Pop radio lacking new songs

[IndieAdvocate / Spectrum]

Apr 7, 2023 14:32:59 GMT -5 Devil Marlena Nylund said:

Apr 7, 2023 14:16:18 GMT -5 IndieAdvocate / Spectrum said:

So if anyone wants a follow-up article that pertains to this discussion (if people find this insightful in any way)...

DID RADIO NOT LISTEN TO THE LISTENERS?

NOTE: This is an article that got released last week for Sean's newsfeed subscribers, and today for everyone.

There’s no link, but it’s sean ross’ radio blog right?

Shoot! Didn't link it correctly; I'll fix that.

EDIT: As noted, the link is now fixed. Thank you again for letting me know.

[lazer]

There always have been complaints of radio overplaying certain songs but this decade has been the worst in this case. I wouldn't be surprised or sad if pop radio becomes dead by the end of this decade. Spotify has done a better job of propping up new artists in their playlists.

[carriefan15]

Apr 3, 2023 15:35:10 GMT -5 Devil Marlena Nylund said:

The pop radio format is on its last breath. That's not to say pop music is dying but pop radio doesn't really have much of a purpose anymore. The format will cease to exist by the end of the decade. Mark my words. In its place will be a Hits Radio format that focuses on the big hits of the last 20 years, with some 80s and 90s throwbacks added in, and the biggest of the current hits - songs already established, rather than up-and-comers. It'll be the new model. It's already in progress.

One can only hope!! 🤞

[valleyghost01]

Apr 5, 2023 7:13:55 GMT -5 Devil Marlena Nylund said:

Classic Rock radio is my biggest nightmare. The same 20 songs in rotation since 1982? No thanks 😂

Hearing AC/DC's "Highway to Hell" for the 80th time in a week, yipee

[macattack]

I don’t listen to pop radio much, I’m very much in the Alternative/AAA/Active Rock realm, my taste ranges from Avatar to Arlo Parks. But a lot of the same problems are on those formats too. Young people aren’t tuning in and the trends towards alternative pop on all three formats in the late 10’s not only fizzled but witnessed full scale listener flight. Only a few stations are doing well. There have been mass DJ firings and an increasing sense that everything is on a shoestring. The sense of locality, connection, and purpose is vanishing.

iHeart especially has a sense of having given up on new music. Their Alternatives just play the aging “Sex, Drugs, Etc.” and the borderline-payola “Out of my Mind” by indie pop band little image once every three hours and are otherwise Classic Alternative stations playing the same 200 songs from the 90’s and 00’s. Their Active Rock stations do the same thing just with Linkin Park’s “Lost” and Shinedown’s “Dead Don’t Die”. Their sole AAA thinks “Something in the Orange” by Zack Bryan, itself an aging track, is more viable than anything else on the AAA format right now.

It really does feel like radio in general is dying. I don’t think it helps that a lot of the most popular songs of the moment literally can’t be played on the radio due to lyrical content or something else. Sometimes they try to make it work anyway (Active Rock is attempting to make “Watch The World Burn” by Falling In Reverse work despite its total lack of radio-friendliness because of how popular it is). Most of the time what Spotify faithful like and what radio listeners like don’t mesh.

I don’t know what the fix is. The few stations doing well seem to adapt a hybrid format, whether it’s fusing Alt and Active together or Alt and AAA. But that’s only one piece of the puzzle.

[jimijoop]

Same in my country Greece. In the last years most Greek radios are playing the same and the same songs over and over again to the point it becomes irritating. And often ignore new releases. Thank god i have Spotify and YouTube to do my job.

Rock radios are the worst. They are basically Classic Rock stations with the occasional 90s/00s song once per hour. You need to go to eclectic/sport radio stations to find more recent Rock stuff.

[daniel1784]

To follow up, It definitely seems like Audacy is done with the pop radio format. In less than a month, two different stations in top 10 markets shifted to Hot AC/Playing a ton of Golds. B96 in Chicago was the first, and now 96.5 TDY in Philadelphia. Audacy is definitely trying to predict that Pop Radio will die already and is just getting started. Almost all of their pop stations that they used to have had switched to other formats.

iHeart will eventually be alone in most markets, which means they have total control to play as little new songs as possible, because what other CHR are they going to listen to?

