Panel Cuts Didn’t Speed Up Country Chart
When Country radio’s two major trades cut their chart panel last fall, one of the rationales was a desire to help break new artists and speed up the 6-8 months that it takes to break any but the most obvious country single. But a comparison of the country chart then and now shows that songs are actually taking even longer to climb the charts. And new artists aren’t any more represented in the top 10 than they were in October.
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Songs That Will Never Test…Until They Do
Ten years ago, “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” was a pretty good example of the type of ‘80s song that programmers didn’t want to play. Now it’s a useable record for a surprising number of research-driven AC and Hot AC stations. How does a song go from goofy to golden?
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Top 40’s Fall Decline: Why It Was Worse in 2003
Top 40’s fall book is supposed to be bad. But the average share for the format was down to a 4.2 this fall. And to explain that one, you have to look beyond the usual fall issues and look at the Christmas music juggernaut, a handful of key sounds that all burned out at once, the shift from rhythm to pop at mainstream top 40, and the decision to super-serve a demo that can, increasingly, take or leave radio.
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Does Notoriety Mean A Radio Hit? More And More
Until recently, it looked like we’d reached a point where an artist’s stock as a celebrity no longer tracked with their value at contemporary radio. But top 40 has been starved for real hits for a few years now, and long-starved for the consumer press attention that was regularly lavished on their core acts in the mid-‘80s. Notoriety isn’t always a sure way back on to the radio, but there’s increasing evidence that it’s helped at least a few artists lately.
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