"How Short Attention Spans Should Impact Song Selection "
In each newsletter, we present a guest article from one of our MusicMaster ProTeam consultants. This month, Tracy Johnson of Tracy Johnson Media Group challenges programmers to think differently about music selection, and how to keep audiences from "skipping" to the next song - or the next station.
In the past, programmers generally accepted a music programming strategy that started with a code more suitable for physicians: Do no harm.
That's still good advice for Doctors but it no longer works for radio stations. Shorter attention spans have affected every aspect of our lives. It should affect song selection.
Programmers fortunate enough to still afford music research have a distinct advantage. Listener feedback provides the basis for making more informed decisions. When it's time to sort the songs, most programmers start by getting rid of the weak songs. And that's valid. You can't take those poor testing titles off the air fast enough.
The next steps, however, need to be re-imagined.
Short Attention Spans
Few dispute that more choices for entertainment has led to changing consumer behavior. Time Spent Listening to radio continues to decline as more competition for attention pulls audiences in different directions.
Impatience for instant gratification is everywhere. Think about how you flip through television channels looking for something that catches your eye. Or how quickly you click out of a YouTube video that doesn't start fast.
There are obvious implications for music programmers:
First, maybe it's time for shorter songs. Yes, song length overall has been trimmed, but if you can get a few more seconds out of each title on the air, you could play up to two more songs per hour.
And, since listeners are spending less time on each station (even their favorites), tighter playlists will not sound as repetitive to the consumer. Conversely, all playlists will sound repetitive because they're hearing the same songs in a lot of places. So if you're going to get blamed for repetition anyway why not play the hits more?
But there's another, more important fact that should affect song selection on every station.
Low Tolerance For Average Should Affect Song Selection
When a music test comes back, most programmers follow a specific pattern. After getting rid of the stiffs, they examine the research to find the best songs to play in high frequency power categories. That's a positive step.
But then there are all those songs that fall in the middle. The research shows they aren't running listeners off (few negatives), but they also don't have many "favorite" scores. The net result is a collection of songs that look fine. They seem playable.
In the interest of broadening the playlist to add variety (and often tempo), programmers create secondary categories. These lists are generally filled with songs that few listeners hate, most don't dis-like and most are neutral or slightly positive.
This is where we run into problems.
Playing songs that test positive, but have little passion no longer hold listeners.
Just because someone doesn’t DISlike a song doesn’t mean they’ll sit through it.
Consider how you listen to playlists on your phone or on Spotify. You’ve already curated those songs. Presumably, nothing on the playlist is a song you dislike, and certainly won't be a song you hate.
Yet when those tunes play through earbuds, what happens? An “average” or even “good” song comes on. You skip it. Why? Because the next song should be better. This one doesn't get you excited. It's okay. But it's not good enough. You've tuned out of your own playlist because you have learned to have higher expectations.
Music Programming Challenges
Music decisions are often driven by programmers seeking to eliminate negatives. The presumption is listeners will stay in the absence of negatives. As a result, a lot of “okay” songs are making it through the music sort and on the air.
But in the real world of radio listening, the opposite of love is not hate. It’s apathy. This is the concept of being in the Zone of Mediocrity. It's not a good place to be.
“Acceptable” songs are causing listeners to hit the “skip” button on their radio. That’s the change channel or scan button. And studies are proving that once they tune out, they're less likely than ever before to come back.
It's a Problem For Streamers, Too
Audio streaming services and pure plays like Pandora, Apple Music and Spotify have discovered this as well. Have you noticed that they're feeding streams more hits, and fewer "discoveries"?
There is a wealth of data available about how users respond to music. It proves how impatient listeners are with audio entertainment.
Spotify reported that just half of all users allow a song to play all the way through to the end. They use the song as long as it’s useful, then skip it and go on to the next song. This gives even more credence to this strategy of editing songs.
Their data also shows that 29% of all songs delivered are skipped in the first ten seconds. Think about that. Almost 1/3 of all songs on a playlist that constantly adjusts by learning individual tastes and preferences fail and cause tune out.
If that doesn’t cause you to rethink the music sort, nothing will. Can you afford to lose that much audience every time the song changes?
Most of the time, the songs that are skipped aren't bad songs. They're not always songs the user dislikes. They're skipping songs that aren't important to them. They are seeking to be inspired, motivated and excited.
