This may be incredibly stupid of me, but flipping through the radio stations, the Top 40 was on. With the popularity of CDs, and not-so-popular single releases anymore (think WAAAAAY back when they used to sell these vinyl disks called “45s”) how do they determine what song has been released? And since CDs - the whole album - are more often sold than CD singles, how do they rate which song is a hit? They can’t possibly poll all the radio stations for requests for those songs can they? With the entire CD being bought and not just one song, how can they tell if that release is a hit and the CD isn’t being bought for some other song on it?
I think (although IANADJ) that “released” refers to songs released for radio airplay, at least as far as the Top 40 countdown shows go. Radio stations are required to have their playlists on file, and I would guess that a countdown show gets the data from a set of radio stations and crunches the data.
I’ve also seen Billboard lists of Top 100 albums, and that would refer to the whole CD, probably based on sales.
So, the radio stations can decide what’s a hit by playing a song more often than another?
I’m also sure the albums lists are based on sales, but I’m referring to singles being released. In the old days of vinyl, I thought the Top 40 was based on the top selling 45s, but since CD singles are rarer than 45s were, I just wonder how it’s done now. Was the singles list ever based on sales, or has it always been airplay?
I always voted that the top 40 in the “wax” days was based on how much money you greased the jocks with. I’m sure that doesn’t happen these days. 
you guys have it backwards. individual radio stations for the most part do NOT feed their data to the Casem4000. most radio stations actually get their playlists from companies that sell them across the country. so it’s actually the central servers that are determining what is being played.
I believe they use polling to figure out which songs are ‘better’. BICBW.
Reminds me of a story. A local radio morning show has a segment called “Ask Us Anything,” the premise being that you could call up the DJ’s and ask them any question.
So I called up and asked them a couple of pointed questions about payola, and whether DJ’s or station managers were getting payed by record promoters to play certain songs. Their response was so defensive and panicky you knew something was up. You could practically hear their hackles rising on the radio.
They had a real hard time explaining why they, the local “alternative/new music” station, had been playing the latest Paul McCartney release ad nauseum (literally).
It all sounds pretty fishy to me. I have a sneaking suspicion we are hearing pretty much what the major labels want us to hear, one way or another.
without a doubt. have you ever picked up a new cd from the store, and it has a sticker on the front saying “contains the hits Snuckjump, My Wife Ate a Car, and You Stupid Sods Will Buy Anything”. Months later, surprise surprise, all of the songs are radio hits (even if Mojojohnson, track seven, is a much better song).
the days of dj’s having any kind of a say into what they play are over. way over.
jb
Not likely. A station’s ‘Program Director’ has a limited say about what gets played, but the majority is decided by what the big record companies who are paying for promotions want.
At our station, we get sent plenty of CDs, singles, etc, and occassionally some local fellow decides he wants some airplay and slips a home-burned single into the mix. All the CDs that aren’t “Company Samplers” get tossed really quicklike into the refuse bin (where I promptly snatch them up, since they are then free for the taking).
A company sampler contains numerous songs which the record company (Warner, etc.) has decided you are going to listen to now. These songs are recorded into our computer, and that’s what you’re listening to. The CDs are then filed away and never see the light of day again, until they’re thrown away a few months after the song has stopped being popular.
However, we have a “Top 10 at 10” playset that is mostly chosen from a select list of hits from the DJs… we advertise that the listener’s requests set the order for the Top 10, but if you believe that, you’ve probably already bought our magic beans. Good luck on getting that golden egg, y0.
FunkDaddy.
Yes here I am, a real live DJ, and Music Director from an actual radio station. (You just don’t know what delight I take in finally being able to contribute to GQ as opposed to always asking.)
The “Top 40” is a very arbitrary list. It is composed of radio airplay from typically the top 50 markets around the country as well as cd sales from the top 4 or 5 major chains. Which stations and chains you take your info from will determine who ranks where in your list. This is how Casey and Rick Dees can have a completely separate “Top 5” eack week (that does not happen that often, but it does happen). This gets even more confusing, because some "Top 40"s are format based. As in - your local adult contemporary station (Santanas latest, Matchbox 20, Third Eye Blind, Alanis, Sarah Mc, ect.) doesn’t want a Top 40 with Toni Braxton, Eminem and Jay Z in it. So what ends up happening is the Top 40 you are listening to may omit certain types of songs.
So is there a definitive “Top 40” ? Nope. The only way to truly do that would be to standardize some system and force everyone to follow it . . . not bloody likely.
Here is an interesting tidbit that many people do not understand : popular music is very regional. There are songs big right now in the southeast that folks in Oregon would have never heard of before - and vice versa. The songs that do hit it big nationwide do not usually do so at the same place at the same time. An example - this weeks rick Dees Top 40 has “Never Let You Go” by Third Eye Blind at #4. That song peaked out here in the Carolinas almost six months ago ! We don’t even play it anymore ! Then Dees #1 is “Bent” by MB20 - that makes sense to us because it is one of our biggest songs right now, but I am sure there is some station in Nebraska that has burnt that song already.
The whole thing is an extremely inexact science. Does that help any ?
Yep, same here Funk. Oh sure we do look at requests, but in the long run they have about a %20 say in what the “9 at 9” is.
Smoke and mirrors people. Radio is all smoke and mirrors.
BTW Funk - where are you at ?
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by NothingMan *
**
–If you played nothing but requests you’d play the same music around the same time of day for the 5% of active listeners that actually call in.
