When should a label or radio give up on a developing song? Or double down?
That’s an eternal question, but also one that has been exacerbated lately by the stagnation at the top of the charts, the release of fewer Top 40 radio singles, and a decreased willingness by labels and radio to commit to any song without a streaming story. With many songs taking longer than ever to perform in radio-station callout, the period between songs tapering off on early streams and justifying their place on the air has become harder than ever to negotiate.
These aren’t the songs that show strength in nearly every metric before radio powers them. At any given time, there are songs like Lady Gaga & Bruno Mars’s “Die With a Smile,” Sabrina Carpenter’s “Taste,” Chappel Roan’s “Hot to Go!,” or Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather” that quickly became hits in every other meaningful way. Songs like those often get their Billboard Hot 100 trophies quickly, becoming established hits regardless of radio’s co-sign.
Then there’s another group of songs, often in the No. 11-20 range. They are gaining somewhere in the range of 150-300 spins. They are often songs with tempo by established artists. Their streaming story may have trailed off — or never been significant. Do those songs still have something to offer? Would the spin be better used on a newer, more exciting song? Or another spin of “Beautiful Things?” Often, they’re helping create chart gridlock just outside the top 10 that also slows down those songs already agreed to be hits.
Those songs are often the ones I struggle most to evaluate from week-to-week. In his new RadioInsight column, Mason Kelter, host of the syndicated LiveLine, takes issues with stations playing mid-charters, while not reacting fast enough to other active records. But what about now when there are so few active songs that are consensus hits?
In general, labels are inconsistent in when they choose to stay with a song these days. Some faltering songs have been worked just to the edge of the top 10. But there are other fast starters just as quickly discarded in the top 25-30 range as soon as streaming cools. In general, I don’t want a song that is neither strong nor fresh to stick around for an extra month just to be a trophy. Then again, with label radio departments under siege, it is harder to begrudge them their commitment.
It’s a sharp contrast to Country, where some songs still build slowly over the course of a year or more. For years, that seemed ridiculous. But in the streaming era, the formula has been modified just enough to make Country a highly rated format with a mix of active records and those ratified by callout research over the course of many months.
And sometimes the experience of radio nurturing a record turns out to be worthwhile. Sabrina Carpenter’s “Feather” looked definingly like a turntable hit, but eventually acquitted itself in callout, also helping set up Carpenter’s next three hits and fostering one of Top 40’s few new core artists.
Teddy Swims’s “The Door,” despite months in the shadow of “Lose Control,” is a power for successful smaller-market outlets like WIXX Green Bay, Wis., and WAEZ (Electric 94.9) Johnson City, Tenn. As Warners’ Josh Reich notes, it was also a song where radio could drive streaming.
With the early support of SiriusXM’s Alex Tear and Mikey Piff and Cumulus’s Louie Diaz, Reich says, “The Door” has gone from about 2 million on-demand U.S. weekly streams to nearly 7 million. This week, it’s also the “1 to Watch” in Coleman Insights’ syndicated callout service, Integr8USA — based on a significant bump compared to its peers, according to VP/consultant Jay Nachlis.
In times past, a lot of songs would have had the opportunity to grow on listeners over time. Matt Bailey, for whom streaming data informs the weekly Hit Momentum Report, hypothesizes that “streaming has changed the math. Instead of hearing a new song casually for a while, people now binge-sample new releases on Spotify [and] are now making up their minds about a song instantly.”
Longboard Insights’ Mike Castellucci, who uses streaming and other data to predict callout with his Power Indicator Score Report, says that “we have enough data points, be it streaming, TikTok, etc., to indicate whether a song is topical with the audience. There really isn’t a reason to ‘wait and see’ … If a song doesn’t perform, we’re living in a world where another record can absolutely take its place.”
“If a song’s streams have trailed off a lot in recent weeks, it means listeners sampled the song and rejected it. There’s no point in radio hammering it. Callout will simply confirm what streaming already told you a month later,” says Bailey. “If, however, a song isn’t getting massive streaming and has never gotten massive streaming, listeners haven’t rejected it. They simply haven’t discovered it yet. That’s the kind of song radio can make a hit.”
KMVQ (99.7 Now) San Francisco has been one of the most successful CHRs in recent years, and one of the few stations still displaying significant music enterprise. In 2024, that has manifested itself in a top 10 made up mostly of Carpenter and Roan, but also in playing Natasha Bedingfield’s “Unwritten” as a current because of Anyone but You, or moving the Weeknd’s “Popular” back into significant rotation several times.
“The audience always appreciates a fresh song — it doesn’t have to be brand new — that fits expectations,” says KMVQ PD Jim Archer. “The problem comes if the radio station plays it too often or too long after it’s obvious the song isn’t special enough to cut through. Freshness must always be a part of any contemporary station.”
For veteran consultant/programmer Guy Zapoleon, part of the solution to the current product issues is to both find and play new music more aggressively and get a faster read, before the specialness can wear off. “Create clocks that spin ‘B’s and ‘new’s faster to make them more familiar and [let them] become the next powers.”
Could we reach the point where there’s no need to give a slowly developing song the benefit of the doubt? This column has asked before if Top 40 should return to its long-abandoned model of turning over a lot of songs, knowing that most of them — other than the biggest smashes – will last only 8-10 weeks, as they did for the first 20 years of the format.
That might seem like a stone-age philosophy, but we’ve returned to 1966 in other ways, particularly the focus on songs, not albums. And while “seeing what sticks” might seem like an insult to a label’s commitment or an act’s artistry, it is exactly what labels are doing for TikTok or DSPs. At this point in the troubled radio/label relationship, there’s just no incentive to do the same for radio.
I’d mostly like to see CHR move faster overall, but there are still times when I might give a mid-chart song the benefit of the doubt, particularly if it helps with tempo issues. Even as Gracie Abrams’s ballad “I Love You, I’m Sorry” emerges as an obvious streaming smash, I might also keep “Close to You” for tempo and artist image. It’s not inconceivable to me that the new song might help reinforce the older one. And often, hearing a song like “Popular” bounce back on KMVQ again is a reminder that radio can miss records.
Coleman’s Nachlis says that how a station “handles mid-charting songs on their way up” depends, in part, on “how important is breaking new music to the station’s strategy? One station may step out earlier because they believe in [a song] and the station has built a brand for music discovery. For another station, it may be entirely too soon.”
Through much of this decade, PDs tried to reassure themselves that shorter playlists and glacial turnover were the will of an audience that no longer expected music discovery from radio. But aside from the Mainstream AC format, which has been on that chassis for 20 years, contemporary radio didn’t flourish again until early this summer and the best volley of new music in years. Perhaps new music is important to everybody’s strategy. Meanwhile, if radio’s overall timing gets better, I’m less likely to begrudge a song that merely sounds good on the radio a few extra weeks.
This story first appeared on radioinsight.com