Impact week. Conversion week. Maximum Spins and the dreaded push week. Let’s start with this premise. Country record labels have a very different agenda than Country radio.
Having been on both sides of the equation, I can say this with 100 percent certainty: Both have a job to do and when partnerships are formed, they can be great relationships.
Adding new music has typically meant playing it for a few spins overnight and late evenings to “help get it started.”
Looking at Mediabase station reports for a large market station in a strong Country market, I found an add last week for the new Jordan Davis song, “Bar None.” Davis is a proven hitmaker. Remember “Buy Dirt?”
The station has to date, given the new Davis song one spin overnight. For the record, another add shows one spin in midday and one in the evening.
What has this accomplished? It helped the record label. They can put that station “on the board.” It helped create one of those “early on” graphics used for marketing.
If this is part of the partnership and everyone knows that, then it’s fine. But I believe it is time to rethink that model.
There is a huge appetite for music discovery. With DSPs and pure plays, TikTok and YouTube fans of an artist already know everything that’s out there almost as soon as an artist’s music drops.
Take Morgan Wallen; you can’t tell me that when he dropped “One Thing At A Time,” a 36-track project in 2023, his fans waited for radio before seeking out every note of it.
Sure, Wallen is an A-list artist who sells out stadiums, but fans are craving the discovery of new artists and songs, which is never in short supply on Music Row.
SiriusXM’s “The Highway” breaks the next generation of Country superstars. The channel’s “Highway Finds” selects a Country artist that “they believe has the talent to make it big.” Their website lists past “Highway Finds” Parker McCollum, Luke Combs, Gabby Barrett, Maren Morris, Dan + Shay, and Florida Georgia Line.
Making new music discoveries should be an essential part of your music strategy. Adding and playing a song seven times a week overnight isn’t music discovery.
Music Choice Director of Programming and Country Programmer Jim Murphy uses this strategy to introduce new music.
“When I programmed for terrestrial radio, I never was a fan of dayparting songs and new songs in particular. My feeling was, and still is, if you’re going to commit to a song or an artist you should be willing to play it enough times throughout the day that listeners stand a chance of hearing it.”
“I understand why some people think any airplay, even overnights only, is better than none. But it always begs the old “If a tree falls in the forest…” question for me. I mean, is there any actual benefit to the audience or the artist if only Mediabase hears it?”
“Our philosophy at Music Choice is different from most radio stations in that we are proud of our ability to drive music and artist discovery on multiple levels. When a song is selected for an add on ‘Today’s Country,’ we’ll most often put it in a Brand New “highlight” rotation to make sure it gets an enhanced level of exposure for the first week or two of airplay.”
“From there, it can move either up or down, but only after it’s been featured enough to hopefully catch the audience’s ear. And even when a song moves down after that initial blast, it’s still playing in all dayparts in every time zone across the country.”
Will playing new music in all dayparts mean adding fewer records? Most likely, if you commit to an all-daypart add. But what good does it do to add three records in a week that maybe only one will ever see the light of day?
Add the song, play it in all day parts, and expose the artist loudly and proudly—one word of caution. When you present the song or the artist, you might want to resist the temptation to use the word “new” because, in all likelihood, it’s already a few weeks old to your savvy social media users.
I use the hub-and-spoke analogy to describe how listeners consume radio. Radio, of course, is the hub, and the spokes are the consumers. In the old days, the spokes relied on the hub to tell them when there was new music or a concert was coming to town.
Now, the spokes have a quick and easy way, in their pockets, to communicate directly with each other, eliminating the hub.
Get into the new music discovery discussion with your spokes.
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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.