[areyoureadytojump]

radioinsight.com/blogs/250514/did-radio-not-listen-to-the-listeners/

DID RADIO NOT LISTEN TO THE LISTENERS?
by Sean Ross
April 7, 2023

One of the recurring themes about the new music process and the way that songs become hits, particularly the left-field hits and comeback songs that emerge from TikTok and streaming, is that the process of making hits has become more democratized. “The days of radio [telling the listener what the hits are] are over,” said a panelist at a recent Radio Days Europe session on the music process, but it’s a sentiment I’ve heard all over the world for the last 15 months.

It’s at this point that I feel the need to interrupt and mention the 65-year history of listener input at radio, and at Top 40 radio in particular. For the first 20 years, it was sales and request lines. For the last 45 years, that has been augmented by radio station listener research, developed in search of representing the entire audience, not just those “actives” who would call a request line. When I began covering radio, the first cliché that radio programmers offered so many times that it wasn’t even worth writing down was “find out what the audience wants and give it to them.” But they weren’t wrong.

When the request line was viable, it allowed KHJ Los Angeles to be the most influential Top 40 station of its era, and perhaps ever, by allowing a successful, dominant Top 40 station to add music aggressively, finishing with all but the biggest hits in less than ten weeks. The impact of sales was clear in the regional differences from market to market, but most felt at stations that started R&B and dance crossovers like CKLW Detroit or WABC New York. It was a return to looking at sales that powered WCAU-FM Philadelphia, the “Hot Hits” station that helped save Top 40 in the ‘80s by “looking at the box-office.”

Over the years, the question has never been whether to listen to the listener, but how best to listen to them, and which ones. That didn’t mean that radio didn’t take a role in offering the listener choices when it came to music. But the best, most enterprising program and music directors were always the ones acting as listener advocates, trying to get a sense of what they wanted before another station did.

The least democratic part of the process was often the chart game and label priorities. For the last 20 years, the explanation of why songs that became phenomenal through left-field means but not on the radio was that they weren’t being promoted. We’re seeing more unicorns now because labels would rather promote established songs, even left-field ones, than some new songs. We have a 13-year-old R&B hit on the pop charts now because of the industry quest for a “Sure Thing.” There are fewer label priorities and game plans now, but even the lack of them is a funhouse mirror, distorting the dialogue between radio and the audience.

There is little music enterprise left from radio now. There is less music being promoted to radio by record labels. There are roughly half as many current songs in play at Top 40 as was once typical. Radio station callout research has softened as the ratings of current-based stations have fallen, making callout better at determining recurrents than power rotation, its original strength. The sudden emphasis on TikTok has replaced radio’s 65-90% reach (depending on who you ask) with a gatekeeper used by only 33% of America, down from 36% last year. That doesn’t feel more democratic.

We’ve also found that listeners, left entirely to their own devices, are unreliable music directors. It’s not their job. Stop making Star Wars movies and you’ll probably find somebody willing to act one out entirely with Legos and post it on YouTube. Mostly, though, you’ll just stop having Star Wars movies. Listeners can supply radio with perhaps half the number of hits we once had. That’s because we’ve lost 50% of the process. We once wondered whether to listen to active or passive listeners. Now the process is best described as passive/aggressive.

It’s worth noting that the comment paraphrased above at Radio Days Europe came from Chris Price, head of music for Top 40 BBC Radio 1. That station, along with AC sister Radio 2, remain two of the world’s greatest examples of music enterprise. If handing things over to the listeners entirely meant I discovered as much new music as I do from either station, I’d have no objections. It’s worth noting that Radio 1 doesn’t rely as much on TikTok and streaming as it does on its specialty show hosts and producers. Even so, Price noted, he feels new music is getting shallower lately.

It would be easier to express enthusiasm for this new paradigm if current-based formats were winning, but most dramatically are not. As radio makes itself less necessary, it’s hard to find out what listeners want when the response may be “that’s okay, we’re good here” Laying out a buffet table for listeners with music was never merely dictating to them; it was merely starting a dialogue. To the extent that dialogue is taking place with friends and family now, it may be because we as radio people have gotten so quiet.

[areyoureadytojump]

radioinsight.com/blogs/251712/is-top-40-a-thing-of-the-past/

IS TOP 40 A THING OF THE PAST?
by Sean Ross
May 10, 2023

The dominance of throwbacks at Top 40 is not a new development.

Well before COVID or the TikTok takeover, I wrote about WHTZ (Z100) New York playing “No Scrubs” by TLC in 2016. Even then, it was a commentary on the state of the available product.

