As a music director, staying on top of new music on radio was easy. Every Monday I would sit down with my team. We would run through all the relevant and potentially “good” new music for radio. As a music programmer, I could also tell you not only the name of any song, but it’s soundcode, runtime, and intro length. Staying on top of new music when you aren’t being bombarded with record company phone calls and listening to new singles and albums all day long as part of your day job is a little bit harder – even if you are an active part of the music industry. It’s surprising how many people in radio who can’t or don’t keep up to date with what’s new on the airwaves. Most listeners are like this as well. But that’s a different article all together.
With a Little Help from my Friends (at RadioAnalyzer)
Luckily, RadioAnalyzer makes staying on top of the relevant new songs easy. One way is to set up a few new music alerts to follow up competing stations, I wrote an article about it here. Another more complete way is via the New Music Function. Using it is incredibly simple. Pick a station, a timeframe, and a minimum number of spins. I’ve chosen BBC Radio1, last week, and at least 4 spins.
At a glance I can see their new adds that ran 4 or more times, and when they first played the song. (I can also see they have started playing the live lounge version of Georgia “Never Let You Go” which is currently one of my favorite songs, that I found using this function).
Found What I’ve Been Looking For
Clicking on any one of the songs will give you a list of all the stations in your catalogue that play the song. Furthermore, when they first played it, and their overall play count and the weekly spins for the past 4 weeks.
Clicking on a single station will let you see the actual play chart. Additionally, you can go even deeper! Above all, in clocks you can listen to the presell by the DJ of the Song itself. You can find more info on the clocks function here. For instance, you can also download any one of these views as a handy excel file to save for later or pass along as a message or email. This works great as a What’sApp attachment. If you are using the system on your smartphone while on the go by the way.
Deeper Understanding
You can fine-tune your filtering option to specific dayparts or multiple stations. You can also check user defined market collections, entire areas or countries. It’s all down to what is important for you and for your program. Here is a short demonstration on the function. Take a minute and listen to our CEO Mikkel showing off the system here.
If you’re looking for a less focused and more open search on new music on Radio, take a look at our Hybrid Hitlist or Predictor functions. Here we use new data collection methods and algorithms. In conclusion, we are finding the songs that really matter to your audience or have the potential to be big hits. Reach out to us, we are happy to show you how we can help you make better audio.
P.S. Hats off to everyone that noticed the section headers in this article were all song titles. 😀
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.
