The Death of the Chart

Napster changed everything.

The music file sharing service debuted in 1999, flared as bright as a comet on a moonless night and faded almost as quickly due to legal pressures associated with licensing of the music that was shared on the application.

Yet, despite its short life, Napster really helped change the world of music consumption and started a ball rolling that continues to build momentum wiping out decades-old business models and creating angst for record labels and artists alike.

We live in a time when we all can individually listen, watch and read virtually anything we want, when we want it and how. Technologies have given us the gift of inflated self-appeasement. Listening to music, for example, is only a mass experience on the radio and in concert venues. The rest of the time, listening to music is mostly an individual pastime as technologies push or allow us to pull only the music we like from the internet.

Before all this technology music charts published by grand old publications like Billboard or Cashbox or industry-focused trade publications like Radio & Records were the way that we were able to ascertain the popularity of music. In fact, music countdown shows were the mainstay of radio as soon as "Rock & Roll" gained mass audiences. Dick Clark saw the future and made a career out of top 10 countdown shows on TV.

Curiosity about where our favorite songs were positioned on the charts or how fast a song traveled up and down the top 100 list, generated great interest from the public and especially record labels.

But technology is about to take another victim. The music chart concept no longer presents a relatable way of showing popularity. There are so many ways of consuming music today that ranking song popularity on a published chart is becoming a more difficult task than ever. Album and single sales have turned into digital downloads, music sharing and music streaming. Popularity varies depending on the platform one consults.

So, is the chart on its way out?

From the public's perception it is.

Consumers may inadvertently discover music and video charts that pop up during on-line searches or news stories, but the majority don't go looking for them.

During a recent Bridge Ratings study of 12-24 year old music consumers, only 15% referenced a chart in a typical week to determine either the popularity of a song or artist they enjoyed or to learn of any new songs.

Even referring to charts reflecting digital sales or streaming popularity carries little interest for consumers. Popularity has become a more personal, one-on-one discovery and word of mouth is becoming more important than ever as a way to distribute popular taste especially among friends.

For this age group, song popularity and music discovery now comes in a variety of ways: word-of-mouth or sharing music with friends being the most dominant. Broadcast radio came in second. Referring to charts was way down the list.

Charts have been a mainstay of the radio and records industries and they will likely continue to be.

For their customers and clients, though, there are other - more personal - ways to determine popularity.

So, as a fan of charts, it hurts to know that charts may be another anachronism of a time when following, even collecting charts of the Top 100, or your favorite radio station's Top 30, was almost a hobby for some.

Dave Van Dyke
Bridge Ratings LLC

Register to receive Bridge Ratings news and media analysis.

What Is Music Radio Missing?

The team at Bridge Ratings has been abuzz this week with the latest revelation about the data we're seeing for on-demand music streaming.

 It seems that almost every day of reviewing the streaming data that crosses my desk reveals another series of golden nuggets about music consumption in 2015. This is a treasure-trove, my friends, and why more radio managers aren't paying attention is a mystery.

According to our friends at Nielsen Music, on-demand music streaming grew over by 50% in 2014 and all signs are pointing to growth exceeding that  number by the time New Year's Eve 2015 arrives.

So, it's plain to see that this train is not slowing and that since over 80% of music consumption is done on-line music radio programmers have access to the SECRET WEAPON.

Now I'm here to report that while on-demand streaming yields poignant consumption metrics for radio stations and what they are playing on the air, there's an even more interesting finding that will further align broadcast music radio with the ability to best reflect its listeners' interests.

Now we can show not only the on-demand streaming behavior of your station's listeners, but we can see what songs your station is not playing that your audience is streaming!

Read that sentence again.

As a programmer of a music station with a desire to be as current as its listeners to know what songs are missing is the difference between simply playing the hits and knowing early what the hits are that your audience has already discovered and are consuming. These songs, too, should be on your air!

In a recent conversation with the programmer of a leading major market contemporary station, it wasn't long after she first saw the data I shared that she found four songs her audience was streaming that were nowhere on her radar. Her record label reps hadn't mentioned them because the songs aren't on the "work list". In fact, a week later when we spoke she relayed a conversation she had with one of her label reps who told her that she was playing the wrong song by the artist he was working. She laughed and told him that her audience had already discovered the song and was rapidly consuming it on line. She helped that label manager that day by giving him a heads up about a song they should be working because there was evidence of success.

I'm continually fascinated by this new technology that allows producers of media content the ability to know exactly what their listeners/viewers are consuming.

If broadcast radio is not paying close attention to the detail available through on-demand music streaming, it is missing another opportunity to advance its ability to mirror its audiences tastes.

And with today's fast-tracking music consumers who are exposed on multiple platforms to music they may enjoy, radio's only chance to be aware of the moving tides is to not only pay attention to on-demand streaming data but use it effectively.

Dave Van Dyke
dvd@bridgeratings.com

Your thoughts?

Too Comfortable to Compete?

Back in the day - when radio DJs spun vinyl discs on turntables and were key reasons listeners were attracted to specific radio stations, creative and interested program directors often tried to understand what their listeners liked musically.  There were no texts or emails in those days, but request lines and record sales were a good indicator of active listeners' tastes.

In those days that process worked quite well.

Today, programmers of radio stations have much more sophisticated methods of determining tastes in music. Research is more sophisticated. All hail to electronic media, the internet and digital music consumption.

Yet adoption by programmers of the most promising of today's technologies - on-demand music streaming - is very slow.

Why is this?

Comfort = Caution.

I've spoken with hundreds of programmers of music stations in the last twelve months about on-demand streaming. Almost all are excited about the promise of streaming data yet only a small group of forward-thinking programmers are using the data and using it properly. This is a group of programmers whose stations more accurately reflect their listeners' tastes.

There are concerns about the data which I will address in another blog, but in a nutshell the concerns lie with programmers' comfort with the tools they have been using for years: telephone call-out research, auditorium music testing or newer platforms such as Shazam, M-Score and others.

Does it matter to Top 40 programmers that the new Meghan Trainor song "Dear Future Husband" has been one of the most-streamed titles over the last three weeks yet radio has it charted below number 50 this week?

Or to Country programmers, that Luke Bryan's new song "Games" is the hottest Country song streamed over the past three weeks but on the radio charts it's hovering in the 40s?

Are Classic Hits programmers aware that Guns n Roses' "Sweet Child of Mine", "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley and "Hooked on a Feeling" by Blue Swede continue to rank in the top 20 most-streamed songs by their audience on-demand?

This is powerful stuff.

And it is very responsive to the real world. When songs become exposed and popularized through TV, movies or commercials the ones that count appear on streaming research giving programmers the chance to mirror interest more quickly than ever before.

According to Nielsen, over 80 percent of music consumption today occurs on-line. That's a convincing statistic in anyone's book for near ubiquity. Yet, the only data that truly reflects this significant consumption of music - on-demand streaming - is not used effectively to reflect tastes in today's popular music.

As discussed in another Bridge Ratings blog, "How On-demand music streaming helps radio programmers", on-demand streaming data indicates that true music consumption today varies from the way radio presents music.

And broadcast radio has a wonderful opportunity - today - to reflect its Unique Purpose in 2015.

Careful attention to and interpretation of on-demand streaming data are at the nucleus of radio's Unique Purpose in 2015.

There are hidden gems in weekly streaming research that confirm radio's long-held purpose of playing the hits and now on-demand data not only shows what the hits are and how long they  truly hold consumers' interest, but it also can easily lead to knowing what new songs to play and how often to play them.

A better indicator than CD sales or even digital downloads, on-demand streaming gets to the root of quantifying song appeal. If a music listener invests time in selecting and listening to songs on-demand, there is legitimate cause to believe they want to hear it.

And on-demand streamies who also listen to music radio (80+ percent) also like to hear the songs they stream on the radio and count on radio to curate songs that may interest them on other platforms.  

One final realization that has come from over a year of studying on-demand streaming metrics: If music radio programmers were to follow the path that this new, important research is providing, their stations will sound more relevant, fresher, stronger and more fun to listen to,

Programmers: if your station's unique purpose is to truly reflect your listeners' tastes, go down this path, study the consumption of your listeners through on-demand streaming and reflect it back to the masses.

It's an exciting time. Technology has given us a gift.

 You may need to put away some old things (call-out or auditorium testing) but this new thing is the greatest new tool in your competitive arsenal and for now your competitor may be too comfortable to be using it.

Dave Van Dyke
President
Bridge Ratings

For additional insights click here.
 

Subscribe to this blog.