We’re about to go into 2023 as I write this. A couple of weeks ago, I came across an article about record company efforts to manipulate the streaming charts. This is as old as music charts themselves. When I was a kid music director, I was just incensed at the idea a Payola. You know, paying a disc jockey to play the record. That became something of a non-sensical ‘scandal’ at the end of the 1950’s in the US. A handful of big time, big market disc jockey’s were, indeed, taking cash to play some records. There was no law against it. There was a law against not paying taxes on that income and that’s what brought down Alan Freed, the biggest of the big time radio DJ’s in the 50’s, the man who coined the very term “rock n’ roll”.
So, I was all huffy at the idea of playing songs for anything other than the pure, honest reason: You thought the song was gonna be a hit. And the more hits you play, the higher your listenership. The more ‘stiff’s’ you play, the lower your ratings. If record companies have to pay to get the song on the air, then it probably ain’t all that great, right!? After I learned how to really read the early airplay charts, the Gavin Report and Radio & Records were the most important ones, I came to see payola as my friend. With careful study, I could figure out which of the “reporter” stations were fudging it. When I saw some new song got 15 adds and I saw that half of them might be bogus, well I’d wait a few more weeks and see how the chart numbers moved before making a decision about adding it myself.
Now, understand there were fewer than 150 stations in a format that were Reporters. Their weekly Current Hits playlists were phoned in to the charts every Monday or Tuesday. The numbers were crunched and by Friday the new R&R was on the desks of every music radio radio station that had a PD who half-knew what he was doing. The Charts honed it down. Out of the two dozen new records on the MD’s desk, the charts showed you the ten new ones that other radio guys were adding. Or, said they were.
Paying for airplay segued into record companies paying for fake reports to the charts. You didn’t have to actually play it the record promoter said, here’s a hundred bucks and all you have to do it report that you are playing it. Sweet deal. Look, it was dang hard to get radio stations to play anything that wasn’t already on the charts, so what’s record promo guy gonna do? Well, spread a few grand around and next week you could be #37 with a bullet. And the PD didn’t have to worry about any tune-out factor with a new, unfamiliar and maybe second-rate song actually taking up any airtime. The practice of reporting a song you weren’t playing was called a “paper add”
All that worked pretty well for greasing the wheels until the coming of the BDS; Broadcast Data Services. The company had a computer that would monitor a station 24/7 and give you a printout the next morning of everything your format competitor was playing. You could figure out his rotations, and how tight was his Power Current turnover. You could see the titles of the Recurrents and Oldies he was playing and how frequently he was playing them. BDS also exposed what had come to be called the “Lunar Rotations”. Those were songs the stations reported as adds to the charts, but only played on the overnight show. If the record guy got enough adds to Lunar rotations, he might get enough reports to get a decent chart position the coming week.
OK, so the whole payola thing pissed me off, but not all that much. Because I’d learned to do my own research. And I came to realize the chart-followers could be bested by not doing what they were doing; by recognizing early on if a song’s chart pattern looked a bit flakey, and not falling for the fakes.
So now, there are somebodies doing their best to hype their spins and rankings in the streaming service charts. There’s always a way. In any case, there is no substitute to really understanding the charts that are your reference points, knowing how they are put together and learning what the weaknesses are. For example, here is an article that went to my client stations in April of ’96:
