What If Spotify Programmed Your Radio Station?

A thought experiment in revitalizing Top 40 radio

Take a gander at the top 10 most-heard songs on America’s hit radio stations for the week of February 8^th, 2024.

It’s familiar mix of pop, rhythmic-leaning pop and pop hip hop titles. Nothing too offensive. Nothing too out there. It’s an approach hit radio has followed for decades.

It’s also an approach that’s failing.

Renowned Edison Research consultant Larry Rosin noted that the country’s biggest hit music station, New York’s Z100, has lost 44 percent of its weekly audience in the last ten years. Many other Contemporary Hit Radio (CHR) stations have seen similar erosion to their once massive and broad audiences.

Now, compare what radio is playing with the songs Americans played most that week on Spotify:

Only two songs are among both the 10 most-heard songs on America’s contemporary hit music stations and the top 10 most-played songs on Spotify in the U.S. 

Shouldn’t radio stations just play what Americans have proven they want to hear by mimicking Spotify?

That approach—at least in its most simplified form—is a terrible idea.

As I showcased in a previous post, most plays of brand-new songs on Spotify are from an artist’s biggest fans who actively seek out that artist’s new material and binge it as soon as it drops. They’re songs that a relatively small group of people play unusually frequently for a very short period of time. However, there’s no guarantee a song will become popular among a much broader audience. Heck, there’s no guarantee an artist’s own fans will like it next month.

Therefore, playing those brand-new songs at the top of Spotify’s charts on a radio station would mean playing highly unfamiliar songs that may never become real hits.  

There’s another problem with simply blindly following Spotify.

There are a few songs that fans play month after month after month. That’s fine if you’re playing it for yourself. For radio, however, playing two-year-old songs—even well-known and well-liked ones—quickly turns off listeners who tuned in to hear today’s hits. Sure, you can sprinkle them in now and then, but playing last year’s tunes 100 times a week destroys a hit music station’s brand.

A BETTER APPROACH TO TRACKING STREAMING

The fact is, streaming data shows what music fans want to hear when they’re in control of the music. Is there a way to tap into that census-level behavioral data to craft a radio station playlist that’s not too new and unfamiliar, not too old and tired, and yet reflects what the masses most want to hear?

Let’s try to build that playlist together.

Unless you’re Adele, it takes four to eight weeks for a song to gain mass-appeal familiarity with a passive fan base. Before this time frame, a song may be hot among an artist’s core fans, but among the far bigger group of causal listeners, even people who have heard it aren’t yet sure if they like it. 

Then, once a song has been around for 20 to 28 weeks, listeners begin to perceive the song as stale: They may still love it. They might even love it 20 years from now. Regardless, after about 24 weeks, that song is out of season.

With these time frames in mind, let’s use Spotify data strategically to build a hit music radio station’s playlist.

For the most frequently played hits, we’ll pick songs that have been on Spotify between four and 24 weeks. Radio calls those songs “currents” and plays them at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels. The more popular a song is, the more often your Top 40 station plays it.

Songs that are 25 weeks and older, we’ll play those songs less frequently. Radio calls those songs “recurrents”, because they’re not old enough to be “Gold[en]” Oldies, but they’re no longer current.

We’ll also spotlight a few brand new songs that we “think” could appeal to a broader audience than just the artist’s core fans. This category will require less focus on data and more emphasis on a programmer’s gut instincts and understanding of the audience—something that great radio stations have always allowed their programmers to do. Based on which songs fans are sampling most on Spotify, here are the contenders.

HOW WOULD SPOTIFY-DRIVEN HIT RADIO SOUND?

1) Radio would play a wider variety of hit music styles. Instead of simply playing pop-centered material, this hit music station would play genuine hip hop songs, Spanish-language hit styles, older songs that Tik Tok revived, and even Country Legendary radio programmer Guy Zapoleon has observed that Top 40 radio wins when it plays popular songs in many styles and loses when it plays it too safe with pop. He notes that in mid-2023, 51 percent of the most-played songs on America’s hit music stations were Pop titles, but only 20 percent of the most popular songs overall on Billboard were Pop.

