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The "best songs of all time" in who,s opinion the PD/MD ?
or the office girl, playing only the best music yep here we go again
this will go on for a long time
are you sure we have enough roon on your hard drive, lets not turn this into community V the others.
at the end of the day when was the last time Bob had a new song played on OZ radio. if i had my way it would be play more jam and clash songs R I P joe
Oh.. I have been waiting a long time for a topic like this to come along.
Some commercial stations play the most absolute crap available. There is too much "recycled pop trash" out there. They also plug too many songs that are new or in the ARIA charts. For example... Avril Lavigne's "Sk8ter Boi". It was on every single station's play list and after 2 weeks I was sick of it. Just about every station I switched it to had it playing every hour. Even MMM have lost my listening due to wiping out all the old rock stuff and putting in new commercial rock in, blasting it down the airwaves like there is no tomorrow (but they are still tinkering with their format, so just for the time being they have lost me).
You should go with what the LISTENERS say and want.. not what the record companies ask you to play after they shove it under your nose.
(Views expressed in this post are my and might not be of the station)
Just a quick word, as I pass through. The way some stations 'feed' music to the listener is quite interesting. The number of times I hear lies about an artist to keep a listener thinking they are on the ball. At the end of 2002 - John Mayer was called a "new artist" with a "debut record"... Ummm... his first record was in 1999, early in the year as well. It is not just the repeating of music but also the 'padding' introductions to some very lame tunes (this bit DOES NOT refer to Mayer)by creating a hype that is quite often word for word of the record company blurb.
What needs to be done? In the old days I would have said "scrap playlists" but I think a better approach is to use lower listening parts of the day to inject new sounds and releases - on a lower rotation bais with NO record company input.
Let's be honest to one self - commercial radio has no COMMERCIAL interest in playing new music. Although, it is interesting to see other stations picking up the playlist format to create their own market with connections to commerical (if not just small) interests.
For the record, on my morning I try to start with an obvious commercial band if not hit - then it's on to music that is very unlikely to see sales in commercial markets to a huge degree. Listener's response - calls wanting to learn about new sounds. But, being on FM it is easy to be a change to the FM Commercial domination.
Baa Baa. That sheep mentality certainly is alive and well in Australian commercial radio!! We can thank the likes of The Music Network Magazine. Great read, but it creates too many clone stations, they can all copy each others playlists, and think that they will sound as good as those succesful (?) metro stations.
Yes, its agreed that you have to hear a song for a few times in order for it to grow in you, but constant regurgitation of the same ol same ol is not a good thing at all! Maybee we should also be blaming the music industry for churning out so much 20 cent disposable pop, I mean how many more soapy stars can there be room for on the playlist? Let us not make the "researched" assumption that all the listeners are morons with a large disposable income who cant think for themselves. Remember the days when a song had substance, and you remebered the tune, and not the hotties wearing next to nothing in the video clip. Pop will eat itself!! ;)
Sir Bob is right and the fact that this becomes an issue only when he says so is frightening.
The potential audience for radio in Australia is much greater than the actual attendence. If we explored new formats as vigorously as we hold on to what we've got we'd make more ground.
Part of the problem is that we have created a star culture and the big risks in radio come from the high cost of hiring people with "Big Brother" as a background and a view to celebrity rather than a comittment to service. Including a comittment to service the divergent music audiences created by both the youth markets and the boomers.
Why. even the ABC has closed off unique music services like Coast FM (made for the booming boomers) and persists with hiring self obsessed, coffee table chatter-boxes.
While they explore alternatives through on-line services like DiG, most of us won't have useful access until they go live and free to air.
As a great man once told me:
"the audience like what they know and they know what they like"
We're in the business world and ratings and making money is what we're all about...we all get the rewards!!
If you want to do your own thing..buy some time on the local community station and DO IT
If anyone has a copy of John Safran's Music Jamboree and you watch a segment of "The Music Mole".. listen to the part about lollypop music from record companies and getting air-play on commercial stations. I wholeheartedly say that Bob Geldoff is right.
is sir bob forgetting one thing? radio is mass media. if boy bands, are dominating the music scene here - chances are they will end up dominating the airwaves too. hell - what would bob have said about the disco 'phase' that changed the sound of u.s. radio in the late 70s/early 80s? sir bob: music is evolving - and the so-called bubblegum 'shite' you refer to - was also on the radio when you were a young boy - remember the monkies & the archies? just like fashion, music trends come & go - sometimes, radio plays a part in them - but nowadays we just seem to go with the flow.
as for expanding playlists (to give listeners more choice)- keep in mind your typical listener will hear only a fraction of your play-listed songs each week. and to be exposed to all 300 or 350 or 400 songs would take the average listener longer than you think. unlike america - market segmentation and niche formats are not a part of our radio landscape (yet) so for now playlists should be smaller (versus larger), familiar (versus obscure). and anyway- if you want to hear your favourite artist 'in depth' don't you turn on your cd player not your radio?