In 2020, with “Throwback Weekends” proliferating, and radio now looking for any “feel-good” to offer listeners, I suggested that “gold-based CHR” could become a format. WKCI (KC101) New Haven, Conn., the station that prompted that observation, didn’t have any reason to fully transition. But 18 months ago, WFLC (Hits 97.3) Miami did, getting out of a three-way CHR war of attrition in that market. Last year, we saw the launch of KZIS (Kiss 107.9) Sacramento, Calif.

Three flips in two years is hardly a groundswell, but WBBM-FM (B96) Chicago’s segue to a hits-and-throwbacks approach has ignited a lot of industry chatter, in part because B96 was a heritage station and part of CHR’s early-’80s comeback. B96’s move came in a week when there were some great CHR success stories. It also happened on a New Music Friday dominated by “flips” of ’90s dance songs, and a few days after the Luke Combs country remake of “Fast Car” went to pop radio.

Beyond the symbolism, B96’s 50/50 mix of older and recent titles isn’t all that different from what’s happening at those stations that are staying in Mainstream CHR. A lot of Top 40 gold libraries go back at least 25 years now. I recently came across a CHR playing Jennifer Lopez’s “Love Don’t Cost a Thing” — not the oldest song being played now, but one that felt particularly like AC radio.

I’ve always appreciated when CHR stations used gold creatively. I have also felt for a while that the first goal for Top 40 radio is to reclaim adult women. Daughters won’t likely come back to CHR unless moms can enjoy hearing it in the car again. I constantly tout such stations as WIXX Green Bay, Wis., and WKRZ Wilkes-Barre, Pa., which lean adult and constitute some of CHR’s biggest current successes.

But I understand the concern. “No Scrubs” might still beat all comers 24 years later. But if “Love Don’t Cost a Thing” is stronger than any new song CHR can play, there’s a problem. There are also both radio and label people who envision CHR’s future as an alternate-universe Mainstream AC, driven by gold-based variety, but also playing the hits 119x a week to satisfy radio’s nine-minute listening occasions.

The dominance of older music and older sounds has been bolstered by a credible belief that new music fans in any format have been siphoned away, leaving only those who want “radio’s greatest hits,” as well as the glacial pace at which songs develop in callout research. So must Top 40 radio be a “thing of the past”? Are its only weapons throwbacks, remakes, and “new” songs like Miguel’s “Sure Thing,” which at least had 13 years to marinate at three other formats back when radio could still set the agenda?

If Ross on Radio has anything to offer, it’s perspective on a CHR doldrums, and how it might end.

The landscape is different. The vibe is familiar. It is certainly possible that streaming and TikTok have so changed listener usage that CHR and other current-based formats cannot rebound. I can only tell you that the situation seems hopeless during every doldrums. That includes soft charts. I didn’t see callout at the time to know whether, say, “Love Sneakin’ Up on You” by Bonnie Raitt became 80% familiar in 1994, but it’s one of many doldrums top-20 chart records that now feels like it never happened.

There will be other format changes. Stay calm. B96 made a logical move for B96. Even when Top 40 began to rebound in the mid-’90s, there was traffic moving in both directions for a while, and respected programmers telling the trades that we would never return to “all the hits” Top 40 as we know it again. It was 1998-99, the very peak of the comeback, when most CHRs felt comfortable getting rid of their oldies weekends or not augmenting the gold library with “Brick House” or “When Doves Cry.”

The real issue is the stations that stay. I talk to a surprising number of people who look at CHR as it is now — too many three-share stations playing “Anti-Hero” in power for seven months owing to a lack of other choices — and aren’t concerned. Any existing CHRs that aren’t trying to fight their way out of the doldrums are making it harder for all the stations that are trying. Stations that don’t take a full-fledged B96 or WFLC approach have an opportunity to foster excitement about current music. They should probably also look at that throwbacks category and decide which of those songs are truly still exciting.

Better is better. Fixing the product is no guarantee of a rebound, especially given the changes in radio’s competitive landscape. But at no time during the doldrums of the early ‘80s, ‘90s, or ‘00s did programmers ever look at CHR and say, “Our music sounds great. I don’t understand why we aren’t winning.” Instead, stations like KKBQ (93Q) Houston, WXKS (Kiss 108) Boston, and KFRC San Francisco tried playing something other than the hits of 1982 as accepted by most other PDs.

