We took music testing to a new level with Delta Scores, based on actual reactions from real listeners. Now we take another leap forward with Music Score, making it even easier and more intuitive to react to your listeners wishes.
“Music is the foundation of your radio house! It doesn’t matter how pretty the curtains are or what kind of couch you have – if the foundation is not solid, sooner or later your house will fall apart”
Bill De Lisle, every research strategy meeting he’s ever had with a new client
The Question on Everyone’s Lips
Having worked with all kinds of research data in the radio and audio industry, both as a client and as a compiler/analyst of that data, the most frequent question I hear is:
“what does this number mean”?
Getting a fast and simple answer to that question is the deciding factor in how easy it is to adopt the system behind those numbers. Some companies build a business out of that in a non-client friendly way, marketing themselves as the only ones that can read the numbers for you.
At RadioAnalyzer, we do things differently.
Our mission from day one has always been to put the power in the hands of the user. You want our analysis? Great! We are happy to share it, but you shouldn’t need it to get the most out of your data.
Better Music Testing
I was introduced to RadioAnalyzer’s Song Delta system back in 2014 when working for a radio group here in Europe. It’s a great, unique tool to get a read on the actual reaction to your music, in contrast to the more common image based music research. They do come with a learning curve, however. Different formats, different stations and markets have different thresholds for changing up the rotation. After a few weeks, you get a feel for what your listeners want to hear. Today a huge number of very successful stations around the world rely on RadioAnalyzer’s Song Deltas for their weekly playlisting, and tell us they are never going back.
Enter Song Score
The idea for song score was born of two distinct wishes. One: making it even easier for new and old users to implement the song delta results for the weekly playlist meetings. And two: making song results comparable across formats and markets. With that mission statement, we went back to evolve the great idea behind Song Deltas and make it even better. Reading the new metrics is incredibly easy. Here is your “cheat-sheet” for your next music meeting:
Any market, any format, any station. If you can count to ten, you can make your music better with Song Score.
Let’s take a look at a real-life examples to see Score in action. The charts that follow come directly from our “Trend over Time” tool in the “Music Test” function of the RadioAnalyzer software suite. The unique blend of market surveillance data and real-time listener metrics allows us to display the song’s reaction – blue line – right next to your station’s airplay and that of the market – yellow and green bars, respectively.
“Moth to a Flame” by Swedish House Mafia.
Taking a look the score, we can see it start out in decent territory in early November with a 5,8. Looking at our cheat-sheet above, that’s in “variety song” territory – don’t clump too many of these together. But since this is a relatively new song, that’s a pretty decent value. We can also see it increase up to a 6,7 towards the end of November, firmly putting it on track to become a hit. Since the green bar is climbing however – this shows airplay of all stations in our immediate market – we need to keep an eye on it for burn.
“Cold Heart” – Elton John & Dua Lipa
In the month of December, Cold Heart really started to take off, scratching just below an 8. We can see however that the last week of the month, with the very large jump in overall plays in the market – green bar – and on the station itself – yellow bar, it is starting to show some sign of fatigue.
As of today, we are adding the Music Score metrics to all current RadioAnalyzer clients free of charge. If you’re a purist, you still have access to the raw numbers in the system just like you used to, but I’ve got a sneaking suspicion you’re going to love music score.
Want to hear more about music testing, station performance, or anything else audio-related? Reach out, we’d love to hear from you.
COO
You might say the poor guy never had a chance, being born to two radio-crazy ArmedForcesNetwork journalists that met in southeast Asia (think “Good Morning Vietnam” – and no, his dad is not Adrian Cronauer). Since discovering his love for music programming as a teenager, Bill has been obsessed with turning great ideas into numbers you can measure, and measured numbers into actionable programming strategies that make great radio. After touring Central Europe as a Music-Promotion-Programm- Director and a Research&Program Consultant for European and International Consulting firms, he has returned to the audio innovation trenches at RadioAnalyzer, and is loving every minute of it.
