally for me, I dislike listening to Top 40 more than ever. I can't stand it these past months. It has drawn me away from Top 40 for the first time in awhile. 

[Deleted]

My local Pop station has Wow at #11. If it was any other recurrent I'd be pissed but it's the best hit song radio has had in several years so... 

[jdanton2]

i will post this here as well.

article sort of explains why songs are hanging around so long .

www.billboard.com/articles/business/chart-beat/9413144/the-weeknd-blinding-lights-record-return-no-1-pop-songs

What's behind the uncommon staying power of "Blinding Lights"?

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, "I think people have been longing for simpler times and a nostalgic escape," says Will Calder, director of branding and programming for Cox Media Group Pop Songs reporters WPOI Tampa and WPYO Orlando. "'Blinding Lights' is 2020's answer to [a-ha's 1985 Billboard Hot 100 No. 1] 'Take on Me.' It stands out because it's different, but also familiar. And, most importantly, it just makes you feel good."

Also potentially helping "Blinding Lights," and other established hits, according to industry sources, is that budgets for radio stations' audience research have been challenged amid the coronavirus. Faced with less measurable data, programmers may be opting to stick with what's been working instead of taking chances on newer, more unproven titles. Plus, less established acts can't tour or make in-person station visits at the moment, further reducing their avenues toward greater familiarity.

[Devil Marlena Nylund]

It's been slow for at least a couple years though. Having songs reach 30 weeks on the pop chart was relatively uncommon once the recurrent rules were introduced in the mid-90s. First it was a 25/26 rule, then 20/20, and eventually 10/20, and now there could be as many as half of the top 10 on the chart for half a year. Songs reaching the top 10 would normally do so much quicker than they have in recent years, where now it's not uncommon for songs eligible for recurrent to still be rising and where slow songs would eventually peter out and fall, now that's not always the case - they just keep rising.

But I would say, and have said on here several times over the last few years, that it's more due to streaming than anything else. I think many of us look at the pop radio charts with the same lens we did in the 2000s and the 90s and that's our mistake, because radio doesn't serve that same role. Radio doesn't break in new artists the way they did in past decades. Radio doesn't really break new songs either. Can anyone name a song in recent years that radio was first to break? And I don't mean songs that get radio deals since radio is still a tool for artists/labels to push new music.

Obviously people are still listening. Listening habits are different. Repetition is up because people are listening for shorter periods of time. On commutes, for example. Radio can't play too many songs people are unfamiliar with because most people want to hear something they (1)know and (2)like. So those new songs by new unknown artists - unless the songs are known through somewhere else (a meme, movie, commercial, etc), radio is going to tread lightly with when they're played and it won't be during high-listening times.

I think COVID has had an impact on radio charts because now we're not only seeing hits losing slowly but now they're also regaining airplay for more than a day or two. Bigger hits are lingering rather than just slowly falling. If listening time is down, that means radio needs to ensure they're holding onto the bigger hits for longer to keep the level of familiarity high, so while songs like My Oh My or Lose You To Love Me might still be able to reach #1, I would say those songs don't quite evoke the same reaction from listeners as Don't Stop Now, Adore You or Blinding Lights. Those are the type of hits that will be on recurrent and gold radio playlists for years to come - radio is just sort of rushing the trajectory of that up by a couple years.

[Michael1973]

The idea that "familiar" songs are more important than "new" songs dates all the way back to the mid-1990s, when chart turnover first slowed to a crawl. I hadn't really noticed that it was getting worse lately, but now that you point it out I'm not surprised.

It's maddening to me, especially since I've started listening to more streaming services and discovering some great songs over the past 18 months, many of which never even touch the national charts. Instead, we get hits from 9 months ago regaining their bullets, and other such nonsense.

[ChartReporter]

I Wanna hear more new music in CHR like KREV-FM, KRCK-FM, KFRH-FM, KBBK-F2, WZRT-FM This stations have a more fastest rotation between power, medium & new music....

[Crimsonio]

My station is the DC one and they've had I Don't Care AND Beautiful People in nonstop power rotation for almost an entire year now. I don't listen to the radio anymore because of that.

[vithor]

It doesn't help either that songs are getting shorter and shorter nowadays. One would think that it could give radio more airtime to play more stuff, instead the rotation of these already decade-old ass songs increased. I remember, maybe 10 years ago, a song at power rotation would get 100 spins a week max, nowadays #1 songs in a station gets at least 120 spins in a week. It clogs up the higher positions of the charts even more.

[Michael1973]

Jul 11, 2020 10:21:04 GMT -5 Crimsonio said:

My station is the DC one and they've had I Don't Care AND Beautiful People in nonstop power rotation for almost an entire year now. I don't listen to the radio anymore because of that.

I hardly do either, but the sad part is radio programmers insist that this is the only way to do things to keep ratings high. And I guess the majority of listeners don't really care.

[Ty]

^ I always assume they do so because there are data supporting this practice, no?

[gemini79]

I remember back in 2013 my local top 40 station were still playing in heavy rotation I'll be Missing You by Puff Daddy, Don't Speak by No Doubt and You Make Me Wanna by Usher, and they came out in 97. That's when I quit listening to radio, now I go by the mediabase chart and download my music. Back in the early 90s if a song was more than 2 years old, it wouldn't get played

[Enigma.]

It's sad but an average Jill and Joe are probably very happy to hear only Blinding Lights, Circles and I Don't Care on radio until the end of time.

[mkarns]

Jul 11, 2020 10:21:04 GMT -5 Crimsonio said:

My station is the DC one and they've had I Don't Care AND Beautiful People in nonstop power rotation for almost an entire year now. I don't listen to the radio anymore because of that.

You're not exaggerating; I just checked the WIHT site and both those songs are still currently ranked in the top 15. Are they on Ed Sheeran's or his label's payroll or something? Also in the "good songs, but enough already!" file are "Good as Hell" and "Circles" which they still have in the top 10.

Incidentally, #1, 2, and 3 there as of today are "Before You Go", "Adore You", and "Don't Start Now". (The followups to the latter two, "Watermelon Sugar" and "Break My Heart" are #7 and 11; in what is presumably an error "Adore You" is also listed at #13.)

[Michael1973]

Jul 17, 2020 18:11:50 GMT -5 Ty said:

^ I always assume they do so because there are data supporting this practice, no?

I know there's supposedly a ton of research that supports the way radio is programmed nowadays. Every radio programmer on the internet say so.

As an older listener who longs for the way radio was programmed in the 1980s, I think my biggest problem with the changes over the years is that it was initiated by corporate consultants, and not the listeners themselves. In the 1980s, radio was very popular. I don't think anybody was complaining that the music turned over too quickly. But along come these consultants who decide everything must change. And over the decades, their approach became the new normal that most die-hard music fans radically dislike. The average listener clearly accepted the changes, but it bugs me that they had no say in what happened.

[warriorsdyn98]

Other than Adore You by Harry Styles ... more new music and movement finally in the top 40 stations