The Hits Radio Ignored in 2025 (and the Stiffs they Played Instead)
The type of songs that are huge on streaming, but AWOL on Contemporary Hit Radio, have changed dramatically in recent years. Why ignoring these songs could endanger radio's future.
There’s a song that fans streamed in greater numbers in 2025 than Sabrina Carpenter’s “Taste”, sombr’s “Undressed”, or Justin Bieber’s “Daisies.”
It wasn’t a flash in the pan either. Fans have kept playing it month after month: As of late January 2026, the song—in its 79th week—was still Top 30 on Spotify in the U.S., with listeners showing no signs of being sick of it.
Here’s the streaming for this mystery song for each week it was on the Spotify 200 in the U.S. compared to Alex Warren’s “Ordinary,” among the year’s biggest hits on radio and on streaming:
As you can see, their appeal is almost identical.
And yet, unlike “Ordinary” and those other three songs, you probably never heard this song on your local “#1 for Hit Music” station.
Gigi Perez’ “Sailor Song” is among the most egregious examples of a big mass-appeal hit on streaming that Pop radio pretty much ignored. If you heard it on FM radio, it was probably a college station or one of the more adventurous Alternative Rock stations.
In Billboard’s Year End Charts for the 2025 chart year, “Sailor Song” was overall the #36 biggest song of the year on the Hot 100 and #26 on Billboard’s year-end Streaming Songs chart.
On Billboard’s year-end chart of the 75 biggest Radio Songs, “Sailor Song” was nowhere. Is there some obvious reason?
The song is melodic enough to be approachable, arguably even catchy.
There’s nothing weird about the song’s structure that makes it a bad fit for radio.
If you listen closely to the lyrics, “Gigi” as fans call her is crushing pretty hard for another woman (one she imagined looks like actress Anne Hathaway) Anything you’d cringe to explain to your first grader, however, will probably go over their head.
It’s not the only one.
The Marias’ “No One Noticed” was an even bigger streaming hit (#19). n 2025 Radio barely played it. Those stations that did play it did so only tepidly months after it was already a proven streaming hit.
Today’s post is the final in the series exploring Billboard’s Year End Charts, specifically Billboard’s tabulations of the 75 most played songs on the radio in the U.S. compared to the 75 biggest songs on music streaming platforms.
To be clear, most of the songs that America’s radio stations played a lot last year were also the songs Americans played a lot for themselves: Lady Gaga & Bruno Mars’ “Die With A Smile” was #1 on both radio and streaming. Kendrick Lamar & SZA’s “Luther”, “Ordinary” from Alex Warren, and Post Malone Featuring Morgan Wallen’s lingering 2024 hit “I Had Some Help,” were all among the Top 10 most played songs on both radio stations and streaming services.
However, an interesting variety of songs that were huge on streaming were not among radio’s most-played songs last year—and vice versa.
Late to the party
Consider the K-Pop Demon Hunters’ track “Golden” from the movie’s fictional protagonist band HUNTR/X, the 18th most-streamed song of 2025. Radio did ultimately embrace “Golden” (It’s still Top 10 in airplay as of late February 2026). However, the song was a huge hit on streaming for months before radio decided it wasn’t merely pre-teen K-Pop fanatics fueling its streaming—thereby completely missing the 2025 radio songs chart.
Then there’s “Back To Friends” by sombr. Pop radio had no problem with the artist—sombr’s “undressed” was the 37th most played song on U.S. radio and the 55th most streamed song of 2025. However, for months, many Pop music stations believed “Back to Friends,” the 28th most streamed song of the year, was only for Alternative Rock stations. (I doubt listeners heard any such distinction.)
Top 40 radio finally saw the light this year. “Back To Friends” was the #1 most-played song on U.S. hit music stations by the first week of February 2026—when the song was already 11 months old.
Why do hit music radio stations ignore songs that listeners stream in record numbers? Is there a common thread with these songs that makes programmers leery of spinning them? Is it time to rethink how we think about streaming?
When streaming was huge—but not mainstream
Consider these tunes, all among the most streamed songs of their respective recent years, but NOT among the year’s most played songs on the radio.
