Thank you for checking out The Industry According To. Every Wednesday we speak with a different expert or leader from somewhere in the vast music industry — label executives, artist managers, programmers, talent, artists, consultants, and beyond. To be considered as a future guest, email me at keithblackboxgroup@gmail.com.
Today we sit down with Andrew Curran, President and CEO of DMR/Interactive, one of radio’s leading strategic marketing agencies.
Andrew began his career with ESPN Radio and iHeartMedia before joining DMR/Interactive in 2004. He became COO in 2011, President in 2013 and CEO in 2023. Along the way, he has helped the company combine data analytics, consumer insights and targeted marketing so radio brands can recruit listeners, strengthen listening habits and turn audience relationships into ratings and revenue.
In 2007, as PPM measurement and the iPhone were changing the media landscape, Andrew created DMR’s social and digital practice. Today, his team works across digital, OTT, AI discovery, social, video, direct mail, mobile, email, databases and word of mouth — but the ultimate objective remains the same: Get the right listeners to choose your brand more often and turn them into fans.
So, let’s dive in.
*Editor’s Note: Answers have been edited for clarity and length.*
Your First Radio
Keith: You bought a radio with your First Communion money in 1986. What did that radio experience give you that today’s audio products don’t, and what should modern radio reclaim from it?
Andrew: Best part of that story is that it’s true. I got $40 from my grandparents for First Communion, and I bought a radio with a cassette deck.
My love affair with radio was born.
I wouldn’t learn about Theatre of the Mind until years later as a communication major at Boston College, but listening to my first radio had already taught me what it meant. It created companionship, imagination and a sense that you were part of something happening beyond yourself.
Forty years later, that shared experience is one of radio’s greatest advantages.
Personalized playlists and on-demand content give individuals exactly what they want. Radio should not try to beat them at that game. Our strength is creating moments, personalities and experiences that people share.
Years ago, I added a phrase to my email signature that also appears on our money: E Pluribus Unum, which means “Out of Many, One.”
That is radio at its best. We connect communities of people with each other and with advertisers.
The opportunity now is to capture that sense of belonging. Not simply getting someone to listen, but giving them a reason to say, “That’s my station. Did you hear it too?”
The Industry Through the Listener Lens
Keith: We all see the headlines, but you’re working in the trenches studying listener behavior every day. If listeners — not pundits — wrote today’s headline about radio, what would it say? Still relevant, loved and critical? Diminished by other choices? Or something else?
Andrew: “Still important. No longer automatic.” Edison’s recent finding that mobile devices have overtaken AM/FM among 13- to 34-year-olds listening in vehicles is the latest evidence of that shift.
That makes the relationship with listeners more important, not less. People love their station. It’s not because it’s a last resort or they don’t know other options exist. They intentionally seek it out. The challenge is that there are fewer people in the radio-first camp, and listening occasions we once took for granted now have to be earned.
Listeners First
Keith: You’ve advocated a “Listeners First” strategy, but virtually every radio company claims it already puts listeners first. What decisions would the industry be making differently if that were true?
Andrew: Spot loads are an easy one, but I’ll shift the conversation to something else. As an industry, we need to understand the lives of our biggest fans so we can serve them better and become a bigger part of their daily routine.
Even your best listeners spend 95% of their lives away from radio. We don’t know enough about those other 23 hours or how their favorite station can earn a bigger role in their day. As we capture these deeper insights and use them to craft a stronger value proposition on-air and off, investing in deeper engagement helps future-proof the relationship. We want listeners to say, “My favorite station understands me and it’s part of who I am.” That’s a lofty bar, but it beats the alternative.
Radio’s original sin: being satisfied with an anonymous audience.
More awareness and cume create the opportunity to build P1s, but thinking about the audience in aggregate can hide where the real value sits. Our job is to identify, cultivate and retain heavy radio listeners who drive the majority of listening, whether they already listen to the station or we recruit them from elsewhere.
If 25% of your audience is generating 60% to 70% of your listening, putting listeners first starts with knowing who those people are by name, understanding what matters to them and investing disproportionately to grow those relationships while efficiently targeting new heavy listeners.
When you build and maintain an army of heavy listeners, you have a proactive and repeatable process to turn cume into habitual listening and reduce your exposure to ratings volatility.
