Radio Drops #14: How Many Songs Should I Be Playing?

Short answer: way fewer than you are playing right now. The video runs 4:13.

Watch the video on YouTube: Radio Drops #14: How Many Songs Should I Be Playing?

Half the Songs You’re Playing Now

I get asked this question a lot: how many songs should I be playing? I’ve got a joke answer I come back with, and the answer is about half the number of songs you’re playing right now.

There is no magic number in any format. Oldies stations tend to play a lot more songs than current-based hits stations, of course, but there’s no set number for either one.

Over the decades I heard one phrase a lot at radio conventions and from smart guys in the trade papers: you don’t get hurt by what you don’t play.

The Number One Tune Out

My job as a music radio program director was to keep people listening longer. To do that, you avoid the tune out. Too many commercials is a tune out: an invitation for the listener, especially the one traveling in their car, to reach over and punch the button to another station.

In commercial radio there was always an ongoing argument between me and the sales manager, who wanted to add more commercials. “It’s just one more, man. Just three more, that’s all.” My argument was: you agreed to limit it to 12 minutes, so raise the rates if we’re sold out. The sales manager always wins that argument. You play 13 spots, is what happens.

But commercials are not the number one tune out. The number one tune out is, are you ready? A song I don’t like.

Not long ago Edison Media, the finest media research company I’ve ever known, did a study of radio usage in cars. People are much more likely to sit through one of those long commercial breaks than through the first 10 seconds of a song they don’t like.

Look at how quickly people hit the skip button on Pandora: within the first 10 seconds, sometimes within 5. Bam, on to the next song. For us, it’s bam, on to the next radio station. Not good.

Nothing but Familiar Records

Relating this to the size of the playlist: it should be nothing but familiar records, beyond the new ones that aren’t yet fully familiar. Anything you play should be familiar to the mass of the audience you’re after, your demographic target. And the only familiar records are the big hits of their day.

When I made the move from CHR, Top 40, as my specialty into country, I didn’t know the music very well. So I broke out the Billboard charts and played nothing but records that made at least the top five when they were currents. If they made the top five, I figured that’s a legitimate hit, and they were being played on all the country stations in the nation at pretty much the same time. So they’re familiar records. The ratings for that station went up.

As a consultant, I got this call several times, two or three weeks after a manager had engaged me: “Steve, we sound better already, man. What did you do?” And I’d say, “Well, so far the only thing I’ve done is pull the crap out of your library.”

In the early days, radio was the only source for new music. We were the discovery medium. If you wanted to hear new songs, you got them on the radio, unless you went to the record store and browsed around all day. That’s not the case anymore. Radio has long since stopped being that. Now we have to be the medium that plays my favorite songs, all mixed up, with a few surprises.

Let’s be careful with those few surprises.