Polo G’s “Rapstar” (#8 in 2021)
Cardi B (Featuring Megan Thee Stallion) “WAP“ (#10 for 2020)
Travis Scott’s “Sicko Mode (#4 for 2019)
XXXTENTACION ‘s “Sad!” (#6 for 2018)
Yep. They’re all Hip Hop.
From 2017 through 2021, almost all of the songs that were huge on streaming but not on radio, according to Billboards year-end charts, were Hip Hop titles
Contemporary Hit Radio (CHR) played plenty of Hip Hop during this time. However, it was songs like Post Malone’s “Better Now”, “Savage” from Megan Thee Stallion, and (eventually) “Old Town Road” that were more accessible to Primarily Pop listeners. Instead, the songs that were huge on streaming, but missing on Pop radio, appealed to Hip Hop’s core fan base. Hip Hop/R&B stations that primarily target Black and (in some cities) Hispanic listeners played these songs.
It’s understandable why Taylor Swift or Ariana Grande fans might not have been into these songs and—therefore—why they didn’t make Billboard’s rankings of the biggest hits on the radio those years.
Hip Hop fans were the first genre fan base to embrace streaming. For the first few years after Spotify usurped iTunes, those Hip-Hop fans overwhelmingly picked which songs became streaming hits. Understandably, radio didn’t follow suit.
Consider below the genre of Billboard’s top streaming and radio songs of each year from 2017 (the last year iTunes had a greater chart influence than streaming) through 2021: While radio’s biggest songs represented a mix of genres, Hip Hop and Rhythmic/R&B titles dominated streaming during this period.
Then in 2022, things changed dramatically.
2022: The year streaming went mass-market
As I detailed in the previous post in this series, 2022 marked the year Pop fans fully embraced streaming. Country fans weren’t far behind, achieving parity by 2024. With Hip Hop fans no longer having Spotify, Apple, and Amazon Music to themselves, tthe genres of songs people played most on streaming each year started looking a lot more like the most played songs on the radio.
Along with a much wider audience embracing streaming, the types of songs that were big on streaming—but not on radio—also changed:
Just to show how important the change was between 2021 and 2022, consider these two graphs…
2022: Streaming-only hits aren’t just Hip Hop anymore
With the styles of songs people stream now closely mirroring the styles popular on the radio, exactly which songs did people stream that radio ignored?
First, there were three different Reggaeton tracks from Bad Bunny that were on Spanish-language radio but understandably weren’t on English Pop stations (see my previous post about why he’s a bigger deal than you realize and how he won big at halftime.)
There was also this Latin-inspired track that vexed radio:
“We Don’t Talk About Bruno” from the Disney film Encanto was the 7th most played song on streaming in 2022. It was the biggest streaming hit to date that radio refused to play. Unlike other songs fueled by young children playing them incessantly, such as “Baby Shark” or Frozen’s “Let It Go,” adults actually played “Bruno” for themselves after the kids went to bed.
(Encanto’s “Surface Pressure” by Jessica Darrow also made the list.)
It’s understandable why radio programmers feared a Disney tune might alienate listeners.
However, another style of streaming hit emerged in 2022, the absence of which on Pop radio is less easy to justify.
“Glimpse Of Us” by Joji, the 36th most streamed song of 2022 that was absent from Pop radio.
Then in 2023, JVKE’s “ Golden Hour,” the 28th most streamed song of the year, was largely absent from Pop radio.
2024 saw Chappel Roan’s “Hot To Go!” (#42) and Mitski’s “My Love Mine All Mine” (#51) become mass hits on streaming, while receiving miniscule airplay.
Gen Z Pop: proven hits on streaming, absent from radio
What Joji, Glimpse Of Us” and “Golden Hour”, along with Chappell Roan and Mitski, have in common with Gigi Perez’ “Sailor Song” and The Marias’ “No One Noticed” is their strong appeal among Generation Z.
These songs and artists have a minimalist, stripped down texture, compared to the EDM-infused maximalist sound of Millennials’ biggest hits a decade ago. “No One Noticed” is the kind of song that sounds great in your earbuds, but not on a dance floor.
Many openly celebrate LGBTQ+ identities and romantic themes. Chappell Roan’s hits sound a lot like 80s hits, but they explore themes that few 80s songs would dare.
Some are lyrically more introspective, exploring personal feelings and struggles instead of clubbing and partying.
So why is radio ignoring these songs?
