One of the biggest knocks on broadcast radio – once we get past “too many commercials” – is music repetition. We see it in every Techsurvey, hear it in focus groups, and read about it in every “radio sucks” article.
So when I think about all the music research I’ve seen – and we’re talking a lot of it – the least important data point is burn/fatigue/tired of/play less.
Radio programmers know this. In fact, the old Top 40 saw – “Once they’re complaining about repetition, it’s time to move it to power” – is one of the first things you learn when you go to work in a music radio station’s programming department.
And it’s why the most popular music channels on satellite radio and on streaming pureplays aren’t the ones that play deep cuts. It’s the big hits that consumers come back to again and again.
But why the disconnect? Why do people complain all the time when they hear that song again on the radio – and then turn the volume up?
Perhaps it would be helpful to understand the origins and the psychology of music repetition. Auditorium testing and callout data are just numbers on a page. They don’t explain the phenomenon.
As a PD, I don’t think you truly appreciate the inner workings of repetition until you have kids. When my children were little, it was about playing Disney movies like “Little Mermaid” again and again and again, thanks to the much-used VCR in our playroom.
Today, it’s “Baby Shark.” Tomorrow it will be something else. The bottom line is that little kids can’t get enough of the same media and songs. They demand it. They revel in it. They live for it.
And we were all little kids once, growing up with the same needs to see and hear our favorites – as often as possible.
It’s the essence of how Top 40 radio works – and really any format that relies on a playlist of songs regularly played.
An article in HuffPost by Taylor Pittman illuminates the “why” behind music repetition. Titled “Why You Like Listening to The Same Song Over And Over Again,” Pittman introduces us to the director of the music therapy program at NYU, Kenneth Aigen.
And with the help a team of music analysts and experts, Aigen and Pittman list seven attributes of music that makes songs pleasantly repetitive.
If you’re in radio, you know all these things. But thinking about them all together and in context, they explain why hearing hit songs again and again isn’t a negative – it’s part of what we live for.
Aigen’s key point is illuminating:
“Music is the way we create our personal identity. Some people say you are what you eat. In a lot of ways, you are what you play or what you listen to.”
Yes, music research and other data points about songs are important, but their popularity and timelessness are more easily explained when we consider the amazing power of music.
Here’s the list:
1. Hearing a favorite song – again – reminds us of our identity. As Aigen notes, “Each time we re-experience our favorite music, we’re sort of reinforcing our sense of who we are, where we belong, what we value.” Music isn’t just wallpaper. It defines us. When someone truly connects with a song, they can’t hear it enough.
2. Music has strong seasonal appeal, especially during summertime. Aigen mentions how Billboard‘s “song of summer” designation (which should make Sean Ross happy) resonates with many of us. I would argue that Christmas music has that same impact, another reason why these songs provide so much happiness, warmth, and good memories for so many every December (and November).
3. Songs provide a sense of time and place. We know this from our studies of Classic Rock, the indelible ties so many people have with songs, events, and locations. Aigen notes, “Whenever you listen to a song you used to listen to when you were 15, the feeling of that period in your life comes back intact.” That’s why “Brown Eyed Girl,” “Hotel California,” “Respect,” “Rolling in the Deep,” and so many others are more than a collection of notes and melodies. They are markers, points in time of our lives that plot where we were and what we were doing.
4. Big hits are often designed and engineered that way. Pittman quotes Laura Taylor, a composer and sound designer, who creates radio spots, as well as music for video games and slot machines (yes, we’re talking repetition). Taylor notes the chorus (the hook) is often highly produced to create a fuller, louder sound. That’s part of what helps those songs stay in your head.
5. Songs can have huge cultural impact. Clinical psychologist Isaura González believes certain music can create “a communal experience for friends and family.” She mentions “Despacito,” a great example. Others include Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side,” John Lennon’s “Imagine,” and Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” They were more than music, instead symbolizing something cultural or even historical.
