There is a current ongoing Twitter debate as to why a radio station like Absolute Radio would play James Morrison’s ‘Broken Strings’? Is it real music ?
Now I totally understand why some people might not like these sort of tracks – ‘too poppy’, ‘too mellow’,’ not cool enough for me’, ‘too wimpy’,’ everyone else plays him’ – and I don’t think that there is any debate that this song is on the musical periphery for us as a station – the same goes for The Script, Lily Allen , Pet Shop Boys and the rest. ‘Pop’ by any other name.
But just because you personally don‘t like it does that mean it is not real music? All of those acts write and sing their own songs. Yes but so do Take That and if that is the argument why doesn’t Absolute play them? Well for me the problem with Take That is that they WERE a manufactured band of the utmost order put together by boy band svengali, Nigel Martin Smith, and that legacy is a lot for lovers of real music to swallow – call us unforgiving if you like. And even though they have reinvented themselves Take That do still attract a 90% female audience to their concerts – not exactly our target audience. And when was the last time you saw Take That play a credible music festival? The thing with James Morrison, and the same goes for the other acts I’ve mentioned, is that they do play music festivals and no they are not bottled off the stage when they do because they cut it live as the singer/songwriters they are.
Any radio station worth it salt will define its core target market. And for a station like Absolute Radio that means 25 – 44 year old men. However in the same way that Heart does not just attract the 25 – 44 year old females it targets, Absolute Radio still manages to attract many women and many listeners both younger and older than the core. So when we are putting our playlists together, of course we focus most heavily on the core listeners, hence if you were define our station the first bands that spring to mind are probably the likes of The Killers, Kings of Leon, Coldplay and Snow Patrol.
But does that mean we ignore everyone else’s musical needs? Remember the smaller you make the target market the smaller potential audience you have at your disposal, but this is admittedly a delicate balance because if you try and please everyone you can often end up pleasing no one. But Absolute Radio is committed to playing the best in rock AND pop. Both are valid although by the nature of the station the emphasis should quite rightly be on rock – but not to the exclusion of pop. It is all about getting the balance right. Likewise a smattering of indie modern rock (Muse, White Stripes, tougher Green Day et al) is part of our music remit because it is fairly popular with our core, but at the same time we know from research it is the LEAST popular music genre with radio audiences generally. But we still play it because it is all about balance. There have to be musical parameters but if we are too ruthless with what ‘fits’ and doesn’t ‘fit’, we could end up with a smaller playlist which does not give the variety of music I think we currently do.
But what do our listeners thing of ‘Broken Strings’? Well, like all major radio stations, we ‘research’ the music we play and might be thinking of playing. ‘Research’ being the scientific word for ‘asking our listeners’ what they think of the music. Each week we get the opinions of over a hundred Absolute Radio listeners as to what they think of particular songs. Over the last couple of months we have literally received hundreds and hundreds of opinions on ‘Broken Strings’. And what are our listeners telling us? Well obviously there is never going to be unanimity (this is not a North Korean election after all!) but generally one in five of our listeners ‘love’ the song; two thirds of them ‘like’ the song and about one in 20 ‘dislike’ the song. The song is definitely less popular with our male listeners than it is with our female listeners, but even amongst the men over half of them ‘like’ the song and crucially there is no marked difference in the numbers who ‘dislike’ the song. But regardless of whether people like the song or not does it ‘fit’? I love the Jackson Fives’s ‘ I Want You Back’ but I would never expect to hear it on Absolute Radio! Well the views we have back from our core listeners show that nearly 90% think it does ‘fit’ our station .
‘Broken Strings’ is for me a great pop song by a very talented singer songwriter, HOWEVER I do agree in terms of sound it will never be ‘core’ for Absolute Radio and if there is a shift in balance were more and more of these mainstream adult pop tracks are getting more airtime on our station then in my opinion we are getting it wrong. But that is different from saying that adult pop should not be played at all.
But this is your station not mine so let the debate continue and you can be sure of one thing – we are listening to what you have to say.
James