Sir Bob is absolutly right. There is too much repitition. It's fine to have a format, but c'mon guys, lets update it a little. Let's change the extend the time between the "A rotation" tracks. There is a lot of undiscovered tallent in this country, tallent that could be really big. I know, in my free time I am engineering some of them. Let's see someone with some balls give some new fresh tallent a go. Play some of those independant CD's that you get posted, and let the public decide. Stop being ruled by the record companys. Also, that countdown thing, unless you are asking your listeners to vote for the tracks, don't try and call your attempt of a format change a countdown (a la a Melbourne commerical Rock station last week). Trust me, I know what I'm on about. Before I started in professional radio, I was involved in a capital city aspirant station. And guess what, we were a little different, like what I mentoned above. We came in in the last month of a survey, we only did it once to prove a point. Guess what, It was the only time the "other FM" collum on the ratings was higher than one of the commerical stations.
"if you want to hear your favourite artist 'in depth' don't you turn on your cd player not your radio?"
You do this, radio will lose listeners because everyone is listening to CDs, then... they would have to change their music rotation to get the listeners back won't they???
The thing that 1st gets you interested in music on the radio when you're young is that there are songs that relate to your life at that moment. So why then do stations going for an older demographic live in a timewarp? I don't know how many times I'll tune & think, "haven't heard this in a while." But then they play the same song a few days later, notwithstanding the age of the song or the balance of that artist's catalogue.
What is there to relate to in the here & now if you're not a teenager? Why can't the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty or Geldof himself get substantial airplay with their new releases? I'm guess it's because those making the decisions are too scared of offending someone, that someone will tune out, they'll lose a listener & therefore advertising revenue. The irony is the current state of radio alienates people.
PS in response to Anonymous Post of 23/1/03 I was playing Geldof's "One For Me" for a good couple of months last year ... but then again I'm only on community radio.
Maybe commercial stations could go back to the old ways and actually take requests (and play them) from their listeners? Thats a simple and effective solution to "de-shite-ing" the play list,right?
How many times do you hear groans and "oh not again" around the office as soon as a song starts playing.......
Ah-Ha...Sir Bob is 100% correct.
And I don't believe that more competition in the radio market will help it any. Just look at what happened when Nova 96.9 entered the market....before Nova, each station had a little niche market, playing new music that fitted into their particular format. Now, they all sound the same. 2 DAY decided to take on the exact same format as Nova, MIX went away from their easy listening format to a watered down version of 2 DAY FM, Triple M have started to move away from rock and 96.1 sound like 2DAY and NOVA with a smaller playlist. Now all the stations play the same new songs, with MIX and MMM going off to a tangent slightly towards AC (MIX) / Rock (MMM) and it is as exciting as watching paint dry. That's why I tend to listen to the regionals that boom into the area like WAVE FM & 2GO, they play some great new releases from people like John Farnham and Bruce Springsteen....stuff that you don't hear on any of the major commercial stations! Pretty sad!
First things first. Shite is in the eye of the beholder.
Besides, there is as much shite in pop as there is shite rock, dance, r&b and country.
And we've all been guilty of playing some of it some time,
as long as someone in a cap city has added it first.
The Vines, The Hives, and scores of other bands with "The" in front of them,
produce the same repedative shite as Holly, Atomic Kitten.
It's just that they can't mime and aren't cool enough to trash Leno.
Yesterday, looking over JJJ's Hottest 100, at least 28 songs listed have been or still are on our High ATB rotate.
Surely there is a smidge of cred for commercial radio in there.
Where was the other 62? Easy! We don't play tracks that most of our liteners consider shite!
There is a fine line between challenging a listener, and offending them to the point of turning off.
When somebody discovers it, let us know.
Music on Australian Commercial Radio is pretty much as described by Sir Bob. The repetition is just way too hard for some to bare in fact you just about set your watch with the same song day in day out.
Its about time radio that is all radio started looking for something that is new and ground breaking and started to give the Australian independent music industry a fair go. Double the Aust content and at least halve the overseas content. Support your local talent as well give them a chance and I mean all genres.
Capital city music radio sucks at least the regionals and country radio try to do the job but often are ignored by the advertising agencies and as for the community stations well they do the job musically but are often let down by the presenters that are at their disposal.
Bring on some decent music.
Remember that Sir Bob is a muso, he has the passion for music in his veins and rightly so. It's dedicated people like him who raises valid questions like this to let us look at ourselves. Steve Biloken summed it up perfectly from a business point-of-view that audiences like what they know, in the younger demographic who simply want to sing along to a popular song. That's why we hear the same songs in rotation, day after day and commercial music radio plugs the 'stock' that their demographic want to hear, very sad but true. I would love to get a hell of a lot more variety than what's dished out to me but radio is a business, whether we like it or not. Profits will always dictate over those who appreciate variety and outside-of-the-box, ground-breaking radio. If you want true variety and want to hear what you want, when you want, a CD player is a great investment. Sorry to be blunt, but this topic could go on and on and we'll still wave our fingers in the air crying foul play. People who listen need to think-outside-the-box. We are sheep and will be fed. The crud on commercial television highlights this.