Radio Missed Many Hits Last Year - Again
A 2022 On-demand Music Streaming Analysis
Last year traditional radio missed 52% of the most-streamed music by their listeners. That’s an increase over 2021 (48%).
How does traditional radio underplay or not play more than 50% of the most-streamed music?
Part of the problem lies in programming by consensus, a widely used method of determining radio playlist structure based on hundreds of similarly programmed stations around the country. This method does not take into consideration any decisions made by other radio stations as to why songs are added, deleted or rotations changed.
And it does not consider actual music consumption.
Another catalyst is the long-used practice of music testing, in which a short song hook is rated by radio station listeners. This method also does not take true consumption into consideration.
Music testing often can give a song inaccurate positive responses since the methodology only tests a song’s perceived “like” or “don’t like” score. Unlike on-demand streaming, this type of research measures only a song’s likeability and not its long-term consumption. Airplay “spins” likely reflects a song’s music test score; the higher the score, the more often the song is played and the higher rank it achieves on a station’s most-played list.
This chart compares on-demand streaming consumption with Top 40 radio’s airplay rank for the song “Little Numb Bug” by Em Beihold, a popular title in 2022. You’ll note that the song’s airplay rank remains high while its streaming consumption rank fades. This causes radio stations to hold on to songs longer than they should. The false positive score of music testing directly affects the song’s rank position. Music test participants may still “like” the song, but streaming data shows they have generally moved on from its consumption.
Since 2014, Bridge Ratings Media Research has analyzed on-demand music streaming consumption and how that consumption can help radio deliver a better product.
On-demand music streaming as a reflection of true consumption and radio is here to serve its listeners' tastes. 88% of Americans stream music in an average month. The behavior has reached the masses. Unlike historical methods of music research (call-out research, auditorium tests, etc), on-demand streaming research that mirrors radio station heavy users who also stream music, very reliably captures music tribes which are the key to radio's desire to attract listeners.
“For the third year in a row, the radio industry missed or underplayed half of the most-streamed songs in 2022. Despite reliable consumption data, the radio industry has not improved these numbers over time. - Dave Van Dyke, President Bridge Ratings”
This is an important point. Radio listeners who stream have different tastes than radio non-users or radio lite-users.
In our 2022 year-end analysis of streaming use by fans of the most popular music radio formats, each has missed or under-played the top 100 songs that were heavily-streamed by radio listeners and were either not played on radio or did not achieve secondary or power spins. We analyzed milions of data points reflecting songs which were heavily streamed in 2022.
For the purposes of this report, we are looking at the following four popular radio formats: Urban, Rock, Country and Top 40.
Of these formats, Country performed the best with 68% of the most-streamed songs receiving moderate to heavy airplay. Top 40 had a good year in 2021 with 60% of the format’s most-streamed songs receiving appropriate airplay, but fell to 54% in 2022. Urban and Rock fall below the 50% mark. The performance rating is based on how well the format delivered on the most-streamed songs over the course of 2022.
In our analysis* of these format stations in the Top 50 U.S. markets, we noted how many of the top 100 most-streamed songs received top 100 annual spin counts by those stations used in this report.
As a whole, the U.S. radio industry missed or underplayed 52% of the most streamed songs this year.
Urban
Of the top 100 most-streamed songs by heavy listeners of U.S. Urban radio stations, on average those stations missed or underplayed 52% of the songs on our chart. This is an increase in misses than in 2021 (49)%.
Rock
Alternative Rock radio missed 55% of the format’s top 200 most-streamed songs last year, an improvement over 2021 (60%).
Mainstream Rock radio in 2022 missed 44% of the format’s most-streamed songs by their core listeners, an improvement from 2021 (45%).
Top 40
Considering the variety of music styles typically aired on U.S. Top 40 radio, the format missed 46% of the most-streamed Top 40 genre songs last year.
Country
Country radio performed best in this Bridge Ratings analysis, missing or underplaying 32% of the most-streamed songs. While this number may sound high, keep in mind how much music is out there. We believe the singular focused nature of the music Country radio plays contributed to this “best-of-class” performance. Nearly 75% of the top 200 most-streamed songs this year were well-represented on Country radio.
While we at Bridge Ratings Media Research continued to see more stations used streaming research as a primary tool in 2022, the industry, in general remains slow to adopt this technique of aligning their music playlists with true listener consumption reflected in on-demand music research sourced to radio’s core listeners.
And in a new analysis to be released to the public, we have found that over the seven years our clients have been using our listener streaming information, station PASSION and DAILY TUNE-IN OCCASIONS have increased.
Our clients refer to this audience behavior “intelligence” as their secret weapon. The believe that having this information weekly gives them a competitive edge.
Where Do We Go From Here?
“Radio programmers who use streaming data...are generally stabilizing time-spent-listening and daily listening occasions. - Dave Van Dyke”
We know from our own experience that an increasing number of commercial radio programmers are using on-demand streaming research in some form to better-align their music playlists and to properly reflect the tastes of their listeners. Yet, there are far more programmers who do not use it either on its own or in combination with other forms of research with which they may be more comfortable.
While radio maintains the greatest reach of all audio entertainment, the industry continues to lose time-spent listening. In numerous studies fielded by Bridge Ratings and other reputable research firms, the reasons for this are many-fold, but one area we see in our studies is that radio listeners use on-demand streaming to complement their radio listening and vice-versa. Favorite songs they hear on the radio - or new songs they discover - are frequently added to playlists. And songs discovered on-demand are frequently requested of radio by these listeners.
In a recent station analysis of a new client, 60% of the top 100 most-streamed songs (old and new) by their core listeners were being ignored. Today, that station has realigned their playlist and is seeing improved listeners tune-in and number of listening occasions.
We are also finding that our radio clients that use streaming data that reflects heavy-listener behavior are generally stabilizing time-spent-listening because their music programming is based on actual listeners consumption.
Use of this approach has made a difference to station and listener alike and as more radio programmers utilize this tool and learn to interpret the data, the industry will be better prepared to compete in a world where audio consumption - and its delivery platforms - is expanding.
Analysis of the radio formats included in this report included data from FY2022 The updated 2022 analysis was conducted between 01/03/2022 to 12/01/2022 utilizing millions of streaming data-points from 2022 FY. 10 streaming platforms were data sources (including Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora and Amazon Music). Stations in each format in the top 50 U.S. radio markets were selected for this analysis.
