Guest posts, Media, Music

The Kids are alright - Or are they? by Geoff Lloyd

June 26th, 2008

Posted By admin

Hats off to the redoubtable Mr Lloyd for sticking his head above the parapet on such a contentious subject!

The arguments that David lists as examples of what other, successful UK radio stations might put forward on music policy are perhaps sound, but certainly not watertight, and probably not very future-proof either.

The jukebox one topples over pretty easily, just by pointing out that a jukebox is a jukebox in a pub, not a radio. They serve completely different purposes. Adam posted some stats in ‘The Golden Goose’ thread, saying that 76% of all listeners discover new music through AM/FM radio. People expect a jukebox to play jukebox hits. New, unfamiliar music is something they like and expect from their radio. (That’s not to say a jukebox format isn’t viable, many radio stations make a great success of it.

The iPod argument is similarly flimsy. If someone has 375 tracks on their iPod, then they’ve probably hand-picked 375 tracks that they really like. If you are programming a radio station’s core music policy, you’re filling it with tracks that come up most positively and frequently in research across a broad sample.

If you gave someone a straight choice between 375 tracks they know that they love, and 375 tracks, some of which they love, some of which they like, some they’re indifferent to, and some of which they hate, nobody is going to pick the latter. Fortunately, it’s not a straight, like-for-like choice between a radio and an iPod. Yet…

It’s possible that people only have an average of 375 songs in their iPod because it’s still a relatively new thing, and their interaction with this technology is still in its infancy, compared with radio. I’d guess that if you were to look at what this figure were just in a younger demographic, it’d be a lot higher than 375 songs. Young people are owning (although not necessarily paying for) a lot more music - something which was again touched on in the comments to Clive’s ‘Golden Goose’ post. Who cares about young people, though? They’re not in our target demographic. But they will be, one day, and technology first adopted by teenagers has a habit of quickly spreading across generations. We ignore da kidz at our peril.

Radio-rivalling emerging technologies are sometimes dismissed by the establishment as niche or the preserve of the youth. Services such as last.fm or Pandora are seen as the clever and complicated playthings of geeks, far removed from the mainstream. They’ll never catch on. Or will they? Media seems to be heading the way of the bespoke. Sky+ lets us watch only the TV we want, the BBC homepage or iGoogle feed us the news, weather, alerts of our choosing, Facebook organises and connects our social lives. There’s a massive shift in the direction of personalised information and entertainment. Is it not folly for us to look the other way and console ourselves with smug statistics about people only filling their iPods with 375 songs?

The line about people not getting tired of hearing their favourite song is a nonsense. Mental unwellness notwithstanding, there are only a finite amount of times someone wants to hear anything. Every time I hear George Harrison’s beautiful, bright guitar burst in after the first verse of ‘Nowhere Man’, my spirit soars and I feel all the optimism of a sun drenched morning. That said, if you were to chop that guitar solo out, make it into a loop and lock me in room with it going round and round and round, I’m pretty sure I would stab through my own eardrums before sundown. The reason no one complains about hearing their favourite song too often is that if they hear it too often, it stops being their favourite song. (Which is OK - we’ve all had heady, but short-lived love affairs with great pop songs. )

Distorted perceptions of repetition? Probably some truth in that one, but it also smacks of radio programmers hearing feedback they don’t like and patronisingly writing off as “Tsk! Those simple, ordinary people listening, with their easily confused brains!”, rather than trying to address it.

Similarly, I’m sure there are listeners who recall songs less well than we do (again a condescending view of “them” and “us”, though) and I’m sure anyone who’s ever answered a studio switchboard can tell an hilarious tale of punters-say-the-dumbest-things like the ‘Hey Jude’ one, but it’s completely unfair to assume that they represent the majority.

There’s a horrible piece of received wisdom along the lines of ‘nobody ever went bust underestimating the general public’. I’ve heard this and variations on it dozens of times throughout my career. Shame on anyone who claims to have any pride in their work and then trots out this nasty idiom. Where is your integrity if you are treating your consumers with such disdain? Sure, a lot of people have made a lot of money doing exactly that, but isn’t it far, far better to throw all your talent and energy into doing exactly the opposite: Giving people something that exceeds their expectations? Striving to make something truly great rather than something bland enough for people to swallow down without really noticing? Wouldn’t you rather be Radiohead than Westlife, or ‘The Simpsons’ rather than ‘2 Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps’?

Moving on through the list: For just about every positive comment on ‘loving the music variety’, stations get someone bemoaning the relentless repetition. And finally, we can all point at once successful, tightly-formatted radio stations which follow the high-rotation, research driven formula whose figures are now in decline.

It’s interesting that the quote David opens with is from an American radio boss. I’ve never really understood the UK commercial radio industry’s fascination with trying to ape the U.S., or for that matter, Australia. Both have undoubtedly, produced many, many excellent examples of radio broadcasting. However, in the UK the public’s relationship with, and expectations of radio are completely different because of the omnipresence and heritage of a quality, listener focused, well resourced state broadcaster.