There are stations winning with new music. Those stations are in Country, and they’re a relative handful, but they are stations that have leaned into the excitement created by streaming. I’ve cited WPAW (The Wolf) Greensboro, N.C., several times, but KSOP (Z104) Salt Lake City is the most aggressive PPM market station in the format, and is easily winning a three-way Country battle. It helps that streaming’s new stars are developing personalities in a way that few CHR acts have. It also happens that, even with consolidations, Country labels remain engaged with Country radio and there are still concerns about too much viable current product, not too little.

When I flip, you flip, we flip. My feeling about having a half-dozen new releases that are “flips” (or remakes or interpolations) of ’90s hits is similar to my recent thoughts on Country crossovers. They’re better as part of a balanced diet. They’re better when CHR programmers have 28 viable and more varied songs to play and not 14. As with the original Eurodance boom in 1986-87, they’re contributing fun and energy for now. If programmers want some other records, they should help break some.

[Az Paynter]

It would be a start if CHR stopped caring so much what's streaming well and what isn't. Radio has killed off a fair chunk of new songs early because they weren't streaming well. None of them ever had a chance to get close to the top 10. And there's plenty of songs that are at risk of the same fate while radio leans on the handful of songs that DO have streaming behind them (which are all already in the top 10, so those songs are format zombies).

Basically; streaming said 'f**k your format', time to say 'f**k you' right back and play the new stuff you're given 'cause chances are none of it is gonna stream well anyway.

[SabrinaFan]

Fascinating article; thanks for sharing! It is definitely interesting to think about how much less frequently artists are pushing songs to pop radio. I imagine that's what's giving some of those weird songs a chance at being promoted in the "Cool New Music" section (i.e. "Calm Down Karen" by Dianña, "Mary Go Round" by Big Daddy Swolls, and "In Love with Amazon Prime" by Karly C).

[kcdawg13]

The entire industry seems to be stagnating honestly, look at the Spotify Top 50 and see how many old ass songs are still sitting there. Anti-Hero, As It Was, Unholy, etc.

Audiences are having as much trouble of letting go as programmers are, we really need something like Nirvana or Lorde to sweep all this boring shit away. Maybe it'll be PinkPantheress and her bizarre brand of pop, maybe it'll be Doja and her "new direction" she wants to go in, maybe someone completely new will come out with something crazy that'll be a trend that doesn't last for only a year tops (like the pop-punk revival). I'm not sure, but all I know is something needs to happen.

[wjr15]

May 15, 2023 15:45:50 GMT -5 kcdawg13 said:

The entire industry seems to be stagnating honestly, look at the Spotify Top 50 and see how many old ass songs are still sitting there. Anti-Hero, As It Was, Unholy, etc.

And then there’s album cuts that have no push whatsoever in the Top 50 like Cruel Summer and Angels Like You. I even saw Starboy on that list which was a #1 single back in 2016/17. I have to agree with you that it seems like the music industry as a whole has no clue where it’s going next.

Edit: I just took a look at the TTH playlist and the number of songs from 2022 on that list is annoying: As It Was, Anti-Hero, Cuff It, Unholy, I Ain’t Worried, I’m Good, Made You Look, Bad Habit, I Like You.

Yet, current singles like Jaded and Trustfall are nowhere to be seen on that playlist.

[r0ckstartrey123]

In all honesty radio needs to push something creative and different if there’s nothing new from any big artists coming out any time soon(Olivia Rodrigo, Justin Beiber, etc). They need to push stuff from genres of artists that aren’t so popular anymore, but still make music, what ever happened to artists such as Fall Out Boy, The Chainsmokers, ILLENIUM, Kelly Clarkson , Kesha, Etc. Those are just a few artists I think of that were played on radio during my childhood. They need to stop pushing singles from all these new TikTok artists and start pushing nice new singles and non-singles from albums that have recently come out.

In all honesty though I don’t think I have too much faith in the radio industry anymore, with their lack of variety, they clearly seem to only care about viral TikTok stuff. I do wish they’d change and go back to the way they used to be though.

[r0ckstartrey123]

Another station was just flipped to a Hip-Hop and throwbacks channel. Power 106 in Atlanta GA.

pulsemusic.proboards.com/thread/215425/power-106-repositions-today-throwbacks

[lazer]

May 15, 2023 15:45:50 GMT -5 kcdawg13 said:

The entire industry seems to be stagnating honestly, look at the Spotify Top 50 and see how many old ass songs are still sitting there. Anti-Hero, As It Was, Unholy, etc.

