Steve

Alright folks, after some few requests and years of hold-out, I’m posting a couple of my old airchecks; me-on-the-air for your listening amusement. I really date myself here, kids. Starting as weekend DJ at 16, I was hired as the full-time night jock six months later and became program director at age 18.

Don’t Play The Flip Sides Of Hit Records. The Saturday night that I sat in a radio station control room for my very first disc jockey shift the number one song was “A Hard Day’s Night”. Others on the playlist included: “Tell Me” by The Stones, “Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime” by Dean Martin, “People” by … Read more

Two quick thoughts about this. First, Oldies always does better as a format in times of economic downturn. Second, who’d want to ever listen to an iHeart station at home?

Here is the obvious, one more time. I’ve seen other data indicating much the same thing this does. A couple years back, I read an account of an experiment Spotify conducted. Some of those “recommended for you” daily playlists were put into the hands of human curators (known as ‘music directors’ back in the day.) … Read more

History lesson about music research. First, what’s the point? Answer: To learn more about potential listeners like, then give it to them. The first research was jukebox spins. We already had the Billboard charts in the middle 50’s when Pop music radio sprouted. But that chart was compiled with record sales data and sales trailed … Read more

Here are three interesting reports about how Spotify’s charts can be used as a replacement for the way we used to have to get music consumption data; which was: Call the record stores each week. Here’s the first post in a series of three. This is the second one. And this is the third one.