Why do radio stations play the same songs repetitively?

Why do radio stations play the same songs repetitively?

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Rich1973

1,191 posts

176 months

Friday 11th June 2021
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Atlantic 252 (remember them?) Used to be shocking for repeating the same track multiple times in a day.

Mezzanine

9,148 posts

218 months

Friday 11th June 2021
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Rich1973 said:
Atlantic 252 (remember them?) Used to be shocking for repeating the same track multiple times in a day.
Were they rebranded as Capital at any point?! hehe

I used to work in a warehouse that only played Capital 24 hours a day - luckily I wasn’t allowed to carry a rusty spoon on my person as otherwise I would have had no eyes left in a very short time frame.

Skyedriver

17,661 posts

281 months

Friday 11th June 2021
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2fast748 said:
A quote from The Simpsons sums this up perfectly:

"How about playing some new oldies!"

There's so much music around in any genre your wonder why the same songs get repeated, I'm a rock music fan so listen to Planet Rock in my car sometimes but they went through a period of only playing Black Sabbath's Spiral Architect rather than anything else.

I put it down to the capacity of their systems, if they are limited they won't have the whole catalogue on their broadcast system.
I listen to Planet Rock almost solely nowerdays but they definitely have a "playlist". Even the request programmes have the same tracks week in week out.

ambuletz

10,690 posts

180 months

Friday 11th June 2021
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the past year I've been listening to the absolute ratio decade channels (90s, 00s and 10s). while i do enjoy listening to both the 90s and 00s... i feel like they probably have a playlist of about 30 songs that's on repeat each day.

egor110

16,818 posts

202 months

Friday 11th June 2021
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MitchT said:
But instead you get the same set of adverts on repeat all day instead. They had it on in the office before lockdown meant WFH. Drove me mad! Plus, Absolute seems to be disproportionately fixated on 90s Indie music, like they think that obsessively playing Nirvana makes them cool... and this isn't even Absolute 90s. Much prefer R2 with no adverts and music that doesn't make me feel like I'm stuck in a timewarp, even if it does mean the odd track being played a few times a day.
I'm late 40's and i think absolute is aimed at people in there 40's .

nirvana , pearl jam , pixies , placebo , oasis, suede, shed 7 that'll do nicely .

Any station that'll pay gouge away is a refreshing change to the usual super safe crap on the radio .

LukeBrown66

4,479 posts

45 months

Friday 11th June 2021
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OP isn't it because they buy playlists basically of maybe a thousand songs (depending on the station) and cant play much else?

And most are owned by huge companies that can buy a vast amount of songs, but I do believe they cant play mush else, only the stuff off that playlist, unless they are topical and play chart music and they probably have to pay an amount to play that too and play certain songs more than once.

LordLoveLength

1,904 posts

129 months

Friday 11th June 2021
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You pay per song - the amount depends on size of your audience. It’s in the 10s of £ per play for national stuff.
That was one driver behind having a DJ chatting - he was cheaper than airplay fees.
Some stations do deals for selected playlists - a few years back one of the 60s hits stations never played any Beatles tracks! presumably too expensive.

It is mostly all scheduled by a computer program that has many permutations, but not many stations fiddle with the setup so they keep their ‘station sound’ with fixed number of repeats.

Drivetime is your big captive audience with short duration and high churn of listeners. This is where the popular stuff is the hook and repeats don’t matter too much.
Evenings you lose drive time listeners to TV but attract student type audiences. They won’t want popular repeat stuff.

One thing the computer should stop is repeating the same song as one show ends with it and the next pre-recorded show starts with it.

You also want to avoid a potentially contentious song after the news. You don’t want to come off the back of a news bulletin about a major car crash with a happy driving song or similar. So you generally get something pretty bland and inoffensive after the news.

Supercilious Sid

2,574 posts

160 months

Friday 11th June 2021
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Payola

Supercilious Sid

2,574 posts

160 months

Friday 11th June 2021
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Skyedriver said:
I listen to Planet Rock almost solely nowerdays but they definitely have a "playlist". Even the request programmes have the same tracks week in week out.
Especially AC DC Thunderstruck

K50 DEL

9,227 posts

227 months

Saturday 12th June 2021
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MitchT said:
silobass said:
I listen to Absolute at work for the no repeat guarantee...
But instead you get the same set of adverts on repeat all day instead. They had it on in the office before lockdown meant WFH. Drove me mad! Plus, Absolute seems to be disproportionately fixated on 90s Indie music, like they think that obsessively playing Nirvana makes them cool... and this isn't even Absolute 90s. Much prefer R2 with no adverts and music that doesn't make me feel like I'm stuck in a timewarp, even if it does mean the odd track being played a few times a day.
They insist on having absolute radio on on the factory floor at work, thankfully I don't have to spent too much time there as it has to be the worst radio station around, (planet rock may come close though) just hour after hour of awful "music" with the odd decent track thrown in.