Audiences are having as much trouble of letting go as programmers are, we really need something like Nirvana or Lorde to sweep all this boring s**t away. Maybe it'll be PinkPantheress and her bizarre brand of pop, maybe it'll be Doja and her "new direction" she wants to go in, maybe someone completely new will come out with something crazy that'll be a trend that doesn't last for only a year tops (like the pop-punk revival). I'm not sure, but all I know is something needs to happen.

Not only that but the TTH playlist on Spotify has a lot of 2022 hits. Plus, it doesn’t really seem to be a driving factor on the Spotify charts. Late 2021 through today has so much stagnation in the music industry, I don’t know why.

[neel]

May 15, 2023 21:00:28 GMT -5 lazer said:

May 15, 2023 15:45:50 GMT -5 kcdawg13 said:

The entire industry seems to be stagnating honestly, look at the Spotify Top 50 and see how many old ass songs are still sitting there. Anti-Hero, As It Was, Unholy, etc.

Audiences are having as much trouble of letting go as programmers are, we really need something like Nirvana or Lorde to sweep all this boring s**t away. Maybe it'll be PinkPantheress and her bizarre brand of pop, maybe it'll be Doja and her "new direction" she wants to go in, maybe someone completely new will come out with something crazy that'll be a trend that doesn't last for only a year tops (like the pop-punk revival). I'm not sure, but all I know is something needs to happen.

Not only that but the TTH playlist on Spotify has a lot of 2022 hits. Plus, it doesn’t really seem to be a driving factor on the Spotify charts. Late 2021 through today has so much stagnation in the music industry, I don’t know why.

That’s the thing I also don’t get, the first two years of this decade were pumping out hits left and right on all genres and formats, but ever since like September 2021 the entire industry just went stagnated unexplained. With the only active hits being songs constantly sampling and being “Blinding Lights” knockoffs. I really hope this doesn’t continue for the rest of the decade.

[neel]

May 15, 2023 21:00:28 GMT -5 lazer said:

May 15, 2023 15:45:50 GMT -5 kcdawg13 said:

The entire industry seems to be stagnating honestly, look at the Spotify Top 50 and see how many old ass songs are still sitting there. Anti-Hero, As It Was, Unholy, etc.

Audiences are having as much trouble of letting go as programmers are, we really need something like Nirvana or Lorde to sweep all this boring s**t away. Maybe it'll be PinkPantheress and her bizarre brand of pop, maybe it'll be Doja and her "new direction" she wants to go in, maybe someone completely new will come out with something crazy that'll be a trend that doesn't last for only a year tops (like the pop-punk revival). I'm not sure, but all I know is something needs to happen.

Not only that but the TTH playlist on Spotify has a lot of 2022 hits. Plus, it doesn’t really seem to be a driving factor on the Spotify charts. Late 2021 through today has so much stagnation in the music industry, I don’t know why.

That’s the thing I also don’t get, the first two years of this decade were pumping out hits left and right on all genres and formats, but ever since like September 2021 the entire industry just went stagnated unexplained. With the only active hits being songs constantly sampling and being “Blinding Lights” knockoffs. I really hope this doesn’t continue for the rest of the decade.

[IndieAdvocate / Spectrum]

May 15, 2023 22:23:34 GMT -5 neel said:

That’s the thing I also don’t get, the first two years of this decade were pumping out hits left and right on all genres and formats, but ever since like September 2021 the entire industry just went stagnated unexplained. With the only active hits being songs constantly sampling and being “Blinding Lights” knockoffs. I really hope this doesn’t continue for the rest of the decade.

Remember, 2020 and early 2021 had the go up against the COVID-19 pandemic, where big names were holding off on releasing new music. The moment when entertainment at-large was shut down for the time being, all we mostly had was the concept of having artists go viral through TikTok (opinions of the platform aside) and other digital means. That's how Powfu and BENEE became one-hit wonders (and they'll most likely stay that way, for better or worse).

As for "Bli-Lights" and the opportunity of having an interpolation become one of the biggest things ever (again, opinions on the song aside), the industry sees that (who relies on spoonfeeding a lot of the general public, who was also going through nostalgia of their own), so of course sampling will be brute-forced into a trend. Now, if there was a lot more variety in what's fresh-out-the-oven and popular, it would still get annoying though ultimately would not as big an issue as it is now; like a good chunk of pop airplay is just...nothing but obvious sample jobs mixed and nostalgia baiting. And the latter has been a thing since at least 2019, with artists like Dua Lipa leading the charge.

