From One Of Our Music 1 Users:
Hey Steve … just thought I’d drop you a line and tell you that I took your advice and checked out PlayoutOne – loved it – and purchased it. It is great to be able to use Music 1 with it for the scheduling. I am broadcasting a Classic Rock station, but I have not really been able to find out anywhere on the net what kind of Categories they normally set up for a classic rock station. My station plays LOTS of deep album tracks along with the more Classic Gold stuff – mostly from the 60s, 70s and some 80s – as well as new stuff by classic rock artists. Any advice you can provide on this – or any idea where I might be able to locate information on this! Right now I just have 3 categories – New Stuff / Classic Gold Stuff / Deep Stuff. But there has to be more to it than that!
Me Say:
…first off, the bestest thing about P1 is it’s voice track function.
it is increasingly obvious that the old radio adage remains true:
“It’s what’s between the songs that counts.” With the P1 voice tracker,
you can have a station that sounds: Alive!
Internet radio is predominately a collection of playlists.
Playlists aren’t compelling, the are mechanical. Pandora being
the ultimate example. And Pandora listening is now down
to just 15 minutes per session.
Anyone can make a playlist and it seems any tune ever
recorded is instantly available to us all. There’s an acronym for it:
TAS/HAS: Type a song/Hear a song.
And anyone can start an internet radio
station and post their playlists. Very few take the trouble to
do more than that.
People listen to music radio for two primary reasons: To hear their
favorite songs and for companionship.
So, my advice is to make good use of the PlayoutONE Voice Tracker.
It can make your station sound ALIVE all the time, because there’ll
be somebody, some real Human saying things about those great songs.
Talk to your listeners at least every fifteen minutes.
Talk short….30 seconds or less.
Talk about the music you are playing. Give some history. Tell
people why you like it.
For rotations…I haven’t done Classic Rock myself, but have
worked Oldies and Classic Country, both similar in their formatting
fundamentals. So consider putting your twist on the generalizations below:
Power …… the mass-appeal monster hits, the iconic.
one every twenty minutes or less.
Image …. The hipper cuts; those that weren’t the biggest hits
but are clearly identifiable by the sound of the Artist. Zepplin always
sounds like Zep. Police is Police. Twice an hour.
Catalogue …. Everything else. I would avoid anything that didn’t
come off of an album that didn’t make the Top 10 in sales in it’s day.
Long Songs … Stairway, Hey Jude, the album version of Light My Fire,
all over 7 minutes. I use a Sound Code for these, i name it Long Songs
then in M1 format clocks a set a rule for no more than 1 an hour.
Spice … us music guys really like to find unique musical treats and
share them with people. we can tell ourselves “boy, if the label had
released this, it would’a been a hit” but we’re usually wrong about that.
Record companies used to know what they were doing, they were run
by guys who were in an even more constant search for hits than we
in radio were. If the track off the album had a chance, it was promoted.
the non-hits failed because they were just that: not hits.
that doesn’t mean they were not good or even great songs; they
just failed to connect with the masses.
if you are going to play songs like thism going to go Deep into albums,
you must preface them and tell listeners WHY you like it, why you
are playing it…. which leads back to the Voice Tracker.
New Stuff I would put the in the same class as
my suggested Spice category. You should probably make it
be it’s own category, yes. But do stage the tracks, put some
introductory talk before and/or after they play.