That said, I'm probably not their target audience anyway as I'm mid 40s and generally not a fan of rock or indie music (with the odd exception)
I'd rather have something like classic gold on, playing hits from the 60s, 70s and 80s or a country station playing actual music!

thebraketester

14,192 posts

137 months

Saturday 12th June 2021
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Rich1973 said:
Atlantic 252 (remember them?) Used to be shocking for repeating the same track multiple times in a day.
That’s going back a few years…..

AlexHat

1,327 posts

118 months

Saturday 12th June 2021
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I've had Absolute radio playing at work through their app for the last year or so and have noticed they might not repeat the same song in one day, but it'll be back on the following day and the day after that, around the same time it was played the previous days.

One song (F.E.A.R - Ian Brown) always seemed to be playing as my boss walked into our office in the morning and became a bit of a running joke between us.

Still better than Capital which doesn't see the problem with playing the same song 3 times an hour, every hour for 9 hours straight (having the radio on when studying for exams years ago made me realise just how often the same songs get played)

Super Sonic

4,518 posts

53 months

Sunday 13th June 2021
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Radio 3. Never really been a classical fan, my CD collection goes from Autechre to Led Zeppelin, but it is calming driving music, mostly stuff I haven't heard before, and No Adverts!

thebraketester

14,192 posts

137 months

Sunday 13th June 2021
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Super Sonic said:
Radio 3. Never really been a classical fan, my CD collection goes from Autechre to Led Zeppelin, but it is calming driving music, mostly stuff I haven't heard before, and No Adverts!
The R3 late night programs can throw up some really off the wall music.

The complete antithesis of classic fm who seem to have 1 cd on loop…. it makes good background music but a total bore to listen to for any length of time.

Chris77

941 posts

193 months

Sunday 13th June 2021
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Lagom said:
I don't know how long the No Repeat Guarantee has got left. Can see Bauer Media eventually dropping the NRG (and increasing ads) to drive more listeners to their Premium offering, to compete with Spotify etc.




https://planetradio.co.uk/premium
Ive been a subscriber to primordialradio.com from the start (Think its been 3 years???) If you are into rock/metal then this is definitely the way to go!

I've been introduced to so many new bands.

StevieBee

12,795 posts

254 months

Sunday 13th June 2021
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I used to run a Radio Station - albeit a Community Radio Station, but to professional standards and in partnership with a Pro-Station.

Someone mentioned that the BBC has to justify its license fee and commercial stations need to pander to its advertisers. Both are correct observations.

All of the main stations use a centralised playlist constructed to appeal to the type of listener the station is aiming at. This is carefully considered because what the stations want to avoid is having a song played and people thinking.... "what the hell's this?" and switching over because once they've switched, that's them lost for the rest of the day. Because the most people only listen to the radio for half an hour to an hour at a time, the songs get put onto a daily playlist. The choice of songs is based on a combination of genre of the station, streaming figures and those 'pushed' by labels (new releases).

This also removes any subjective influence of the DJ which can at times be a little strange. I pushed back on using a playlist for several years as I felt that the DJs we had knew enough to choose the right songs for their shows. But I got fed up explaining why playing The Buggles, Dua Lipa and a 25 minute prog-rock track don't really go together back to back on a drive time show.







StevieBee

12,795 posts

254 months

Sunday 13th June 2021
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Teddy Lop said:
I always assumed like everything in the entertainment its Corruption and networking ie play what you're told to by the record labels and life will go swimmingly and quite literally whatever you want.
It certainly used to be. I have a couple of associates who used to work at Radio 1 in the 70s and 80s. They tell of when record labels used to employ Pluggers to get tracks played on the shows. They'd turn up mid-show with a couple of 'ladies of dubious morals' who'd provide some mid-show, under-desk relaxation to the DJ whilst the track was playing.

Bit different today - all 0 and 1s,



AlexS

1,550 posts

231 months

Sunday 13th June 2021
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Chris77 said:
Ive been a subscriber to primordialradio.com from the start (Think its been 3 years???) If you are into rock/metal then this is definitely the way to go!

I've been introduced to so many new bands.
It's a shame that Primordial isn't available via Sonos at the moment, otherwise I would have signed up.

anonymoususer

5,717 posts

47 months

Sunday 13th June 2021
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If I could turn back time I would like to hear some thing from Rainbow but seldom do
Here I Go Again simply listening to Radio GaGa whilst hoping it won't Bring Me Down

Deranged Rover

3,316 posts

73 months

Sunday 13th June 2021
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monthefish said:
.

It's almost like the station has a bag of 33rpm vinyl singles....
Nerd mode ON

Singles are 45rpm, not 33! wink

Nerd Mode OFF.(Ah, who am I kidding? It’s never off...)

I can’t help wondering if there’s a grain of truth in the theory that what these stations play is what most people want to hear. When Simon Mayo was doing Drive Time on Radio 2, I was an avid listener but generally didn’t bother on ‘All request Friday’ because the sort of songs that people rang up and requested were generally the same middle of the road, safe oldies that you could hear day in and day out on the likes of Heart, Smooth or Capital.