Radio stations and the bands they support

[UTH]

Do stations have particular 'deals' or whatever with certain artists so they are the select few that get played all the time.

I don't list to much radio, but if I do it's usually Radio X as I've always loved Chris Moyles and I think Jonny Vaughan is good too.
But my god am I getting fed up with hearing Blossoms and Biffy Clyro. They're even starting to make me dread hearing Foo Fighters, but not on the same level as those other two yet.

Any reason why this station will be playing Blossoms/Clyro as much as they do!?

[UTH]

48k said:

UTH said:

Do stations have particular 'deals' or whatever with certain artists so they are the select few that get played all the time.

I don't list to much radio, but if I do it's usually Radio X as I've always loved Chris Moyles and I think Jonny Vaughan is good too.
But my god am I getting fed up with hearing Blossoms and Biffy Clyro. They're even starting to make me dread hearing Foo Fighters, but not on the same level as those other two yet.

Any reason why this station will be playing Blossoms/Clyro as much as they do!?

Radio X are playing a Biffy Clyro song roughly every 5 hours through the day - today for example 1:47am (A Little Love), 6:11am (A little Love), 11:49am (A Little Love) but there was also a play of "Who's Got a Match?" at 1:28pm. If you don't listen to the radio much you're either very unlucky when you dip in to it or its just a perception thing, albeit today they have played two songs an hour and 39 mins apart.

Interesting. To be fair I probably dip into Chris Moyles for maybe an hour max per day, then maybe another hour in the afternoon as and when I'm walking from meetings/train home, so maybe my random dip in times happen to hit the Biffy/Blossoms moments.

[48k]

UTH said:

Do stations have particular 'deals' or whatever with certain artists so they are the select few that get played all the time.

I don't list to much radio, but if I do it's usually Radio X as I've always loved Chris Moyles and I think Jonny Vaughan is good too.
But my god am I getting fed up with hearing Blossoms and Biffy Clyro. They're even starting to make me dread hearing Foo Fighters, but not on the same level as those other two yet.

Any reason why this station will be playing Blossoms/Clyro as much as they do!?

Radio X are playing a Biffy Clyro song roughly every 5 hours through the day - today for example 1:47am (A Little Love), 6:11am (A little Love), 11:49am (A Little Love) but there was also a play of "Who's Got a Match?" at 1:28pm. If you don't listen to the radio much you're either very unlucky when you dip in to it or its just a perception thing, albeit today they have played two songs an hour and 39 mins apart.

Radio X uses GSelector (as does the rest of Global) for music scheduling which generates playlists based on various rules and one rule you can have is artist separation (minimum time between selecting tracks from the same artist) so maybe something went a bit squiffy with that this afternoon of maybe they don't use it or have it set too short for example.

Edited by 48k on Tuesday 28th October 15:23

[UTH]

Interesting insight, thanks. And funny how it clearly does become a perception thing as I feel like they play it every 30 mins!

[48k]

UTH said:

48k said:

UTH said:

Do stations have particular 'deals' or whatever with certain artists so they are the select few that get played all the time.

I don't list to much radio, but if I do it's usually Radio X as I've always loved Chris Moyles and I think Jonny Vaughan is good too.
But my god am I getting fed up with hearing Blossoms and Biffy Clyro. They're even starting to make me dread hearing Foo Fighters, but not on the same level as those other two yet.

Any reason why this station will be playing Blossoms/Clyro as much as they do!?

Radio X are playing a Biffy Clyro song roughly every 5 hours through the day - today for example 1:47am (A Little Love), 6:11am (A little Love), 11:49am (A Little Love) but there was also a play of "Who's Got a Match?" at 1:28pm. If you don't listen to the radio much you're either very unlucky when you dip in to it or its just a perception thing, albeit today they have played two songs an hour and 39 mins apart.

Interesting. To be fair I probably dip into Chris Moyles for maybe an hour max per day, then maybe another hour in the afternoon as and when I'm walking from meetings/train home, so maybe my random dip in times happen to hit the Biffy/Blossoms moments.

Playlist is here if you want to correlate against your dipping times

https://onlineradiobox.com/uk/radiox/playlist/

[hondajack85]

Gone are they days when an old prog rock dj suddenly hit his mid life crisis and started championed teenage pub bands so he could go and stand next to lovely young gurls lol.

[48k]

hondajack85 said:

Gone are they days when an old prog rock dj suddenly hit his mid life crisis and started championed teenage pub bands so he could go and stand next to lovely young gurls lol.

Not gone, it just happens on Community Radio now.

[Simes205]

Google - pluggers in radio

[MattyD803]

I was wondering this myself. I listen to Virgin Radio, and their current 'flavour of the month' seems to be the latest one from Richard Ashcroft - "Lover". Its been played to death on there recently....yet you don't hear it much else on other stations. They did a big launch event for it too.

