In 2024, radio gained a massive star: Shaboozey. Thanks to an ambitious five-format strategy by the EMPIRE label to break “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” to the widest possible audience, the singer-songwriter’s signature track hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in July and remained there for a record-tying 19 weeks, making radio history along the way.
“Shaboozey walked into the steps of Bailey Zimmerman and Morgan Wallen and on and on,” says Randy Chase, executive vp of programming for Birmingham, Ala., radio chain Summit Media. “Because they changed our format sonically and texturally and taught radio: ‘Don’t get in your little box.’ It really opened up people’s minds.”
But Shaboozey’s triumph, along with Post Malone‘s surprisingly smooth crossover from pop and hip-hop to country, was among the few major radio success stories in 2024.
The biggest story was the continuing decline of radio as an industry. Although iHeartMedia and other radio giants point to rosy statistics showing radio’s ongoing popularity, MusicWatch surveys show the “incidence of listening to music” on broadcast radio dropped from 79% in the fourth quarter of 2016 to 50% in last year’s fourth quarter. And while radio continues to reach 52% of music listeners, according to MusicWatch, time spent listening has dropped from five hours a week in 2016 to two hours last year.
Among the broadcasters laying off large numbers of employees: iHeartMedia, Audacy, SiriusXM and, presumably, author Stephen King’s three long-running stations in Bangor, Maine, which punctuated the year in radio by announcing they would close Dec. 31. Major labels responded in kind, laying off numerous longtime promotion execs.
As part of Billboard‘s look at 2024 in a variety of areas, from record labels to the concert business, here are the year’s biggest radio stories.
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iHeartMedia Layoffs
The November layoffs, which reportedly involved hundreds of employees, was one of a few downsizing waves by the No. 1 broadcast company at its 860 stations. It’s all part of the way the industry works, said iHeart CEO Bob Pittman on a third-quarter conference call around the time of the layoffs, pointing to an increase in total revenue of more than $1 billion — a 5.3% jump compared to the same period in 2023. (The company’s net loss expanded from nearly $9 million to $41.3 million during that same period.)
Pittman told investors technology allowed the company to “take talent we have in any location and put them on the air in another location,” citing popular syndicated hosts such as Ryan Seacrest, Charlamagne tha God and Bobby Bones. “There’s not a slot for everybody,” he continued. “Just because [talent] was willing to live in the market, doesn’t assure that they’re the best person for that slot.”
That may make sense on a corporate level, but it’s not a huge comfort to veteran radio execs who’ve lost their jobs. After his April layoff as an iHeart senior VP of programming in Tulsa and Oklahoma City, Okla., Don Cristi told Billboard, “I started my career at Wendy’s when I was 16. I hope I don’t have to end it there.”
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Morning Show Cuts
Over the summer, news of prominent local morning-show stars losing their jobs arrived rapidly: WKTU-FM New York’s Carolina With Greg T. KZZU-FM Spokane, Wash.’s Dave, Ken and Molly. CKCE-FM Calgary, Alberta, Canada’s Mornings with Bo and Jess. The hosts, popular local talent who had, in many cases, worked at their stations for years, often didn’t see the cuts coming.
Many veteran DJs did not go quietly. After losing his job along with Jessica Hoy in Calgary, co-host Bobby May declared on Instagram, “Radio is in terrible shape with the current CEOs and shareholders at hand nationwide and I HATE to see my coworkers go down with it. … Talents have unfortunately become just a number on a piece of paper.”
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Shaboozey’s Four-Format Milestone
In happier news, EMPIRE, the indie label that broke Shaboozey, saw immediately that the Nigerian-American singer’s track “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” which interpolates J-Kwon‘s 2004 hip-hop hit “Tipsy,” would thrive on country radio. But Ghazi, the label’s CEO, had grander ambitions, telling Billboard he planned all along to release the track to multiple radio formats at the same time: “For a record like that, it’s a no-brainer.”
The strategy worked. With the help of an indie promo company, Magnolia Music, the label pushed the song onto country playlists, then crossed it over to Top 40. Finally, as “A Bar Song” started to show up on Shazam charts, Hot AC and regional rhythmic stations threw it on the air and received what Columbus, Ohio, programmer Chris Harris told Billboard was a “great response.”
Where many hits today break from streaming or synch, or at least start that way, “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” was an old-fashioned radio success. Just before Thanksgiving, it tied a record held by another country song by an African-American artist, Lil Nas X‘s “Old Town Road,” by claiming No. 1 on the Hot 100 for 19 weeks.
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Labels Cutting Promo Staffs
Not long ago, label radio-promotion staffs were highly paid, lavishly spending VIPs, jet-setting around the U.S., often with pop stars in tow, to persuade programmers to add singles to heavy rotation. Some of that still happens — radio remains important, every label exec will say — but the shrinkage of the broadcast industry in recent years has meant corresponding cuts to labels’ promo staffs. “It’s just an evolution,” Skip Bishop, a former Sony promotions exec who is now a radio consultant, said in April. “You don’t need six regionals, three nationals, two vps and an svp when 20 to 45 people are making the decisions that 200 people used to make at radio.”
So as top labels from Atlantic to Republic have cut employees over the past year, emphasizing streaming, AI and other new technology, promo staffs have felt disproportionate pain. “Five years ago, 10 years ago, it’s radio, radio, radio,” said Ron Poore, who lost his longtime job as Atlantic’s senior vp of promotion, alternative and rock in the spring. “And now it’s the last thing we do at these labels.” Inflection points can be brutal.