6. And sometimes songs are just plain hooky. Aigen mentions the “Macarena.” I think of Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky.” And just a year or so ago, it was the return of “Bohemian Rhapsody” (and “We Will Rock You”) that got in our heads. Whether it’s Bobby McFerrin, Pharrell Williams, or Timon and Pumbaa telling us to not worry and just be happy, these songs simply endure.
7. Some songs are timeless. This quality is what made the Oldies format successful, and the torch was passed to Classic Rock. Aigen talks about the phenomenon of how certain songs and even bands have gone on to become multi-generational hits. From Motown to the Beatles to AC/DC, there’s “a timeless quality that’s helped music rise to the level of art.”
Aigen concludes by noting that music repetition helps us recover certain feelings – whether nostalgic, happy, or sad. As he notes, “We are constantly trying to go back to some kind of lost paradise.”
Big songs with burn?
Throw ’em into power.
Play the hits.
Jacobs Media has consistently walked the walk in the digital space, providing insights and guidance through its well-read national Techsurveys.
In 2008, jacapps was launched - a mobile apps company that has designed and built more than 1,300 apps for both the Apple and Android platforms. In 2013, the DASH Conference was created - a mashup of radio and automotive, designed to foster better understanding of the "connected car" and its impact.
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Fred was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2018.
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I ask PD’s, how often do you want your P1 listener to hear “X” Song each week? If the answer is “once a week”, then they need to play it about 12-15x spread evenly. So to add to your excellent list: distribution does not equal actual consumption by a listener. You have to play it a lot so their listening span actually intersects with it.
Dave, especially true in the PPM reality the average listening occasion is 10-ish minutes. Thanks for chiming in. Hope all’s well.
Great stuff, Fred and great point by Mr. Shakes above (hi, Dave!).
We always have to remind ourselves that we are so much closer to our stations than the average listeners; the things that people in the station’s halls think we do too often have often not even been noticed by the average listeners by the time we’re tiring of them.
Great stuff, Fred! We don’t know what we like, we like what we know. We (at Cumulus) always used to tell PD’s that a listener can never hear their favorite songs too often. And now there is more scientific proof of that for radio. Play the hits! Whatever they might be. Keep up the great work!
Appreciate that, Jim. And I’ve never heard a musician protest that radio is playing their songs too often.
Oh, how I wish this blog post and the quoted article could be a forced read on every non-industry “music fan” who has ever told me that I am wrong to research music and only play the songs that test well.
How many times does it have to be proven that whenever someone has tried to compete with a researched playlist by playing “a wider variety” of titles, the result has been failure (and often, the original station’s numbers go UP as a result of the competition)?
And when are “music fans” going to realize that they’re never going to be in the position to put their programming “strategy” into practice, short of winning the lottery, buying a station, and then running it into bankruptcy with their “deep tracks” format?
Those are both rhetorical questions, of course …
(Oh, and Fred: I rebutted a commenter over at AllAccess a little while ago, advocating the same thing for John Sebastian’s new “wow” format, and referring them here. You’re welcome.)
It is clearly one of those odd dichotomies where people say one thing, but often behave differently. The HuffPo story spoke to me because it explained how the power of music is precisely why people want to hear their favorites again and again. That said, if the “Macarena” is not a favorite song, you have my permission to change stations. Thanks, KM.
My past few programming positions in small markets I’ve interacted with managers, staff and listeners, who believe there is too much repetition in small market radio. They want to hang their hats on TSL. Not true. They believe the smaller the audience is, the bigger the playlist and slower rotations. Still not true. Are we to believe that listeners in smaller markets want to hear broad music and not hear hits? Again still not true.
Nope. And oftentimes, people who work in radio “over-consume” their stations, listening for hours and hours a day. That’s not reflective of real listening patterns, whether we’re talking Chicago or Chattanooga. Thanks for this important comment, Chuck.
I’m on the sales/management side and the only Programming I know is the first thing I ever learned – Repetition equals quarter hour.
By the way – it is the same way with commercials and we need to remind our clients.
