Despite releases from Taylor Swift, Shawn Mendes, and Ed Sheeran/Justin Bieber in the last few weeks, hit music has been weakening for several years now. Top 40’s ratings have fallen as a result. It’s affecting Hot AC as well, and will eventually impact AC.

Current “mainstream” music is definitely poor. Many Top 40 stations are seeing the worst scores ever for power currents. Currents are weaker at Hot AC as well; in one market we’ve seen Current pop decline from 24% of the top-testers to now just 7%.

We’re in the doldrums…so what are we going to do about it? In part one of this post, we’ll suggest four ways to make your station stronger despite the overall weakest music product in years

We aren’t in control of what music is created for our formats, and many if not most programmers and managers therefore assume there’s nothing we can do except wait it out. But while nothing can completely replace the shares lost because of weak music supply, but there are actions you can take to soften the impact of a music cycle slump. 

A large part of the opportunity is in the interstitial content…what goes between and around the music. Here are four keys; the more you can improve in any or all of these areas, the stronger your station will be in any phase of the music cycle:

Key #1 – Creativity. This is the key to all truly successful entertainment content. Social scientists have concluded that novelty is one of the six most basic human needs, right after food, water, shelter, and sleep. Creativity provides your audience with novelty. 

Key #2 – Emotion. Emotional content is incredibly compelling. It bonds listeners to the storyteller, it generates recall and stimulates word-of-mouth. Male PDs and air personalities tend not to be comfortable with emotional content. Get over it!

Key #3 – Personality. If your station has one or more dayparts anchored by strong, well-liked personalities, you’re better able to withstand music slumps. If you have personalities who are in a rut, now is a good time to motivate them out of it and into more creative, novel, and emotional content.

Key #4 – Promotion. Probably the weakest of these four keys but definitely a useful band-aid. A good promotion can generate excitement; a great promotion can be compelling entertainment. It isn’t always about how much money you can give away; to borrow an old adage, “some stations can make a dime sound like a dollar…and some can make a dollar sound like a dime.”  In the best promotions, the effort and path toward the prize are the entertainment: think Survivor or American Idol for examples from TV, or Secret Sound from radio.

We don’t control our music supply, but we have virtually total control over what happens between and around the songs we play. Maximize the four keys above to withstand the cycle’s down times…and keep them strong so that when the cycle turns up – as it always does, eventually – you’ll be at peak performance.

Look for Part II of “What Do You Do When the Music Sucks?” soon; we’ll offer some tips on what to do with a weak music supply.

Alan Burns 251-243-1592

Jeff Johnson 410-647-6666