Two weeks ago, Classic Rock got a gift. One of the format’s biggest acts, Rush announced a 2026 tour. Always a successful road act, Rush has not played live since the passing of drummer Neal Peart. That means it’s been more than ten years since fans could see the band perform.
Fan reaction to the announcement was massive. The original announcement included twelve shows spread across seven venues. Due to overwhelming demand that has already grown to fifty-eight shows across twenty-four cities. It wouldn’t be shocking to see it expand even further.
There was clearly a big buzz about the announcement. That begs the question, did Classic Rock radio take full advantage of the moment? Let’s dive into the numbers and find out.
To start with, we need a baseline of how many spins Rush has been receiving on an average week. Using the Mediabase Classic Rock panel as the base, Rush received 119,476 plays between January 1st and September 30th. That is essentially 39 weeks which means the band has been getting 3,063 spins a week.
Unfortunately, I can’t pull information that matches exactly with the tour announcement on October 6. But during the week of October 9th through the 15th, Rush was played 3,625 times. The following week, October 16th through the 22nd the band was played 3,296 times.
For the 9th through the 15th that’s an increase in airplay of 18%. Considering that it doesn’t include the first couple of days directly after the announcement it’s safe to say the initial jump, when the tour was first promoted, was likely higher. Let’s say a 22% increase in airplay. The more recent seven day period, the 16th through the 22nd, shows the amount of airplay trending back down settling in around 8% higher than usual.
Now let’s compare radio’s reaction to the Rush tour news, to the fans’ interest in hearing the band. I reached out to Haley Jones at Luminate for streaming data to see what impact the news had on people’s online listening habits.
In the four weeks leading up to the announcement the band averaged 5,868,379 streams. Weekly demand was steady with little variance from week to week. In the seven days following the announcement, streams jumped to 8,168,379 an increase of nearly 40%. In the seven days after that demand remained high, continuing to be 25% higher than normal.
Since the streaming world is complicated, another way to look at how the fans were reacting is to isolate the on-demand streaming numbers. You could say that’s a better gauge of interest when playlists and other factors are taken out. The results are similar. In the first week after the announcement on-demand streaming jumped by 45% and in the second week it remained 29% higher than average.
| Rush Exposure Increase | Announcement Week | Following Week |
| Radio | 22% (approx) | 8% |
| Streams | 40% | 25% |
| On-Demand Streams | 45% | 29% |
Since Rush made their tour announcement another Classic Rock-related event took place that wasn’t as much fun with the unexpected death of Ace Frehley on October 16th. Classic Rock Radio clearly paid tribute with spins of KISS songs going from 1261 the week before his death to 2800 the week following. That’s a 122% increase.
In the streaming world, we have data including the day Ace died and the four days afterword where KISS averaged 1,876,359 plays. The five days before the band was averaging 827,316 plays for an increase of 126% not far off from the increase at radio.
Now that we have the numbers the question is did radio successfully take advantage of the moment in these two cases? Like a typical consultant, I think the answer is yes and no. Here are a few thoughts:
No: Neither of these are core acts for the format. An overreaction could be problematic because there are a limited number of hits and relevant depth tracks to work with. There is a limit here that isn’t the same with bigger artists.
Yes: My guess is most of the increased exposure for Rush and KISS took place the day of or day after each event. Then it was right back to normal. The sustained increases in streaming show that these type of events have longer lasting impact than just a few hours that we need to capitalize on.
Yes: We know that listeners, especially more casual fans, aren’t tuned to your station all the time. We know occasions of listening are short and difficult to get. Letting the hype and interest around events like this fade within a few hours, especially when they can then go online to listen, is a mistake.
If you have thoughts on how to manage events like these or did something particularly interesting on your station please let me know. In the meantime, you are now free to go back to programming safely tucked away from any math.
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Mike Stern is a Classic Rock columnist and Features writer for Barrett Media. He has been with Jacobs Media consulting stations in the Classic Rock, Rock, Alternative and AAA world for more than a decade. Prior to that he programmed stations in Chicago, Detroit, Denver Las Vegas and other markets. He also worked as News/Talk Editor for Radio and Records, wrote about Top 40 Radio for Billboard Magazine and had his own radio talent coaching business called Talent Mechanic.
