CORE ARTISTS
Here’s a fun game you can play. Grab a piece of paper and write down in order the most important core artist on your station. Rank them.
Now if you have research you can either have data from respondents to rank or give a 1 to 10 score of importance that artist has to them. A one being not very important, and a ten being I want to hear them the most.
Then go to your music software and look at the spins of these artists over the last 30, 60 or 90s days. Are they the same?
There are ways to adjust them up or down to match what the research tells you are the desires and expectations.
These things effect not only the impression or images that the station holds in the mind of the listeners but help drive TSL / ATSE.
If an artist is playing too much give that artist a higher Artist Separation. Or platoon rest a few titles. You could consider packeting a few of the lesser titles or perhaps packets of the slow tempo titles.
If an artist isn’t playing enough consider reducing the artist separation. Make sure there are enough titles by that artist to get the job done. And if all else fails advantage the songs by that artist. In some software its called percentage back and you put 75 in percentage back and when the song plays it doesn’t go all the way to the back of the stack order. It goes three quarters of the way back. Or 50% back would mean it will be half way back meaning it wont sit out a whole turn of the stack order.
In Musicmaster the field to use is Rotation Weight. Musicmaster’s rotation weight is far superior to just percentage back limited to 100 or less. In Musicmaster’s rotation weight it supports up to 999. The number 200 would mean that a song would be twice the distance back in the stack, thus sitting out a lap of the race so to speak, and that 999 well that’s missing ten laps. Perhaps that would be a good thing to do with a novelty song.
Tuning a music database for a radio station is akin to getting your blood just right. When you go to the doctor they take sample and you get a report on your good cholesterol, bad cholesterol, and a bunch of other things they hassle me about.
The blood analogy is a good one I think because your blood goes everywhere. Blood travels to every organ of your body. If your music isn’t quite right then your ratings will likely suffer in mornings, middays, afternoons, evenings, overnights and yes even on weekends and holidays. Not Good.
There is literally a “panel” of things I look at when I tune up the music for a radio station to go win the Gold Medal in the Nielsen Olympics. What medal does your station get?
Go For the Gold Call Keith Hill 252-453-8888