Product Before Promotion
Keith: Great marketing can put a station into the stack of choices, but it can’t make someone love a weak or undifferentiated product. Have you ever told a client, “Don’t spend the money yet — the product needs work first”?
Andrew: When it comes to marketing funds, most groups aren’t spending on stations with a weak product. The bigger issue is timing. When approvals come in late, sometimes there’s a limited runway to cement new habits before a predictable shift in listening behavior, such as the arrival of Christmas music or the end of the school year. In those cases, we’ll talk through how to maximize the impact of the available window to ensure we’re always good stewards of your money.
The Savannah Bananas Lesson
Keith: You’ve pointed radio toward the Savannah Bananas and their fans-first approach. What is the radio equivalent of the Bananas experience — something so distinctive that people don’t merely consume it but actively want to belong to it?
Andrew: Make the listener feel like an insider rather than merely an anonymous member of an aggregated audience.
The Savannah Bananas understand that the game is only part of the experience. The relationship surrounding it matters just as much.
Radio can do the same through personalities, experiences, access, recognition and community. The goal is to create something people want to identify with and talk about.
Jesse Cole is the man in the yellow tuxedo, and he is obsessed with super-serving his fans. He has built the business around enhancing their experience, even when that means walking away from short-term revenue.
Who’s the More Important Target?
Keith: According to your campaigns, which produces the greater return: getting P1s to listen more often or recruiting like-minded people who currently listen very little or not at all?
Andrew: Not all P1s are created equal. The same is true of P2s and P3s. A listener can listen to radio for five minutes a week and still be a P1. I’d rather focus on winning more listening from an employed P1, P2 or P3 who commutes to work and listens two or three hours per day.
Cume tells you how many are listening, but it doesn’t tell you how much. The greatest return comes from heavy listeners.
About 90% of the people we recruit and engage in our station marketing campaigns are heavy radio listeners who listen at least one hour per day. With limited marketing dollars, it’s not just about growing cume. It’s about growing the right cume.
Changing Listener Behavior
Keith: Changing behavior is the objective when a station wants someone to listen more often or stay longer. “Make the station better” doesn’t count as an answer — what is the simplest, most reliable way to get a listener to change an established habit and give a station more time?
Andrew: Offer an incentive, deliver an amazing listening experience and set appointments, multiple times a day.
Contest franchises like Double Your Paycheck, Pay Your Bills or a Grand in Your Hand are great examples. They should be timely, relevant and support your brand position. They invite people to daydream. Then, when their name gets announced, their phone starts blowing up with texts from friends and co-workers making sure they call back and win. Incentives make the world go round, and radio is no exception.
Trying to convince someone to “listen more” is abstract. Winning two or three additional occasions per day is tangible. Repeat it daily until it becomes habitual. Now you have changed their habits, and you’re getting more of their listening.
Habit Versus Passion
Keith: DMR works to make listening habitual, but habits can be broken when new choices are constantly appearing on phones and dashboards. Is radio too dependent or too focused on habitual usage and not focused enough on making listeners passionate about choosing it?
Andrew: I don’t think it is either/or.
Passion gives someone a reason to choose you. Habit makes that choice repeatable.
There’s a danger in assuming yesterday’s habit automatically survives tomorrow’s technology. Declining PUMM levels draw that out.
Radio has to keep earning both the emotional connection and the next occasion.
Contests, Entries and Actual Listening
Keith: Stations continue to lean heavily on contests — $1,000 here, water park tickets there — even though some listeners distrust them or assume they’re rigged. A national contest or social campaign can generate astonishing numbers of entries and impressions without proving anyone listened more. When do contests truly change listening behavior, and which metric ultimately proves it?
Andrew: Whether it’s rewarding your kid for getting an A in school, a football coach earning a bonus for making the playoffs or Nielsen incentivizing PPM panelists, incentives make the world go round.
Yet a million contest entries misses the point.
The question is who played, how often they played and whether their listening behavior changed.
We routinely see a small percentage of contest players generate a disproportionate number of entries. That distribution tells you much more than topline numbers.
The ultimate metric is listening. Did the contest create additional occasions, increase frequency or strengthen the relationship with people capable of moving the ratings?