2) Radio would still play a lot of the same songs, but some of them would play less often: When simply comparing radio vs. Spotify, it looks like the two media are on different planets. With the approach suggested above, however, most of the big hits radio plays now are still on the playlist: Doja Cat, Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter, Tyla, Kenya Grace, and the other Doja Cat are all there, but some of these songs are in the tertiary category, where songs play a few times a day, not the primary category which plays once every hour or so.

3) Radio would play more songs that are relevant to Generation Z: Artists such as Mitski, Teddy Swims, and 21 Savage, who have strong fan bases among today’s teens and young adults, would enjoy a role on this hit station that they currently lack on Top 40 radio. Additionally, songs that never had a presence on hit music stations, but consistently garnered Spotify plays, would have a place among the recurrents, such as Hotel Ugly’s “Shut Up My Mom’s Calling,” and TV Girl’s “Not Allowed.”

Statistically, the Spotify-driven top 10 receives 52 percent more streaming compared to the Spotify plays for the top 10 songs America’s hit music stations play now. The top 10 songs would also be three weeks newer, with an average vintage of 15.1 weeks Currently, the top 10 songs radio actually plays are 18.5 weeks old on average

THE PITFALLS

If this idea is so grand, why aren’t radio programmers following it? There are at least three big potential pitfalls:

1) Some songs might not appeal to a mass audience: Xavi’s “La Diabla” is clearly huge. Despite a resurgence in the genre among younger fans, however, can a Regional Mexican song catch on with listeners who don’t speak Spanish? Flo Milli “Never Lose Me” might be huge on Tik Tok and big on Hip Hop stations, but is your mom going to listen to it on the way to Pilates? There’s a reason hit music radio plays a lot of pop: It’s not everybody’s favorite music style, but it’s a whole lot of people’s second favorite.

2) It might play songs that don’t appeal to the same audience. Do 21 Savage fans want to hear Morgan Wallen? Do Noah Kahan fans want to hear Travis Scott? It’s not a rhetorical question. My own Gen Z teen has musical tastes far broader than we Gen X kids had back in our day, so our beliefs about which styles of music are compatible could be out of date. Since Spotify exists, however, the only way a radio station can survive is to consistently delight its tribe—and by definition, no tribe includes everybody.

3) It could alienate older Millennial adult listeners. Some Gen Z’s favorite artists that a Spotify-driven playlist would include don’t have many fans older than 25. A typical 39-year-old mom is probably more into Taylor Swift than Mitski. Even if she’s not a Hip Hop fan, she probably can deal with Jack Harlow more than Flo Milli. The fact is, those adults are spending a lot more time with FM radio than are today’s teens.

THE VERDICT ON SPOTIFY-PROGRAMMED HIT RADIO

To be clear, this post is a thought experiment, not a recommendation to America’s broadcasters.

It brings up important questions, however, about how Contemporary Hit Radio could reinvent itself musically, while leaning into radio’s ability to offer companionship, connection, and curation for a new generation.

Personally, though, I think the Spotify-driven hit music station would be a hell of a lot more interesting than hearing “Blinding Lights” yet again today.

I’d love to hear your thoughts below.

Sources for this post:

• Mediabase - Published Panel - Past 7 Days (week of 2/8/2024): http://www.mediabase.com/mmrweb/fmqb/charts.asp?SHOWYEAR=N

• Spotify Charts (week of 2/8/2024 for USA): https://charts.spotify.com/charts/overview/global

• JacoBlog Guest Post: Where Did All Those P4s And P5s Go?: https://jacobsmedia.com/where-did-all-those-p4s-and-p5s-go/

• Guy Zapoleon: 2023 Marked Fourth Year Of Worst Music Doldrums For Top 40 Radio: https://guyzapoleon.com/10-year-music-cycle/#how-to1