I strongly suspect that those few Top 40 stations who still can afford traditional music research are testing songs among listeners in their late 20s and 30s, not listeners in their early- to mid-20s. The logic is that 36-year-olds spend more time with FM radio than 24-year-olds do these days.
That’s a bad idea.
First, those younger adults who do still enjoy FM radio won’t keep listening if they don’t hear songs they love. The erosion—both now and in the future—of Generation Z listening to the radio will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Second, even if that young adult is never coming back to radio, her tastes influence which songs and musical styles ultimately become popular among older adults, too. 22-year-olds determine what 38-year-olds like. 38-year-olds don’t influence 22-year-olds.
The songs radio plays that nobody plays for themselves
What’s even more disconcerting are the songs radio played incessantly in 2025 that few listeners played for themselves on their favorite streaming app. In the graphs below, I’ll compare each of those songs’ weekly streaming on Spotify in the U.S. with Gigi Perez’ “Sailor Song”, the aforementioned streaming smash that radio barely played:
1) Myles Smith “Stargazing” (#10 most played on radio) - At its peak, “Stargazing only garnered about half the Spotify plays that “Sailor Song” did before falling out of the Spotify 200 chart entirely.
2) Benson Boone’s “Sorry I’m Here For Someone Else” (#15 most played on radio) - I’ve defended this song, especially for Adult-oriented Pop stations. It never attracted a large fan base, but the folks who tried it liked it, playing it reliably week after week. Despite massive radio exposure, however, the audience for “Sorry” was always small.
3) Sabrina Carpenter’s “Bed Chem” (#29 most played on radio) - With massive success with 2024’s hits, Carpenter fans were eager to hear her new songs in 2025. Unfortunately, those fans who flocked to hear “Bed Chem” when it dropped didn’t like it like “Espresso.” Streaming fell rapidly each week. By its ninth week, “Bed Chem’s” weekly plays fell below “Sailor Song’s” streaming in its ninth week.
4) Lady Gaga’s ”Abracadabra” (#43 most played on radio) - Whether it was Gaga herself or fans of “Die With A Smile,” "Lady Gaga released “Abracadabra” to great anticipation. Spotify users ultimately abandoned “Abracadabra” even faster than they did “Bed Chem.” It vanished from the Spotify 200 within 20 weeks.
5) Ed Sheeran’s “Azizam” (#51 most played on radio) - I really don’t know how the label got PDs on board with this one. Anyone who has a teenager can tell you Ed Sheeran is woefully uncool. “Azizam” spent just one week near the bottom of the Spotify 200. Yet some stations played this song for months.
Perhaps these songs are performing well in music research among adults in their late 30s and 40s to warrant their airplay.
Perhaps it simply took months for radio’s music research to convince programmers that they weren’t going to be hits.
Perhaps record labels aggressively promoted these artists to radio.
The irony here is that back in 2017, Ed Sheeran became the first artist to debut two singles simultaneously in the Billboard Hot 100’s Top 10, a feat he accomplished specifically because fans were streaming his latest album ÷ (Divide), not buying it.
Nine years later, when the majority of Americans and fans of every music genre have paid music streaming subscriptions, there’s no way a Pop song could be a mass-appeal hit and not be among the 200 biggest songs on Spotify.
Want your favorite music turned into graphs?
For Radio Programmers: “The Hit Momentum Newsletter” is my weekly analysis of the Spotify 200 that finds the songs that could be huge hits on your CHR or HOIT AC station. It’s yours every Monday for a paid subscription below.
For chart nerds and music geeks: Choose the “FREE” option to get Graphs About Songs’ stuff like today’s article directly in your inbox.
Data sources for this post:
Billboard’s 2025 year-end charts: Hot 100 Songs: https://www.billboard.com/charts/year-end/2025/hot-100-songs/
Billboard’s 2025 year-end charts: Streaming Songs (Top 75): https://www.billboard.com/charts/year-end/2025/streaming-songs/
Billboard’s 2025 year-end charts: Radio Songs (Top 75): https://www.billboard.com/charts/year-end/2025/radio-songs/
(Data from previous years’ Billboard Year End charts archived)
Spotify 200 Weekly Charts for the USA - Weeks ending 1/3/2019-1/29/2026: https://charts.spotify.com/charts/overview/us