Thank you for checking out ‘The Industry According To’. This series runs each Tuesday, and features radio and record industry executives, managers, programmers, talent, artists, and professionals from all areas of the business world. To be considered as a future guest, email me at keithblackboxgroup@gmail.com.
Today we visit with one of the industry’s most thoughtful contributors. Sean Ross is a multi-format veteran and journalist who is equal parts music expert and data ninja. Over the past decade, he has been the editor of his Ross On Radio Newsletter. He recently joined Advantage Music Research as an additional resource for music testing clients after spending two decades as Edison Research’s VP of Music and Research. In addition, Sean consults and schedules music logs for numerous stations in the US and Canada.
So, let’s dive in.
Data vs. Gut
Keith: You’re one of the rare people who understands both music instinct and audience data. There are cases of winning stations not doing research and some researched brands losing, but when those two things disagree — the data says one thing, your ears say another. Which one should win?
Sean: There is not only a place for gut, but there are also different types of research that you can draw on now. I look at callout, streaming, and requests, which I still believe in, especially for songs in the weeks before callout kicks in. Part of what gut is for now is deciding what to do when different types of research contradict each other, or which unlikely songs from streaming are also potential radio records.
There are songs now that look healthy in every other indicator that may not test until they get to No. 1 like Bruno Mars’ “I Just Might” or might not test power for everybody like Raye’s “Where Is My Husband!” If I were a programmer, I would want to see callout. I’m not sure though it’s the every-time arbiter of whether a song should be a power.
As somebody who both loves music and conducts music research for a living, I’ve always believed that research helps you find songs to play, not just eliminate them. When I work on a music test for a station, I usually find at least a few songs which they weren’t planning to test that come back in the top 100 and sometimes even in the top 5. I think callout could give programmers a faster answer on new songs, but only if we’re willing to rotate them aggressively while they’re fresh.
The Streaming Reality Check
Keith: Streaming data is giving labels and programmers more information than ever about listening behavior and music consumption. What’s the most important thing radio and labels still misunderstand about how people actually consume music?
Sean: The biggest myth about streaming is the belief that their audience is inherently faster and more interested in new music than the radio audience. For two years now, there’s been a study at Country Radio Seminar showing that Country music’s streaming-only audience is choosing streaming to hear more oldies, not the edgy new artists that Country radio won’t play. If you look at Spotify’s Today’s Top Hits, there are plenty of recurrents and year-old songs or 18-month-old songs, and if you look at pure Spotify numbers, you still have Fleetwood Mac and the Killers in the Top 20. One of the reasons so much old music is gurgling up is because streaming isn’t creating as many new hits as people think. Radio has been discouraged from their own enterprise.
The Discovery Myth
Keith: Radio spent decades owning music discovery. Today, discovery mostly happens elsewhere. In your view, what role should “new music” realistically play for a radio brand in 2026?
Sean: I firmly believe that “new music” is part of the promise for most contemporary formats. Triple-A stations are posting some surprisingly good numbers now by not giving up on the music discovery franchise. In some cases, they’re beating the commercial Alternative stations in their market that have largely become Alternative Gold. Country is our most successful new music format and most stations there are doing a good job of balancing currents, recurrents, and gold, as well as active and passive records. For the new music pipeline to begin flowing again, there would need to be people at the station level listening to new music, not just looking at streams, and healthy promotion departments willing to pursue those songs.
Don’t Go Below the Mean
Keith: Traditionally, when music research comes back, the first step is cutting everything below the Mean. But sometimes the difference between survival and death is razor thin — say 3.8 to 3.75. Is radio becoming too rigid with research, or is that discipline still the right approach?
Sean: I have never believed in just playing the ranker. If you look at Top 40 ratings now, just following callout and keeping “Ordinary” or “Golden” in power indefinitely isn’t working for people. In a library test, there are a lot of factors that determine the mean score—how many songs you tested, whether you held back some of the songs that you thought would test anyway, whether you included currents and recurrents. When you get to the middle of the test, you have an opportunity to play any song in that region, but not an imperative. And if you can only test music once a year, like most people now, the song that squeaks through with a 3.8 could easily lose some of its shine after six months, and it might not beat the song with a 3.75 next time.
Repetition Reality
Keith: Radio has always leaned on familiarity, and “repetition” has always been a listener complaint. But today listeners have infinite choice. Are audiences becoming less tolerant of repetition? Does the complaint carry more weight now, or should the industry continue to largely ignore it?
