John Lund is President of the Reno-based Lund Media Group. He consults on radio, podcasting, and digital media and publishes “The Lund Letter,” a program and marketing newsletter.
This feature was inspired by a recent edition of “The Lund Letter.” In that edition, Lund stated his belief that 78 percent of all radio stations are playing the wrong music and that it is time to DOGE your playlist.
In this case, it stood for Duplicates, Oldies, Garbage, and Extras. This clever use of the term to describe the makeup of a radio station’s playlist caught my attention, leading to me catching up with Lund.
While I thought it was clever, it seems that in today’s political climate, no political reference goes unpunished regardless of its intended meaning.
“I should share with you since running this, I wrote this maybe a month ago and appeared in our newsletter and I’ve taken some crap from the Trump derangement syndrome readers that have said why are you talking up that communist Elon Musk?” Lund said.
“It was done humorously when I redefined Doge as duplicates, oldies, garbage, and extras. I said 78% of radio stations are playing the wrong songs, that’s been a number we’ve used in our company for decades. Easily three-fourths of all stations are playing the wrong songs.”
Lund followed up after our call, telling me that he had decided to rewrite the article and change the title to “Does Your Music Library Need Ozempic?”
I asked Lund to explain that 78 percent theory.
Lund drew an example of a client in Canada. “Here’s a radio station that does extensive music research, as do most big stations. Montreal is the second largest market in Canada behind Toronto, with a population about the size of Philadelphia.”
“They did an auditorium music test, we tested 800 songs, we recoded the music, figured out here are the ones that should be your powers, here should be your secondaries, etc. And then they don’t do it.”
“When you look at their powers, their secondaries, and the songs that they play, their playlist is twice the size of CHUM in Toronto, which is the number one-rated Hot AC in Toronto, owned by the Chum group, a very famous station. So why do they play so many songs?”
Citing a particular song in high rotation, Lund asked, “I questioned why they played the song. And they said it’s a really good song. I said there are a lot of good songs. They said, our research turned out well.”
“What came first, the chicken or the egg? And they said, what do you mean? You started playing it because you saw it was really big on TikTok. We know from radio that people who listen to radio for the most part are not people who go to Apple Music and these other sources.”
Hot AC is not the only format with bloated playlists. “There’s a Country station in Oregon that I think plays 75 current songs.”
Another case involved a station in the oldies format where a talent who plays requests aired a song that never made the Billboard Top 60.
“He’s playing songs by request. And according to my rules, yes, provided they made top 10 on the billboard or something like that. So, somebody requests the song, West of the Wall.”
“I asked, why did you play it? It was requested. So, if I requested a piece of sh&t, would you play that? And he said, no, I wouldn’t. I said, well, I think you did.”
“Back to this concept that I have that 78% of all stations are playing the wrong music. I don’t mean a hundred percent wrong. They’re just playing some wrong titles because of the examples I’ve given you. Jocks or programmers go on these songs and if it were a novelty, you play it here and there, depending on what size market you’re in.”
So, let’s break down D.O.G.E.
Duplicates: “We look through these playlists, and we find duplicates, which would be songs with different versions or with an artist’s name, like The Beach Boys on three songs and then Beach Boys on nine songs. And then I asked, why do we play two Beach Boy songs within 20 minutes of each other? MusicMaster doesn’t know the difference between one letter or another. So, when they misspell something, you can see that happen.”
Oldies: “When I talk about oldies, I talk about the songs that are too old for the format. I see this a lot where I find 50-year-old program directors of top 40 stations. And although they do a great job separating their life from the lifestyle of their listener, every once in a while, they’ll go back and pick up a song, which is 10, 15 years too old for their target demographic.
“I also see it in AC. AC is very gold-based in many markets, and they’re looking for more and more gold. They’ll start picking gold that doesn’t really work with the AC audience. “
Garbage: “When I talk about garbage that’s the song that just doesn’t belong. It never tested well, but somebody likes it.”
Extras: “They sit in the system because they were once hits, then they were moved to recurrent, then to gold. And no one ever really thought of looking at research to figure out if that song, which by the way, era-wise fits the format, is really not a hit. And because people liked it when it was a hit doesn’t mean people like it today.”
So, what does Lund offer as a solution?
“When I look at the solution for this, you come to grips with the fact that you’ve got music fallacies for one reason or another and fix them.”
“If you can’t conduct music research, do a music audit and look at these songs that are being played for one reason or another, and say, do people really want to hear them today? And more often than not, the answer is no. Everybody has access to some research or another.”
“Then I say, follow the rule of 300. And that is that, depending on format, there are only 300 to 600 hits. There are thousands of songs, but only 300 to 600 hits. And if you play the hits and not the other trash, you’ll do better. You’ll do fine.”
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Jeff Lynn serves as Editor of Barrett Media’s Music Radio coverage. Prior to joining Barrett Media, Jeff spent time programming in Milwaukee, Omaha, Cleveland, Des Moines, and Madison for multiple radio groups, including iHeartMedia, Townsquare Media, NRG Media, and Entercom (now Audacy). He also worked as a Country Format Editor for All Access until the outlet shut down in August 2023.
To get in touch with Jeff by email, reach him at Jeff@BarrettMedia.com.