I used to work at a radio staion as a DJ about 15-20 years ago; before CDs, etc. The height of our orginization was that we had to select about 10 records per hour and play one song from each. The only limitation was that they had to be different music styles, and artists. Ah, the good old days . . .
And that is why I try not to listen to radio anymore, well, mostly because they play the same crap over and over and over…
It’s a shame that you don’t get local popular music genres anymore, except in the big markets, and everything is squeezed into one format. For instance, hip-hop, techno, dance, R&B is all squeezed into one station (B-96 Chicago, at least it was when I moved out of town last year). These styles are very different, almost like putting adult contemporary and alternative together (well, maybe not that extreme, but you get the gist). My favorite genre is Eurodance, but specific kinds of music in that genre, which is very different from Techno/House, etc.
To buy my CD’s, I usually have to go to a review site like EurodanceHits (<----- shameless plug, great site for me) to find out what I want to buy in the store, which is usually an Internet store.
Tis a shame if you don’t particularly like mainstream music. Big labels with money shouldn’t force me to listen to something I don’t like. Fortunately, there is a way for me to cope, the same with all music fans.
/end soapbox
Good inside info from FunkDaddy and NothingMan. Thanks!
So, NothingMan, am I correct in assuming that we are just hearing what the big labels want us to hear (as FunkDaddy suggests)? If so, how do the labels achieve that end? Does money change hands, or is it more subtle? (Such as tit for tat. E.g., Label sez “Our big-time star will agree to participate in your promotion; oh, by the way, here’s our sampler. Hope you can play some of our songs…”
Also, has it always been that way (with labels controlling airplay), in your experience, or has it gotten worse over time?
Albums have stickers on them because many bands know which songs are going to be singles.
Charts differ - some are based on sales, some on airplay. Most are compiled by some sort of sampling, which may be more or less clean.
When I was playing, (in Australia) the major label distributors knew which were the “chart shops” and the staff lucky enough to work there got a fair bit of attention.
On one occasion I was dragged around to gladhand the assistants in the chart shops. Part of the idea was the staff would recommend your record, part was that they may misreport sales.
It was widely believed that you could in this way (and by schmoozing with radio stations) hype a record into the top ten of the singles chart; the idea being that radio stations would then start to play you and you would actually start to sell. Then the album would sell itself.
I don’t know whether my visit worked (I’m sure they would have preferred the singer!), but I sure needed a shower when I got home.
picmr
Thanks NothingMan - that helps. I was under the impression it was based on sales, and wasn’t sure how you can track airplay.
spoke- to a certain extent you are correct. There are examples of artists who buck the system and somehow make it big without first getting a big record contract . . . they then immediately get a big record contract. (“3 Doors Down” did this by having one huge song - “Kryptonite”, the song got big local in Biloxi Mississippi and was picked up by a radio station there, from that point it spread like a wildfire until it caught the attention of an industry bigwig. The rest is history, 3 Doors went from playing clubs in MI to doing a world tour.)
Someone else wrote of “lables” on cds that say “featuring the hits : BLAH and BLAH2”. What happens is that the record company has the cd put through extensive testing prior to it being release to find out what songs have the best chance of breaking big. Now surely you have seen such a sticker with “BLAH and BLAH2” and thought : “BLAH2 ?? I have never heard of that”. Well that does occur. Not always do the songs focus groups say will be big actually make it big.
The was a time when record reps handed a music director or even famous jocks cash to play songs. It is now illegal (see “payola”), but all that means is that it happens in a much more subtle way. Have you ever heard of a local station giving away 2 brand new cars and thought . . . how the hell can they afford to do that ? Well - they can’t. The record reps call and politely request that we add a songs to our stations rotation. We say, “hmmmmmm I like it - I think its a hit” or “hmmmmmm I really don’t like the song, I think its a stiff”. Either way it is in the best interest of the record rep to keep the relationship a good one, so at the end of said call we say “you know our station is giving away two brand new cars, do you think your company could help us out paying for them ?” 90% of the time the answer is “sure”. We don’t always have to add their song, but we do. They don’t always have to help us out with tickets or backstage passes or free cds or even a little donation to our car fund . . . but they do. It is sadly rather sleazy at times, and also dangerous because there is a lot of grey area between “scratching each others backs” and a flat out bribe. The bribe is very illegal . . . the back-scratching is what the music industry is all about.
I hope that made some sense, I am writing and working at the same time. Any other questions ?
One question for anyone who thinks they can answer…Are many songs still regional hits before they break nationally in the U.S.?
I recall that in the 1950s, a hit song, like That’ll be the Day would first break in certain markets as various DJ’s started playing it heavily.
How likely is it that this would happen now?
Comment–I found it interesting that all the songs that a station plays are put into a computer now. This is possibly why my local oldies station plays the same songs quite frequently…even though there were thousands of cool oldies songs. Playing something not in the computer would be a big pain.
Someone mentioned Paul McCartney. I kind of like Paul but lately (or Press to Play on, I guess thats 14 years of “lately”) he has only two or three good songs an album. But I’ve figured out how he (or “they”) pick the first single. They simply pick the worst song on the album. If they need another single, the next worst. And so on. He tried to confuse us a bit by picking good songs from **Flowers in the Dirt ** and **Tripping the Live Fantastic ** but after that, they fell into the old bad habits again.
THe funny thing is, you’ld think he wants to appeal to people like me, the ones who’ld be quicker to pick up the album. But he either doesn’t care, or he’s so out of touch that he doesn’t realize how bad he’s become. I vote for the later, ** Run Devil Run** is nothing but a mediocre version of **Chopa B CCCP **. *Linda *McCartney’s album was better than that.