You factor in old songs and fossil recurrents ON TOP OF THAT, then I could see how obnoxious that would be, even as a curator wannabe who's having trouble letting go of his own current fossils at the moment. Like, "Free" from Florence + the Machine and "Astrogirl" from Sana Tsukumo and Snail's House, are now going on 48 weeks with me. I added them back in mid-June of last year. My old record was with a song at 44 weeks, and before that a 3-way tie at 37 weeks. However, that fact and my own situation of 115 currents are beside the point.

[wjr15]

May 15, 2023 23:24:51 GMT -5 IndieAdvocate / Spectrum said:

May 15, 2023 22:23:34 GMT -5 neel said:

That’s the thing I also don’t get, the first two years of this decade were pumping out hits left and right on all genres and formats, but ever since like September 2021 the entire industry just went stagnated unexplained. With the only active hits being songs constantly sampling and being “Blinding Lights” knockoffs. I really hope this doesn’t continue for the rest of the decade.

Remember, 2020 and early 2021 had the go up against the COVID-19 pandemic, where big names were holding off on releasing new music. The moment when entertainment at-large was shut down for the time being, all we mostly had was the concept of having artists go viral through TikTok (opinions of the platform aside) and other digital means. That's how Powfu and BENEE became one-hit wonders (and they'll most likely stay that way, for better or worse).

A lot of big names dropped albums during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021: Taylor, Gaga, Bieber, Shawn, Katy, BTS, Miley, Ariana, Bruno (Silk Sonic), Lil Nas X, Doja Cat. And then you had artists in the middle of big eras during the pandemic: The Weeknd, Dua, Harry. If anything, it seems like big artists wanted to drop albums during the pandemic because there was nothing else they could do (no tours, music festivals, etc). Out of that list, only Harry, Taylor, and Miley have dropped albums over the past year and each album’s lead single had stuck around way longer than necessary. I do agree though that the pandemic led to a large influx of random one hit wonders created from going viral on tiktok.

[IndieAdvocate / Spectrum]

May 16, 2023 12:45:02 GMT -5 wjr15 said:

May 15, 2023 23:24:51 GMT -5 IndieAdvocate / Spectrum said:

Remember, 2020 and early 2021 had the go up against the COVID-19 pandemic, where big names were holding off on releasing new music. The moment when entertainment at-large was shut down for the time being, all we mostly had was the concept of having artists go viral through TikTok (opinions of the platform aside) and other digital means. That's how Powfu and BENEE became one-hit wonders (and they'll most likely stay that way, for better or worse).

A lot of big names dropped albums during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021: Taylor, Gaga, Bieber, Shawn, Katy, BTS, Miley, Ariana, Bruno (Silk Sonic), Lil Nas X, Doja Cat. And then you had artists in the middle of big eras during the pandemic: The Weeknd, Dua, Harry. If anything, it seems like big artists wanted to drop albums during the pandemic because there was nothing else they could do (no tours, music festivals, etc). Out of that list, only Harry, Taylor, and Miley have dropped albums over the past year and each album’s lead single had stuck around way longer than necessary. I do agree though that the pandemic led to a large influx of random one hit wonders created from going viral on tiktok.

Okay yeah, you got me there. Admittedly, I had completely forgotten about all of them, or at least was thinking the immediate start of the pandemic where there were delays (though with those in the middle of album rollouts, I didn't think they were worth noting at first, but I'm glad you did mentioned them anyway).

[🅳🅸🆂🅲🅾]

May 15, 2023 9:42:34 GMT -5 Az Paynter said:

It would be a start if CHR stopped caring so much what's streaming well and what isn't. Radio has killed off a fair chunk of new songs early because they weren't streaming well. None of them ever had a chance to get close to the top 10. And there's plenty of songs that are at risk of the same fate while radio leans on the handful of songs that DO have streaming behind them (which are all already in the top 10, so those songs are format zombies).

Basically; streaming said 'f**k your format', time to say 'f**k you' right back and play the new stuff you're given 'cause chances are none of it is gonna stream well anyway.

And you have the select few who keep saying that if something is doing well on radio, and it isn’t streaming well, it has to be payola. Or if it’s only streaming well but with radio on it just doesn’t build an audience or programmers don’t give it a chance then they say the streaming is payola’d or manipulated. Damned if you do damned if you don’t.

And then, of course, there’s the bizarre consequences of the radio call outs, which pretty much kill a lot of songs from doing better on radio even though they stream well. I sometimes wonder what criteria the people who evaluate those songs are using when they do the rankings. It also blows my mind that in recent years, we have seen record low bad call at scores that we never saw previously and it’s disproportionately affecting female artists.