The benchmark for radio in this country has always been set by the fact that listeners are used to programmes being produced for them; with their enjoyment in mind, by the BBC. In a less-regulated, free market commercial radio environment, listeners are there to be mined for, collected and offered up to advertisers.

Let’s not kid ourselves, that’s what we’re doing in UK commercial radio, too, but whereas in, say, the States it’s all about investing as little as possible into programming for the maximum possible return (ie. you just need to be one notch less rubbish than your closest competitor), the high quality and production values of the BBC’s radio services have raised the game.

Which brings us on to the Radio Two view, which I’d love to get my teeth into, but I’ve ranted on for far too long, and it’s about time somebody else had a go.

I think it’s absolutely brilliant that David’s thrown this one out to us wolves, and look forward to being part of the conversation as it unfolds. It’s a sad but common state of affairs in commercial radio when it’s actually a handicap for a DJ to be passionate about music. Is there a future in a music policy where this passion can be harnessed instead of frowned upon and robotically dismissed with reams of “computer says no” research?

Geoff

4 Comments

  1. Andy Grumbridge,
    June 26th, 2008 at 6:08 pm:

    Great post, Geoff.

    “There’s a massive shift in the direction of personalised information and entertainment. Is it not folly for us to look the other way…”

    In a word, yes. If we do not embrace this paradigm shift of then we are doomed to a slow but terminal decline.

    I understand the power of traditional radio, of what it can do and how it can make you feel. I’ve listened to Radio Luxembourg under the covers, sent my Top Ten in to Radio Caroline, used John Peel to keep me company during revision, the BBC World Service to keep me in touch while living abroad. It’s part of my media history and why, when I sit in the office and hear us play Bowie’s Changes or Oasis’ Wonderwall (or one of Vince’s hilarious station promos, or hear One Last Dream unfolding day by day) I have to pinch myself that I’m actually working for a music radio station. Really, it is a dream.

    But here’s an idea of the challenge we face, culled from the World of Me.

    When I listen to music at home now, it’s wirelessly from a hard drive. I have enough music on my desktop computer to listen non-stop, 24 hours a day for 4 months or so and not hear the same song twice. I have playlists for mood (’cocktails’, ‘bookstore’, ‘abbatoir’) and I have my Top 1000, Top 2000, etc. Radio doesn’t get a look in.

    Yes, yes, but that’s the same as when you used to play LPs from your alphabetically-ordered record collection, you might say. True, but bear with me, it gets worse.

    If I want to listen to some songs I like interspersed with some new stuff, I use Last.fm. If I want to only listen to songs I really love, I use Last.fm. If I want to listen to music that people who like music like me, like, I use Last.fm. If I want to see a video of a band in action, I use Last.fm. If I want to recommend a band to a friend or ask a question about them, I use Last.fm.

    Still with me?

    If I want to see what my friends have been listening to, I use Last.fm. (If I want to I can look at what they’ve been listening to in the form of a chart. Indeed, I can look at what I’VE been listening to in the form of a chart. Cool. And I can put that chart on my blog, or on my social network pages.)

    If I want to see which bands are touring and where, I use Last.fm. If I want some biographical information on the bands playing, I use Last.fm

    And finally, EVEN WHEN I’m listening to music from my computer, I’m still using Last.fm - scrobbling in the background as well as reading, investigating, recommending, shouting in the scrobble app page.

    Last.fm

    Infinitely wide in its scope and yet it’s unique to me – now that’s what I call niche!

    Do you know what the name means? It refers to the last place you’ll ever need to go for all things related to music. The ultimate music sandbox. Scarily accurate in my case.

    How do we in radio respond to these and similar changes? I’ve plenty of thoughts on the matter – focusing on our points of difference (formats, DJs, news, competitions, our ‘live-ness’), widening the music focus online, allowing listeners to interact with each other, and so on - but this is already turning into more of an essay than a blog post. Over to you, perhaps?


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  2. Adam Bowie,
    June 27th, 2008 at 5:18 pm:

    Up here on the sixth floor we just love research, and the statistics that accompany them. But it’s always worth checking to see if there are new figures - particularly when one gets repeated regularly.

    From what I can tell the “375 tracks on an average iPod” stat comes from an American piece of research that dates from September 2005 (http://www.srgnet.com/pdf/375%20Tunes%20in%20My%20Pocket%20Release%20(Sep605-US-f).pdf). So it’s a little out of date, and part of the reason for that relatively low number was probably capacity. If you had a first generation 512MB iPod Shuffle, then that’d fill it.

    Today many phones have more memory than that. My phone shipped with a 2GB memory card and if I pay £18 on Amazon I can up that to 8GB - the same as the smaller iPhone. And an iPod Classic can now hold around 40,000 songs.