We are heavily involved in group contest analytics and work with clients to implement a robust strategy that recognizes loyalty and gets players to not only come back but also increase their listening occasions and contest entries.
If you aren’t actively working with your first-party data, you’re leaving listening on the table and risking irrelevance in the world of AI.
The Targeted-Digital Arms Race
Keith: DMR helped pioneer precision digital targeting for radio. That was once a significant advantage for those who used it. Now it’s just a cover charge. Competition has grown, and reaching desirable consumers has generally become more expensive. What’s the next marketing hack stations should be using before everyone else catches up?
Andrew: The next advantage is not another media channel or platform. It’s better audience intelligence and consistency.
Everyone has access to digital advertising, and stations sell more and more of it each year. Unfortunately, the skills associated with generating leads for a personal injury law firm don’t necessarily translate to heavy radio listening. In addition, the marketplace is full of tactics sold as a magic bullet. Cheap marketing that doesn’t work is still expensive. What matters is delivering an outcome you can monetize.
The opportunity involves using first-party data, behavioral signals and AI to identify the people most likely to become valuable listeners and then determine the right message, platform and moment to reach them.
Precision used to mean targeting. Increasingly, it also means relevance to the right person at the right moment, so you win their next listening occasion as we build an army of fans.
The Database Problem
Keith: Stations have spent decades building listener databases, but many still use them as little more than places to send contest emails and client messages. What should a high-functioning brand be learning from its database, and how should it use that information tactically in 2026?
Andrew: You’re not wrong. Long before AI came along, technology allowed stations to segment their data and personalize the message. As an industry, radio simply hasn’t put enough value on that relationship.
A database allows you to monitor signals and segment interests and behaviors so you can identify the people who matter most to you and your advertisers.
Who is highly engaged? Who is becoming more active? Who is disappearing? Who streams? Who plays contests? Who attends events? Who recruits friends and co-workers?
Your database strategy should transcend the station email newsletter that started back in the 1990s. With the right strategic vision, first-party data becomes an audience intelligence engine that can drive monetization and help future-proof your brand.
Streaming Knows Us
Keith: You’ve talked about how Spotify uses AI to map behavior and personalize a listener’s experience, much like TikTok serves up more of what a user engages with. Advantage digital. How can radio overcome that disadvantage when the broadcast product itself cannot be personalized for each listener?
Andrew: Radio cannot personalize the broadcast signal for every person, but it can personalize the relationship around it.
We should know who someone is, what they respond to, how they listen and when their behavior increases or decreases so we can accelerate that growth or prevent a lapse.
The broadcast might be one-to-many. The marketing surrounding the station should increasingly be one-to-one. We help stations accomplish that every day, which starts with a specific point of view on heavy users and strategic touchpoints that leverage repeat and varied contact.
Proving It Without Nielsen
Keith: Some companies and markets now operate with limited Nielsen measurement or none at all. When there’s no reliable ranker, how does DMR prove that a campaign is needed and that it has been successful when it’s done?
Andrew: Start with the behavior you are trying to impact and monetize.
Streaming occasions. Monthly active users. In-car listening behavior. Donations. Database engagement. App session starts. Contest entries. Listener acquisition. Retention. Reactivation.
That can include new sources such as DTS AutoStage, which gives broadcasters another view into how people are listening in the car.
Measurement should never begin with what data happens to be available. It should begin with the business outcomes you are looking to achieve.
The Blank Slate
Keith: Last question — blank slate. Say anything you want to any sector of the industry. What do you want them to hear?
Andrew: Just like Vince Vaughn said to Jon Favreau in the iconic movie Swingers, “You’re so money and you don’t even know it.” That’s radio in a nutshell. Before chasing people who are not listening, win more of what’s available.
If you’re #1, grow your share of the pie. If you need to improve your rank, take listening from your competition. Analyze your CPR reports. Most stations are only getting about half of the current listening from their top panelists. There’s enormous upside right in front of you.
But the road isn’t getting any easier.
Even your best listeners spend most of their lives with the radio off. During those hours, they are exposed to countless alternatives competing for their attention.
Strengthen relationships with current heavy listeners and efficiently recruit more of the right people.
At DMR, our job is to make sure the right people hear your content and keep coming back for more.
Technology will keep changing.
The objective does not.
Create fans who love your brand.
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