Time to Speed It Up? Country Radio Programmers Ponder Shorter Life Spans of Singles

For years, record labels have lamented country radio’s pokey approach to single cycles. But at this year’s Country Radio Seminar (CRS), which started Feb. 19 and concluded Feb. 21, even radio programmers are frustrated with the approach.

“It shouldn’t take a year for a good song to get to No. 1,” Cumulus vp of country Travis Daily said during the “Why Can’t We Be Friends” panel on Feb. 19. “We, on my side, are like, ‘People get bored easy, so let’s slow it down.’ It’s dumb.”

Panelists used Cole Swindell’s “Forever to Me” as an example: The track reached the top 10 on the Country Airplay chart dated March 1 after 45 weeks (see On the Charts, page 4). It had all the hallmarks of a hit — an emotionally appealing release from one of country’s most consistent hit-makers — and yet stations had a difficult time committing to it. Meanwhile, digital streaming providers, based on the data from customer reaction, responded commensurately and ran it through their hit cycle. Thus, country radio — once the genre’s primary source of music discovery — seems slow, uncertain and sheepish next to more nimble competition.

“[DSPs] had to come off of it because the audience wants fresh,” Warner Music Nashville senior vp of radio and streaming Kristen Williams said. “They want something new and they want it faster.”

As a result, Williams’ team is using a bifurcated marketing campaign for Swindell, pushing country radio toward the label’s goal of a No. 1 single with “Forever to Me” while talking with DSPs about the singer’s latest track, “Kill a Prayer.”

“This is actually more commonplace than not,” Williams said.

The conversation took place as the country industry again reevaluates its tactics and relationships at the annual seminar, founded as an event for broadcasters and labels that has expanded in recent years to include streaming-related panels. CRS hosts a series of educational panels daily with plenty of showcase opportunities available during label-sponsored lunches and nighttime performances. This year’s event has already featured performances by Brothers Osborne, Jelly Roll, Jordan Davis, Avery Anna, Old Dominion, Dylan Schneider and Brad Paisley, who apologized to programmers who had to wait in single-digit wind chill for entry into the Ryman Auditorium at the Universal Music Group Nashville lunch on Feb. 20.

“The temperature outside,” Paisley said sarcastically, “is what it’s like to play for you.”

The joke received an appreciative groan from the programmers in the audience, who have enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship with Paisley since his introduction to radio in 1999. Country artists have typically gone on expensive radio tours for decades, performing for radio staff in conference rooms and forging a rapport that would hopefully lead to personal investment in the artists’ careers. But the relationship has changed with the maturation of the streaming business.

In an earlier time, country artists released three or four singles per year, and those that succeeded would peak on the chart in 12 to 18 weeks. Around the time that Paisley debuted, CRS attendees were encouraged to hang on to their hits longer, which slowed the number of singles and made it more difficult to establish careers.

With the growth of DSPs, artists are once again able to release more music and cycle through the hits quicker, creating stronger relationships with their consumers. Those expensive radio tours have mostly dried up — Cox Media/Houston director of operations Travis Moon estimated that KKBQ has had only four or five artists visit the station on a radio tour in the last year. Programmers seem to be recognizing that playing the same hits for longer periods may be a competitive disadvantage.

“Music is moving faster than ever, [while] the charts are going slower than ever,” said Sticks Media owner Todd Nixon during the Feb. 20 panel “Cycle of a Song” that focused on Tucker Wetmore’s “Wind Up Missin’ You.” “We just got to go faster on this record.”

Programmers have long believed that listeners prefer familiar music over new songs, though a Nuvoodoo study, “The Country Fan — Reviewing, Retaining, and Recruiting Your Listeners,” presented Feb. 20, suggested that overfamiliarity may be hurting radio more than new music. Commercial breaks are the top reason for tune-out, with 47% of the study’s respondents citing them as a factor. Three different kinds of repetition — playing songs too frequently, burnout and tracks appearing at the same time on successive days — were each cited as a problem by more than 40% of respondents. But only 34% of listeners said they turned off the station because they “don’t know” a song.

Therefore, feeding a healthy amount of new music, slotted in the right position on the playlist, may be one of the ways to counter the repetition issues.

“If you just take conventional wisdom constantly, you create narratives and biases in your own head and you’ll bore the audience to death,” Bonneville/Denver director of operations Brian Michel said during “Sound Off: What Is ‘Mainstream’ Country?” on Feb. 20.

Stations with minimal research of their own might consider watching Spotify’s Hot Country playlist, which features material that’s previously proved itself in other forums.

“You can trust that if something is in Hot Country, it is performing well with the mainstream country audience,” Spotify Nashville head of editorial Rachel Whitney said during the “Sound Off” panel. “Then use your own judgment about whether or not it matters to your audience.”

Even if country radio is considering a course correction, the medium remains a venerable institution, and the artists — all of whom grew up with it playing a significant role in their exposure to the music — continue to show their appreciation.

“You guys have changed my life in the last year,” Wetmore said during the “Cycle of a Song” panel. “Truly, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.”

That’s one aspect of CRS that remains the same.

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