    Some more recent research conducted in the UK by the University of Hertfordshire amongst 14 to 24 year olds reveals that the average mp3 player owned by this age group now has 1,770 songs (http://www.bmr.org/page/press-release-29). The research was conducted for British Music Rights, and it also reveals that about half of these tracks are illegally downloaded, but that’s another story.

    The research shows that 84% of 18-24 year olds have an mp3 player, but that rises to 92% for 14-17 year olds. And they’re only ever going to get bigger. Incidentally, according to some recent Virgin Radio research, 80% of our listeners have an mp3 player, and most of them are older than 24. This is well ahead of the average of 31% that RAJAR says the population owns.

    What’s clear is that people who love music, love iPods and mp3 players in all their forms. Is there *anyone* in Golden Square who does not have an iPod or similar? Are we so different from our listeners.

    Certainly there are tracks on mine that I’ll never here, but not that many, and only having an 8GB Nano, I find myself constantly bumping albums off to make room for other ones.

    Incidentally, the concept of an album is surely short-lived in the medium term. While I couldn’t conceive of not buying a full album, people are more than happy to pick and choose individual songs these days. Even amongst our own listeners only a third buy full albums. Another 31% buy tracks on their own, and the remainder buy albums and tracks evenly. That’s what technology allows us to do. Yes in many ways an album’s an artifical construct, its length determined mainly on the basis of what you could get on either side of a 12 inch piece of vinyl spinning at 33rpm, and later by what a CD could take (itself determined by the length needed to hear Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony uninterrupted). But then all forms of music are constructs from the four movement symphony to the two minute pop song. But I digress…

    If the average teenager is carrying around three times more songs than the average radio stationplays then that’s something to certainly think about.


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  3. Dan Benedictus,
    July 2nd, 2008 at 4:45 pm:

    With regards to Geoff’s point about it sometimes being a handicap for a commercial radio dj being passionate about music, that is indeed a sad state of affairs.
    Maybe i’m being idealistic, but one of the things that made me want to get into radio was that there seemed to be a genuine passion and integrity involved, whereas in telly a presenter didn’t necessarily need to know much about the subject, (with notable exceptions such as news and sport obviously).
    In one of the other posts, Christian wrote about having heard a track by the White Stripes, but not being allowed to play it, only for Peel to get there instead. Geoff also talked of the many catagories and sub genres of rock. Could it not be possible for there to be more varied shows outside of the main hours of programming? I always thought that one of the strengths of Radio 1 was that, come evening time, there was a wealth of specialist music programming, so that even if you hated the playlist in the daytime, you could find something you were interested in the evening, be that rock, (whatever the hell that is!), dance (in all its myriad forms), or even something completely different like bhangra.

    I’m not suggesting that we would stray so far from the rock/pop format, and start playing house music at night as it isn’t what we have ever been about, but would it not be possible to have more specialist evening shows so that dj’s can inform and educate, as well as entertain, and help people find more new music they love?

    We have Extreme and Classic Rock which cater for more niche audiences, but I just thought that it would be possible to put in some complimentary shows around them that possibly cater for a more specialist audience, and a more specialist DJ, without necessarily compromising the listenership or the station; off the top of my head Extreme could fit in a show for metal and heavier music for example or there could be a show on the main station that takes the pick of the week from extreme, so as to bring less mainstream stuff to more people?

    But hey, i’m just starting to ramble now, or maybe that started at the beginning of this post, but i’m just taking advantage of the blog. Not having any programming experience I could just be talking rubbish, after all, when I do my community radio show in Brighton, i’m happy to play Kate Bush next to some techno, followed by thrash metal, so maybe that’s why i’m the one who orders the stationery!


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  4. Bobby Harrison,
    July 3rd, 2008 at 9:16 am:

    I think Dan has a great point!
    I feel if we are ever to attract a younger audience who mainly would listen to the radio in the evenings and are probably the most digital zavy these days then the music needs to be more relevent to what they want to hear, take NME magazine for example a great example of how something can influence so many young people these days on what music to listen too.
    I remember listening to certain radio shows when i was younger and hearing a band new band for the first time and if your passionate about music you felt a genuine excitment and would want to know more about that band!
    There are so many new bands and even genres of music that it would be a shame not to embrace all these types of music in one show, younger audiences are alot more open minded to different styles of music these days. I know we have extreme at the moment but we dont really have the resources to market the programmes or even extreme itself so would be good to make more of a feature of extreme with actual shows featuring live DJ’s talking about new music with there own opionions on the music (they shouldnt have to like everything they play and should be able to make their own choices!), what gigs are coming up, which albums and singles are out this week, unsigned bands(has anyone heard of that band carlotti first single is out on 28th on itunes?) , the list is endless.
    rant over.


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