Years after streaming stats and TikTok stories became the industry’s units of currency, radio programmers are still trying to contend with a firehose of stories, or allowing the labels to prioritize them. Some TikTok records don’t sound like radio records and make their way over here anyway. But some do. Should radio be working harder to develop them?
I first heard about “If We Ever Broke Up” by Mae Stephens in late January from Matt Kelly, PD/afternoon host of CHR WVAQ Morgantown, W.Va. Kelly spotted it in listeners’ TikTok videos before the full song had even been officially released, something that wouldn’t happen until February 10, a few weeks later.
Even as a snippet, “If We Ever Broke Up” sounded like a potential radio record. It was clearly identifiable as a song, not a sound, or a sped-up sample. It had a similar uptempo pop feel to “Supalonely,” “Better Days,” and “Sunroof,” relatively mainstream songs that had emerged from TikTok to become radio hits of some magnitude (and No. 1 in the case of “Sunroof”).
When “If We Ever Broke Up” finally came out, it did become a mid-chart hit in the UK, reaching No. 13 on that country’s sales- and streaming-driven charts, and achieving top 20 airplay. In New Zealand, it reached No. 6.
In the U.S., the song’s TikTok success translated less:
- It received a handful of spins at iHeart stations, apparently including the group’s New Hitlist show, but never seemingly went into rotation. Those spins were enough for “If We Ever Broke Up” to peak at No. 45 CHR in April, according to Mediabase, but the song was never seemingly impacted by Republic.
- WVAQ did play the song, but dropped it after a lack of reaction several weeks later.
- WFLY Albany, N.Y., gave “If We Ever Broke Up” 45 spins, the song’s most U.S. airplay.
- The song’s one true radio home in America was, not surprisingly, SiriusXM’s TikTok Radio, where it is now at 721 spins so far). SXM’s mainstream CHR format, Hits 1, gave it just over 30 spins.
- Even in the UK, “If We Ever Broke Up” is receiving only a handful of spins now.
One issue at the time, I thought, was that the full version of “If We Ever Broke Up” didn’t venture far beyond the 90-second snippet already available. But Jack Harlow’s new and very successful “Lovin’ on Me” is already a confirmed hit that relies heavily on the hook it pre-sold before its release.
I wasn’t expecting to hear much about “If We Ever Broke Up” again. But a headline in the December 6 issue of Music Week declared, “UK breakthrough star Mae Stephens had the No. 2 track globally on TikTok in 2023.” It was also, the UK trade reports, the No. 2 song on TikTok’s global Songs of the Summer list. (The No. 1 song globally was Fifty Fifty’s “Cupid,” which also resembled “Better Days” in both its feel and its overall footprint.)
I had come to think of “If We Ever Broke Up” as TikTok ephemera. When it was unveiled as the No. 2 TikTok song of the year, I suddenly found myself wondering again if it was a song that radio had missed. ‘
For at least two researchers who look at streaming metrics, the answer is no. On Mike Castellucci’s Power Indicator Score, “If We Ever Broke Up” peaked at a 4.0. Castellucci’s threshold for playability starts around a 7.0 and an undeniable hit is in the 9-10.5 range. (That said, a lot of songs get a lot higher than No. 45 on the CHR charts and never get to a 4.0.)
Integr8 Research’s Matt Bailey points to the song’s Spotify performance, noting that it was only in the top 200 U.S. streams for one week at No. 145 with only 2.1 million plays. “That’s not an audio hit.” Songs familiarized by TikTok, Bailey says, typically only translate to callout if they have generated significant streaming first. (Bailey also noted that his 15-year-old had commented over dinner that evening, “Most teenagers don’t like most ‘internet’ songs.”)
WFLY’s Reid says that the song never reached the critical mass on the station to impact its music research. “When it peaked, we obviously moved on,” she says. But she did see Shazam activity on the song when WFLY played it. Reid also thinks that a lot of TikTok songs are overlooked by radio because they don’t flood everybody’s feed, or because of “simply not using the app.” She says it raises the question “is radio too reliant on research?”
I did feel that radio was too reliant on research with Olivia Rodrigo’s “Bad Idea Right?” That song — uptempo, just edgy enough, from a major artist — got stuck at No. 11 waiting for callout that didn’t soon materialize, and was also stuck in between “Vampire” and “Get Him Back,” already a bigger CHR hit at No. 9.
In early October, “Bad Idea Right?” was back in the top 10 following its album release. It also had a 9.5 in Castellucci’s calculations. At that moment, I thought PDs should consider “Bad Idea Right” for power rotation, even without callout, based on the excitement both in and around the record. That seems willful now, but the callout story did materialize for at least one major CHR, WXKS (Kiss 108) Boston, where the song was power last week. (It’s down from 87x to 71x this week.)
There are songs that win the current trifecta of TikTok, streaming, and radio research. Reid cites radio’s “huge success” with Miguel’s resurgent “Sure Thing.” In the last six months, Top 40 has come to be dominated by similarly languid, atmospheric hits. I think the need for tempo and energy still exists, and won’t feel otherwise until Top 40 is winning consistently again without relying on “We Found Love” or “Party Rock Anthem” for tempo. For radio and labels alike, the question then becomes how to help develop those songs.
This story first appeared on radioinsight.com