Michael Steele is Director of Playlist Programming for for Warner Music Group. He has discovered there are many reasons a user skips songs. He says, “Not liking a song is just one reason, but unfamiliarity is a really big one, too. Just like in radio. Another is that the listener may have just heard the same song 3 minutes ago somewhere else. It could be on the radio, in a video game or at the grocery store. Or on another playlist. Or maybe they really love the song but it just doesn’t fit their mood at the time.”
In other words, maybe programmers forget that listening isn't done in a vacuum. Many factors affect listener behavior, and it should affect song selection.
The Hits, and Nothing But The Hits
I'm not suggesting there's just one winning strategy for programming music. That would be ridiculous. There are many ways to succeed, and the right formula for your brand will vary based on format, market conditions, station position, target audience, history and other factors.
But several things are certainly worth consideration:
Most stations can and should have tighter lists than they have. More emphasis should be placed on "favorite" scores, even if there are some negatives that go along with it.
Set up music research to eliminate the middle by not allowing respondents to choose an average score. For example, instead of a 1-5 scale (with 3 being "average" or "okay"), go to a 1-4 scale.
Build format clocks that include more powers than secondary songs. If average (secondary) songs are a potential tune out, and nearly 1/3 of the audience is exiting, it doesn't take long to turn over the entire audience.
Try for a 2:1 power to secondary ratio and use the principles in the Spoke Theory of clock management to protect the weak spots.
Don't worry about burning out songs. Listeners are constantly tuning in and out. They're going to hear the most popular songs in a variety of places because they're the most popular songs.
Reducing play of high testing songs with high burn scores weakens your station. You'll be replacing it with a song that may have less burn, but nobody cares about it. And what happens? Tune out. In fact, it's probably a good idea to stop measuring burn. It's not nearly as relevant as it once was.
Programming a station with "safe lists" isn't nearly as safe as it may have been in the past. A popular tactic for stations without research is analyze a group of similarly formatted stations and choosing the songs they share most.
This can be dangerous, unless you know how those playlists are constructed. A safe list may end up being nothing more than a collection of the most generic songs that are not disliked.
But What Are The Hits-Really?
Since radio stations began playing music on the air, music marketers have tried to impact airplay (real and reported) in an effort to "game" the system. Judging what to play based on charts is an unreliable metric. Even isolating specific stations to follow is fraught with peril, unless you know exactly what criteria the station uses to choose their playlist.
So what are hits? We can't judge it with sales at Tower Records anymore. And downloads on iTunes only provides part of the picture.
Steele has found a metric that seems to be a strong indicator of passion. It's Save Rate on a streaming service: “When someone saves a song, it requires them to take action. Saving a song means the listener likes it enough to put it in their library and may even share it with someone else. We track this very closely.”
Accessing this data (and other criteria like Track Completion Rate) could change how stations test music today. With tens of millions of touch points of data, and actual humans making decisions whether or not to listen or not listen to a song, why would we rely on a few dozen respondents ratings songs over a phone line, an online test or in a hotel ballroom?
This data is how Steele discovered the Bebe Rexha/Florida Georgia Line song Meant To Be in 2017. Steele says, “It was streaming a couple million a week globally and was getting excellent response (saves) with pop fans. At that time, it wasn’t even considered as a radio single, let alone a country single. Traditional thinking is it was too pop for country and too country for pop and AC. My team and I kept bringing the data every week and the rest is history. It was the biggest song of the year in three formats.”
At the end of the day, it all comes down to song apathy. Nobody has time anymore for anything but the best, as they define it. Today, it's easy to get the best, and move on from anything average.
And that applies to every format.
Execution
This is logical programming, but much harder to put into practice than it seems. Personalities quickly get bored playing a smaller collection of hit songs. You also hear it from sales personnel, managers and even some of those listeners who spend far more time with your station than most listeners do.
To diffuse that situation internally, explain the strategy to the team. Many programmers tend to hide the research, but it shouldn't be a mystery. It's a valuable programming tool and using it to communicate how the station will win can help everyone feel more involved in the process.
Conclusion
This is common sense, really. The audience is changing. The way we consume entertainment is completely different than even a few short years ago. Smart programmers will focus on the way listeners actually use radio and program through the audience experience.
That will absolutely affect song selection.
Want more advice like this? Read more about Tracy and his services on our
ProTeam page or on Tracy's website:
TJohnsonMediaGroup.com. Or contact Tracy directly at (858) 472-3546 or Tracy@TJohnsonMediaGroup.com.