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Audacy’s Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy was a lifeline for the No. 2 broadcaster, which owns 230 stations including heavyweights such as KROQ in Los Angeles and WCBS in New York.
The January deal allowed the company to work with debtholders to reduce its debt from $1.9 billion to $350 million, or 80%. (The original debt came when the company, which used to be called Entercom, merged in 2017 with CBS Radio, expanding its revenue and increasing its debt.) In September, the FCC approved the company’s restructuring, which let it emerge from Chapter 11 and, as CEO David Field has said, allowed the broadcaster to grow faster and more efficiently.
At first, early in 2024, the company declared that the Chapter 11 proceeding would not affect operations. But three months later, Audacy announced it would reduce its workforce by “less than 2%,” which meant laying off a Boston sports reporter, a Chicago afternoon news anchor and nearly 100 others. “How many layoffs can they go through before there’s nobody left?” an employee, who requested anonymity, asked Billboard.
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Thanks to Radio, Two Country Songs of the Summer
For two summers in a row, Billboard‘s Songs of the Summer chart contained a country one-two punch — Wallen’s “Last Night” and Luke Combs‘ “Fast Car” in 2023, then Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” and Wallen’s “I Had Some Help” collaboration with Post Malone in 2024. The last country song to top this chart? John Denver‘s “Annie’s Song” in 1974.
So radio retains the ability to break big hits. Or maybe it’s just that country songs are especially strong and popular these days. “It feels good to know there’s this much quality coming out of Nashville,” Steve Stewart, director of country content for broadcaster Cox Media Group, said in September.
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Post Malone’s Country Radio Strategy
Not every pop star can pivot from Top 40 radio to country, where showing up in Nashville and shaking hands at industry events means almost as much as the music itself. But Post Malone, who’d made his superstar name in hip-hop and pop, pulled it off in August with his hit-filled album F-1 Trillion. How? “He went all in,” Chase said. Instead of showing up for an event or two, Post spent years hanging out with programmers, playing clubs and working with local songwriters.
So when he needed star-power collaborators on the album, Blake Shelton, Morgan Wallen, Dolly Parton, Luke Combs and others answered the call. “Post ingratiated himself within the creative community — opened up to writers, collaborators and session musicians — that were the throughline of this campaign,” said Patch Culbertson, executive vp/GM of Big Loud, the Nashville country-focused indie label that worked with Post’s major label, Republic, to break the album.
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SiriusXM’s Struggles
It wasn’t a great year for satellite radio, either, as SiriusXM cut 3% of its staff in February, 11 months after slashing 8% of its workforce. The new layoffs affected 170 jobs out of 5,680 total employees. Jennifer Witz, the company’s CEO, tried to spin the news positively in a staff memo: “We have just begun to scratch the surface of what is possible here at SiriusXM,” she wrote.
While the company launched a free, ad-supported subscription service in August to compete with AM-FM radio and streaming, the service lost 445,000 paid subscribers in the first quarter and 173,000 (out of 33 million total) in the second. To make matters worse, a New York judge ruled in November that the company could no longer subject subscribers who want to cancel to a “burdensome endurance contest” involving speaking with an agent by phone and lengthy hold times.
Looking ahead, the contract of the company’s flagship star, 70-year-old Howard Stern, expires at the end of 2025. Will Stern renew? Or will a flurry of new content deals, involving popular podcasts like SmartLess and Call Your Daddy, make up the difference? We’ll see. But already the company is pivoting: Just this week, it announced a new strategy to move away from its streaming app and double down on car subscribers.
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Will Radio Royalties Ever Happen?
Probably not. But the latest push in a decades-long attempt involves Randy Travis and a congressional bill called the American Music Fairness Act. If passed, the bill would create a performance right when traditional radio stations play a song. So an artist who performs another writer’s composition would receive a royalty payment.
Travis, who endured a stroke in 2013 and cannot perform, relies on royalties to help pay for his long-term health care. Additional radio royalties would clearly help. “This piece of legislation is essential to correct a 100-year-old issue,” Mary Travis, his wife, said at a June hearing.
The barrier for the Travises, and the many artists and labels that support them, is that the broadcast industry consistently opposes such bills. Its lobbying power, derived from radio stations in cities throughout the U.S. that have relationships with powerful local congresspeople, is almost impossible to overcome. Such legislation didn’t pass when Frank Sinatra pushed it in the ’80s, and it’s unlikely to do any better under a Republican-led Congress that takes over in January.
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Stephen King’s Radio Stations to Close
The not-so-great year in the radio business ended on a horrifying note when King, the 77-year-old horror novelist, said the financial losses from his chain of Bangor, Maine, radio stations were too much for him to keep going. A statement from his radio company, Zone Corporation, said the stations “consistently have lost money” since King purchased them in the early ’80s, and the author said he was attempting to “get his business affairs in better order.”
The Zone release did not specify how many employees would lose their jobs in the move, which affected WZON (“Retro Radio”), WKIT (“Stephen King’s Rock Station”) and WZLO (“Maine’s Adult Alternative”). But it’s clear this development involves a different — and possibly more disturbing — kind of head-cutting than King fans are accustomed to.
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