Sean: Repetition has become a problem, especially in current-based formats. We trained ourselves as an industry to view listener complaints about repetition as validation that we were playing the hits. I think somewhere around 100x a week on powers, that changed, and judging from ratings, there was a point of diminishing returns. For gold-based formats, I can’t argue with anything KRTH (K-Earth 101) Los Angeles does. However, not every Classic Hits station that plays its powers 3-4 times a day is winning like K-Earth and the highest-rated Classic Hits station in America, at least until Cumulus pulled out of the Nielsen ratings, KCMO-FM Kansas City, which is at the more traditional 12x a week on powers.
If Sean Owned a Radio Station
Keith: A song may be “new” to one listener, but three months old and tired to another. If you programmed Sean FM, when does a song stop being new? When do you stop calling it new?
Sean: On Sean FM, there would be a lot of things done differently, besides deciding when to call a song “new.” In general, if radio was advocating more for all the songs it plays as currents throughout their lifespan, and not just with “discover new music” stagers playing before “End of Beginning” on its second or third time around, we would defang this issue.
The “Good Enough” Question
Keith: You listen to more stations than most. There’s a growing sense that “just good enough” is okay. Budgets are tighter, and expectations are lowering. From a programming and music standpoint, would you agree with that growing concern that the industry has quietly lowered its product standards?
Sean: Broadcasters are doing what they can logistically manage to do with the resources they have. To some extent, they’re too blinkered and pressured to even decide what “better” would be now. Is it “more local” or “more personality”? Is it marketing again or addressing spotloads or the streaming experience? It’s hard to imagine how we could make any of those things happen, but they definitely won’t happen if we get defensive and decide that today’s radio is just fine, or if we’re determined to prove that yesterday’s radio wasn’t really so great.
Who’s Standing Out to You
Keith: I loved your article on KYGO/Denver and how you see them doing some things differently. In that spirit, which brands do you see taking risks or doing things that may be from the conventional playbook but it’s working?
Sean: Any list I might provide here is vulnerable to sins of omission. I write a weekly column, and I still don’t get to spotlight everybody I like, which is, at least, good news for the state of radio. In terms of ratings stories, besides the non-comm Triple-As that have surprised everybody, I was happy to see Country WKDF Nashville’s music enterprise pay off in the ratings, again before Cumulus withdrew. I’m glad that Top 40 KMVQ (99.7 Now) San Francisco is usually among our healthiest CHRs. I was also a big fan of 2Day Sydney, which went more aggressive with their music a year ago. A month ago, they scored their first decent ratings books since the change. They recently evolved back to Hot AC nonetheless.
Will Tight Be Right 10 Years from Now?
Keith: Most radio playlists are very tight. Ten years from now, do you still see radio as a tightly programmed experience or something broader?
Sean: Being tight vs. playing what I call “hits plus,” really does come down to the individual station. There will continue to be room for both. Programming for variety is a lot more challenging, especially when there are fewer people at the controls. Each of them is under pressure to let AI crank out a log in a few minutes. But I don’t believe that tight is always right. I also think “you don’t get hurt by what you don’t play” is no longer the mic drop that it used to be.
Over the last 20 years, the lessons of Bob- and Jack-FM, then Pandora, then streaming, have been some people do want “hits plus.” I believe that programming your station for an eight-minute listening span becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. We want to double-down on in-car listening because it’s where radio is still most dominant. Is that an invitation though for listeners to not give us half of their workday afterwards?
Overall, I would hope that strategic “surprise and delight” remains part of radio, whether that’s with new or old songs.
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Keith Cunningham is a music industry and Rock/Alternative columnist for Barrett Media and the founder of Black Box Group, a modern-modeled creative & strategic consultancy built for brands that need strategies with teeth. He’s the former Master of Mayhem at 95.5 KLOS-FM in Los Angeles for over a decade, a nationwide consultant, and has been repeatedly voted one of America’s top Program Directors and strategic thinkers. Keith has built his career by taking multi-million-dollar brands from worst to first and leading Marconi & Gracie award winners along the way. A data nerd with a rock-and-roll heart, he is an advisory council member for St. Jude fundraising, a fantasy football champion, and lover of his daughters & dogs. Reach him at keithblackboxgroup@gmail.com or on LinkedIn or X.
