Inside Music Media

I’m working on the curriculum for this year’s Philly learning seminar in March and thought you’d like to see some of the ideas we’ll be kicking around.

Stations keep programming music from the charts but the earthquake of new music is being driven by “unknown” (at least unknown to some radio PDs). These are YouTube artists. They don’t need airplay. They are having their own live events that are selling out. They are household names to the music buying public while radio still relies 100% on 30 or fewer tunes played over and over. But there is a way to add YouTube artists without risking abandoning the hits.
For stations that refuse to (or are not allowed to) cut their unlistenable commercial stop sets, try this. Load all the :10s, :15s and a few :30s in one stop set and run all :30’s or :60’s in the other without short spots.
Rotate the commercial stop sets. PPM won’t die if you don’t run commercials in the same position every hour.
Rely less on music sweeps. Radio people think music sweeps are great. Young money demo listeners? Not so much. In fact, their shorter attention spans will make them bail out on these sweeps anyway. Go ahead, ask them. Most won’t even listen to a single song all the way through so there is now a new way to handle that. And radio has been basing its entire reason for being on the assumption that if they play the right songs, listeners will stay with them.
Take time checks, weather and traffic out of morning shows. I know you think I’m nuts but just listen. Ask the money demo listeners you are trying to attract. They don’t need these elements because they already have that info from their smartphones. When we’re face to face, let’s talk about three that you should be doing to replace time checks, traffic and weather. And, yes, you can sell these 3 things. At a premium! (By the way, I didn’t fall off of a sneaker truck in south Philly. Stations want traffic and weather to sell it. I get it. But sell something listeners really want).
Change the way you talk to your audience. Radio still sounds old school, hyped, kind of out of it. But there are 5 things young listeners cannot resist – in fact they crave them – that you could start doing now. Let your competitor sit there and watch you morph into more relevance.
Never run a sweeper again. Hey, I know. I love them and used them all the time but they are a big turnoff. Maybe one of the biggest. We’re going to brainstorm with what to replace sweepers with. You’ll be into it.

If you do not want to suffer another year of audience erosion, then you’ll like what we’re going to do in Philly.

The program includes: