Christy Taylor is Music Director for Audacy’s Alternatives 107.7 The End in Seattle and Alt 94.9 in San Diego.
For this edition of Meet The Music Directors, we talked about Alternative Radio and programming music for two markets with distinct psychographics.
Taylor believes that there is no shortage of new music for the Alternative Genre.
“I think that there’s always a product. There’s music out there, if you know where to look for it. It’s not that hard to find things. It’s really about your access points.”
“I think what’s changed is the number of new artists who maybe want to work their records to radio or understand its value compared to social media. So, we aren’t getting worked on every song with a streaming or TikTok story, and it’s up to us to try to pay attention to what’s happening outside of our ecosystem. I also think that, due to the consolidation of labels, we hear from fewer people.”
Discovering music in the local scene is also an important part of music curation.
“We have a show in Seattle called ‘Locals Only,’ that has been here for decades. It is one of the important ingredients of The End’s secret sauce. There’s value in the locality that radio can provide. I think if you reach out to people in your community, they will reach back out to you.”
“But if you don’t reach out, then you’re never going to get to ‘shake hands’ and make that connection. I believe when you reach out to the local music community and they see that you’re doing something for them, they will advocate for you in return.
“When people see that you care about them, it can become a reciprocal relationship. It’s essential to be part of the community. Particularly in Seattle, there are so many local musicians here that deserve record deals.”
“There are plenty of great bands in Seattle right now. One of the more famous artists to come out fairly recently are Deep Sea Diver. Signed to Seattle’s Sup Pop Records, we have had them in rotation for a few months now.”
When The End gets behind a local artist, it’s more than just the occasional overnight spin.
“One of the things that we do with our ‘Locals Only’ program is we have a ‘Locals Only Artist of the Month.’ And that song goes into regular rotation. So, it’s not a song we throw into overnights and nights. It gets a daytime spin. And it gets special promotion on social media. It gets called out in the imaging. It’s just a really cool way to connect the audience with the music coming out of Seattle.”
What is the difference between programming Alternative for Seattle and San Diego?
“San Diego and Seattle are different, because San Diego was one of the markets that in the ‘80s, when the Rock of the ’80s was a thing, and being the cutting edge of rock. They had 91X in 1983. And there was KROQ, LIR and a few of those other stations that really made the format what it is today. So you can get a little deeper musically in that market in certain ways, into that new wave post-punk sound.”
“When The End signed on, Alternative was hitting its heyday in sync with MTV and all the music coming directly from Seattle. So, you have a little bit more of a deeper Alternative music knowledge at both brands for different reasons. There’s also more of a beachy skew in San Diego. Those reggae vibes will resonate a little bit more
Keeping in mind that there is not a one-size-fits-all solution, what is a good current/gold balance for Alternative?
“That’s a great question. And I hesitate to answer it if I’m being honest with you, because I think it changes. It’s based on what the product is. Not just the new product that’s coming, but the product we’ve gotten that we can move to recurrent.”
“Sometimes, in my opinion, stations hesitate to move records to recurrent. And if you take something all the way to power, and you’re a thousand spins in, and then it’s not worthy of the library? To me, getting a record into the library is the ultimate goal.”
We don’t survive if we don’t get the records to library. Recurrent records are really important to any radio station, at least I think they are for Alternative. People focus a lot on the new music, and we need to focus on the new music. But most of the songs we pick, they’re going to stall out at a certain point. We need to make sure we have the right recurrents on the stations because to the audience they can still perceive these records as new and these are new ‘hits.’”
“At one of my stations, we’ve been talking about potentially playing more recurrents. In fact, in the past year or so, we decided we could play more songs in our C level rotation. These are new songs that rotate about 12-15 times a week. The new music product we’re getting right now helps us establish those things.”
“It’s about knowing how to center your music pendulum. If you know what your center lane is and you have the trust of your audience, then you can swing a little bit right or a little bit left, but you have to always come back to center. You need to have balanced quarter hours.”
“People need to get all the flavors they’re expecting in a 15-minute window. And I know some people say that’s an old way of thinking, but Radio is supposed to provide a soundtrack to people’s lives and needs to meet a sonic expectation.”
“Tempo on radio really helps. You need to make sure that you’re not having lulls for too long. That you’re providing the different textures of music from the genre, in this case, alternative. Streaming provides a more, I want Frank Ocean today kind of thing.”
“We’re casting a different net with an eye for strong quarter hours. If in one quarter hour we sound like an indie alt station, and in the other quarter hour, a rock alt station, then we’re not delivering on sonic expectation.”
Taylor believes Alternative needs to mirror the audience in its presentation.
“During the days of monoculture, when there were less ways to discover music there were a lot of programmers who were able to be on a “soapbox” and tell their audience what music they should listen to. They were able to tell people through their curation that this is Alternative music. Now the audience has so many more ways to access music and decide what they want to hear.”
“Radio used to lead with the ‘What’ and now we need to lead with the ‘Why’ to try to pull people into our radio communities. Actually, Simon Sinek’s Ted talk on leading with ‘why’ does a much better job of explaining this than I am.”
“I guess in certain ways, if you want a soapbox, you go to TikTok. We’re supposed to look at music trends and go, does this make sense for our audience, and does our audience like it? We need to figure out what resonates. What can we weave into the fabric of what we do? What makes sense in our music recipe?”
“Now, when it comes to on-air talent, there’s a place for contexting and soapboxing. But musically, we need to mirror and reflect where the moment is and where the audience is. When we are assessing bands, are we asking… Who’s wearing the t-shirts? Who’s selling out their shows? What is their traction on social media?”
“One of the other phrases I use a lot is, ‘where there’s smoke, there’s fire, but not all the smoke we see deserves our attention.’ We have to be able to discern what songs make sense for each station because not everything that streams is viable for radio.”
“Yes, streams matter to me, but in my opinion local streams matter more than national streams. We look at many different data points to see what works. With music being subjective, it is both a science and an art. So if you have the trust of your audience, then you can lean into something that might be new and fresh and relatively undiscovered, like our ‘locals only artist of the month’ and help build it from the ground up, just like radio did back in the day. But I firmly believe the majority of the music we play should reflect or mirror what the audience wants and is interested in.
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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.