Edited by MattyD803 on Tuesday 28th October 17:29

[UTH]

Amusingly as I got in the car just now, Wolf Alice came on immediately, and it was the last song I heard on the walk home earlier!

[48k]

UTH said:

Interesting insight, thanks. And funny how it clearly does become a perception thing as I feel like they play it every 30 mins!

TBF I felt the same about Absolute Oasis, sorry I mean Absolute Radio.

[Chimaera98]

I didn’t think it was allowed for companies to pay a radio station to play their songs.

I recall when I did Community Radio, (in the pre download days) it was said that some of the main companies wouldn’t send out promos of their new releases to smaller/community stations.

I imagine most stations just upload songs to their playlist , play out systems that meets a certain listener demographic. The days of presenter choice, certainly at large stations has pretty much gone.

[djgritt]

I’ve just recently tuned out from Radio X - I enjoy Moyles & Vaughan when commuting and also listen to the whole daytime offering when WFH 2 days/week - but the general station playlist seems minimal and very repetitive.
Wife even mentioned it as she was hearing the same things regularly overnight if/when she woke up (quiet background noise on our landing for pets!)

We’ve gone to Radio2 for a bit now and it seems to have far greater variation.

[Chimaera98]

Radio stations will have an A list, B list possibly a C list of 10songs in each, then a larger general list. It will all be scheduled so A s could get played more in an hour than those on B or C lists. The presenter will have little of no choice over what is played. Big companies are more interested in profit and market share/audience reach than diverse playlists.

Haven t listed much to R2 recently, but always got the feeling with Ken Bruce and Steve Wright s shows, that someone who knew music had gone to the archives and dug out some of the more obscure stuff. Eye in the Sky -Alan Parsons Project, New York Minute -Don Henley etc. Not being UK hit singles they would likely never get played on a heavy rotation computer driven playlist commercial station.

Edited by Chimaera98 on Tuesday 28th October 22:41

[Nickp82]

djgritt said:

I ve just recently tuned out from Radio X - I enjoy Moyles & Vaughan when commuting and also listen to the whole daytime offering when WFH 2 days/week - but the general station playlist seems minimal and very repetitive.
Wife even mentioned it as she was hearing the same things regularly overnight if/when she woke up (quiet background noise on our landing for pets!)

We ve gone to Radio2 for a bit now and it seems to have far greater variation.

Same. It’s a shame as it used to be a good station but is now not only repetitive but leaning more in to being ‘Capital Pop/Rock’ than Radio X.

[48k]

djgritt said:

I ve just recently tuned out from Radio X - I enjoy Moyles & Vaughan when commuting and also listen to the whole daytime offering when WFH 2 days/week - but the general station playlist seems minimal and very repetitive.
Wife even mentioned it as she was hearing the same things regularly overnight if/when she woke up (quiet background noise on our landing for pets!)

We ve gone to Radio2 for a bit now and it seems to have far greater variation.

The challenge for music programmers (the person in charge of curating the playlists) is that listeners like familiarity so you can't stray too far off piste particularly during your peak shows which are morning and evening drivetime otherwise listeners will tune away. BBC stations have the benefit of slightly less pressure to chase audience (although they still have to justify their funding which is of course audience driven) but in the commercial world where you are selling airtime to advertisers and sponsors you need to be playing popular songs to draw the audience in and keep them there.

[Zetec-S]

48k said:

The challenge for music programmers (the person in charge of curating the playlists) is that listeners like familiarity so you can't stray too far off piste particularly during your peak shows which are morning and evening drivetime otherwise listeners will tune away. BBC stations have the benefit of slightly less pressure to chase audience (although they still have to justify their funding which is of course audience driven) but in the commercial world where you are selling airtime to advertisers and sponsors you need to be playing popular songs to draw the audience in and keep them there.

It makes sense. I've come to the conclusion that the core audience of most mainstream radio stations are perhaps a bit "simple"... they like familiarity and repeats, just listen to any "request hour" and you'll find people phoning/messaging in for songs which are already played regularly anyway, which I always find odd.

[Gary29]

Radio 6 Music is by far the least painful to listen to.

[toon10]

Gary29 said:

Radio 6 Music is by far the least painful to listen to.

I've been listening to this station for a while now and music wise, you get a large array of styles, bands and good tracks. So much nicer than getting in Mrs. Toons car and having to put up with Heart radio where the awful adverts are a huge relief to the shocking music they play. Any radio station where I hear Beyonce's wailing tones sends me into rage.

[jet_noise]

Gary29 said:

Radio 6 Music is by far the least painful to listen to.

Broadly agree but there are a few too-regulars e.g. Grace Jones and there will be a flavour of the moment Fontaines DC has been a recent repeater.
And Mary Anne Hobbgoblin can get a bit wearing if she's doing tekno tekno tekno!