In a music radio advertising break, how many spots is too many? Four. I’ve seen the research. It’s old, yes; from the 90s came the data. That was a time when there were far, far, far, far fewer other music sources a listener could switch to. The data indicated radio listeners all thought three commercial in a cluster were acceptable. So, don’t play four.
This means long music sweeps are out the window, and so what! A long music sweep is now little more than a playlist and you can get a playlist from all sorts of places. Radio, on the other hand, is made of what’s in between the songs. It needs to be more ‘active’ sounding and shorter, but more frequent spot breaks contribute to that end.
For commercial broadcast music stations, five breaks of three units each is ideal.
For internet stations, spot length is a focus-point. An internet station should be formatted for ten and fifteen second spots. A max of three units per break. And this is a biggie: Identify the station audibly at least every two songs.