Mike, great point. Reach and frequency is a proven concept in radio. You need enough of the latter to hit your goal with the former. Thanks for the reminder.
Fred,
You made me laugh. I wish you had it this concise when we tried to explain playing the hits to Jim Ladd. Not that it would have done any good.
Your expirence with children and Disney movies, which surely every parent shares, reminds me of a poster Arbitron distributed many years ago. It’s a large poster with a small picture of a dog standing there. The bubble reads “sit.” It’s followed by five or six more photos of the dog standing there and the another with the bubble reading “sit.” The sequence repeats numerous times in several rows. In the last picture the dog is finally sitting and the bubble reads “Good Boy.” At the bottom Arbitron proclaims “Repetition Works.”
Finally, seeing Warren’s comments above reminds me of something Jon Coleman always says. “People don’t dislike repitition They dislike repition of songs they don’t like.”
Andy, it is sometimes true that we get wiser with age. Or at least, we’ve had a lot more experiences.
You know, there are exceptions to every rule, and I think back to the unique persona that was Jim Ladd and I’d still think about giving him a special exemption – or at least a mulligan or two. The really great radio storytellers can make just about any song interesting, and Ladd had that gift of reminding us of the first time we ever heard a song. I always marveled at that.
That said, there’s just a handful of truly gifted rock radio personalities – Cerphe, Stroud, Ken Calvert, Pierre, etc. – who have that talent. For everyone else, “play the hits” is the mantra. And even the aforementioned personalities likely benefited from tighter rotations. They were/are so good they could even make “Money” and “Sweet Home Alabama” sound fresh. Now that’s talent!
Thanks for the comment, Andy.
I’ve long subscribed to the perspective that the songs may seem burned because the talent contributes. The same jocks intro-ing the songs the same way, delivering the call letters/logo exactly the same way with the same cadence and inflection the same way over and over. It’s always “partly cloudy” and “register to win” and yadda yadda yadda. And, helped somewhat by so much voice tracking, assembly line radio suffers from McDonald’s drive through syndrome-they repeat the exact same things so often they read their scripts just to get through them, resulting in the customer asking, “oh, what did you say?”. Rant over. Thank you.
There’s probably some truth to that, JJ. Although the 750th time you hear the “Mambo #5” can be a bit oppressive. Thanks for the comment.
Or The Macarena! Of course, you’re correct…my point is that it doesn’t exactly help when nearly everything else on the station is repetitive and just “mailed in” by far too many talent getting far too little coaching and development of their talent.
Agree!
After every auditorium test I would conduct quick focus groups. The big question was: how often should i play your favorite song? The general answer was “not more than once a day”. I found that the whole “repetition” thing was more about songs you don’t like than faves. “Hey Jude” may be the most popular Beatles song but i punch out every time it airs…
Correct, Steve, and for every listener, there’s a different song that drives them nuts. I worked for a guy who HATED “Signs” by the Five Man Electrical Band. In spite of the tests, he simply didn’t want me to play it.
Never been in radio, but love the formatics. A “geek” if you will.
When you buy gas, do you go with a name brand or an off brand with possible water in their tanks? Pepsi/Coke/7up or Clyde’s Cola? Do you buy a Ford/Chev/Dodge or the unproven new car from the new manufacturer?
Listening to KCBQ/KHJ/Bartell/RKO stations (of the past), do you find yourself saying “I wish they’d play #29” or “wish they’d play the obscure cut from…” C’mon. You want to hear the HITS! Period!
I certainly remember 1974-75 when new songs were not added as much (as in tightened playlists), stayed on chars forever, etc. It’s tight now, also.
Now too, the attention span is down…. quite a bit. (Dumbed down? Try to get change at a fast food place!)
I’m a geek, BUT, from non-radio types I’ve heard “they play the same songs at the same time (every day.) Yet, when in their cars, I do see the station in the
presets! Hello!
Excellent article!!!!!!
Appreciate it, John. Always great to hear from “civilians,” the true arbiters of what works and what doesn’t. Thanks or sharing those observations.