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Post by Dawn on Sept 25, 2009 11:50:06 GMT -5
Mark and I were listening to KRTH last night in the car while returning home from doing some shopping. KRTH's format is oldies, with most of their playlist consisting of hits from the mid '60s through the early-to-mid '80s. Lately, they've been mixing in a few later '80s songs, such as Steve Winwood's Higher Love, which still seems a stretch for an oldies station, but then again, it's been over 20 years since that was released. Last night they played Michael Jackson's Black or White. That song was released in late 1991!! They've been playing more of Michael's songs since his death, so it's not too surprising to hear Billie Jean or Off the Wall. But Black or White? It's hard to wrap my head around the fact that a 1990s song could be considered an oldie. I suspect it won't be long before the Spice Girls and Hootie and the Blowfish start turning up on oldies stations as well. I feel ancient...    |
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Post by H2IZCOOL on Sept 25, 2009 12:12:28 GMT -5
I think we've talked about the definition of "Oldies" before, Dawn. There are at least two, I believe. In the late '80s and maybe most of the '90s, Oldies used to mean pop/rock songs from 1955-1969 and that was it. Markets would have an '80s station, a '70s station and an Oldies station. There's another definition of Oldies that just means old pop/rock songs. This definition started in the very late 50s, and was simply any pop/rock song that is not current. There were no Oldies stations then, but most pop/rock stations did have a once a week Oldies show. Some songs they'd play would only be 6 months old! I don't really mind songs from the early '90s being included in the playlists of Oldies stations - they are nearly 20 years old. In a perfect world, I would have Oldies stations develop ever-expanding playlists as time went on. Of course, as we all know, what really happens is as songs from the '90s get added, songs from the '60s get removed. Soon the British Invasion will become a legend, and the Beatles will be heard no more.  |
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Post by Dawn on Sept 25, 2009 12:26:43 GMT -5
I think we've talked about the definition of "Oldies" before, Dawn. There are at least two, I believe. In the late '80s and maybe most of the '90s, Oldies used to mean pop/rock songs from 1955-1969 and that was it. Markets would have an '80s station, a '70s station and an Oldies station. There's another definition of Oldies that just means old pop/rock songs. This definition started in the very late 50s, and was simply any pop/rock song that is not current. There were no Oldies stations then, but most pop/rock stations did have a once a week Oldies show. Some songs they'd play would only be 6 months old! I don't really mind songs from the early '90s being included in the playlists of Oldies stations - they are nearly 20 years old. In a perfect world, I would have Oldies stations develop ever-expanding playlists as time went on. Of course, as we all know, what really happens is as songs from the '90s get added, songs from the '60s get removed. Soon the British Invasion will become a legend, and the Beatles will be heard no more. There was so much good music released during that era, it's a shame to see it disappearing...but I agree, Ed, that seems to be exactly what is happening. There's a diner near us that we eat at fairly regularly, and they play hits from the late '50s through '60s. Every time we go there, I'm amazed at how many songs I hear that used to be staples on oldies stations, but that never get played on the format anymore. Artists like Herman's Hermits, Lesley Gore, Chad & Jeremy, Dave Clark Five, Brenda Lee, Martha & the Vandellas...just to name a few. |
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Post by H2IZCOOL on Sept 25, 2009 14:19:44 GMT -5
I think we've talked about the definition of "Oldies" before, Dawn. There are at least two, I believe. In the late '80s and maybe most of the '90s, Oldies used to mean pop/rock songs from 1955-1969 and that was it. Markets would have an '80s station, a '70s station and an Oldies station. There's another definition of Oldies that just means old pop/rock songs. This definition started in the very late 50s, and was simply any pop/rock song that is not current. There were no Oldies stations then, but most pop/rock stations did have a once a week Oldies show. Some songs they'd play would only be 6 months old! I don't really mind songs from the early '90s being included in the playlists of Oldies stations - they are nearly 20 years old. In a perfect world, I would have Oldies stations develop ever-expanding playlists as time went on. Of course, as we all know, what really happens is as songs from the '90s get added, songs from the '60s get removed. Soon the British Invasion will become a legend, and the Beatles will be heard no more. There was so much good music released during that era, it's a shame to see it disappearing...but I agree, Ed, that seems to be exactly what is happening. There's a diner near us that we eat at fairly regularly, and they play hits from the late '50s through '60s. Every time we go there, I'm amazed at how many songs I hear that used to be staples on oldies stations, but that never get played on the format anymore. Artists like Herman's Hermits, Lesley Gore, Chad & Jeremy, Dave Clark Five, Brenda Lee, Martha & the Vandellas...just to name a few. I think the one hope may be the Internet. It is big enough to cover everyone's likes and desires - on an international level. Somewhere, there will be a "station" (for lack of a better word) where we will be able to hear anything we want. Maybe satellite radio is the first step in that direction. |
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Post by Dawn on Sept 25, 2009 15:09:09 GMT -5
There was so much good music released during that era, it's a shame to see it disappearing...but I agree, Ed, that seems to be exactly what is happening. There's a diner near us that we eat at fairly regularly, and they play hits from the late '50s through '60s. Every time we go there, I'm amazed at how many songs I hear that used to be staples on oldies stations, but that never get played on the format anymore. Artists like Herman's Hermits, Lesley Gore, Chad & Jeremy, Dave Clark Five, Brenda Lee, Martha & the Vandellas...just to name a few. I think the one hope may be the Internet. It is big enough to cover everyone's likes and desires - on an international level. Somewhere, there will be a "station" (for lack of a better word) where we will be able to hear anything we want. Maybe satellite radio is the first step in that direction. I wonder if one of the issues is simply the huge quantity of music that has been recorded over the past 50+ years, and the challenge of presenting it in a way that keeps the formats/playlists fresh, but isn't overwhelming. Supposedly one of the reasons that corporate radio has become so limited and stale is because, according to them, "the average listener" wants the tried-and-true and isn't as receptive to the less familiar. |
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Post by H2IZCOOL on Sept 25, 2009 15:27:57 GMT -5
I think the one hope may be the Internet. It is big enough to cover everyone's likes and desires - on an international level. Somewhere, there will be a "station" (for lack of a better word) where we will be able to hear anything we want. Maybe satellite radio is the first step in that direction. I wonder if one of the issues is simply the huge quantity of music that has been recorded over the past 50+ years, and the challenge of presenting it in a way that keeps the formats/playlists fresh, but isn't overwhelming. Supposedly one of the reasons that corporate radio has become so limited and stale is because, according to them, "the average listener" wants the tried-and-true and isn't as receptive to the less familiar. 50+ years of music is certainly a lot, but in this computer age I don't think it would be difficult to generate a decent playlist. I think your other reason (corporate radio's perception of their average listener) is the real reason it isn't done. But I still argue -- I don't think I ever heard anybody say "I'm perfectly happy listening to my favorite 20 songs over and over again." I think corporate radio has it wrong; I think corporate radio is in serious trouble! |
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Post by Dawn on Sept 25, 2009 16:08:39 GMT -5
I wonder if one of the issues is simply the huge quantity of music that has been recorded over the past 50+ years, and the challenge of presenting it in a way that keeps the formats/playlists fresh, but isn't overwhelming. Supposedly one of the reasons that corporate radio has become so limited and stale is because, according to them, "the average listener" wants the tried-and-true and isn't as receptive to the less familiar. 50+ years of music is certainly a lot, but in this computer age I don't think it would be difficult to generate a decent playlist. I think your other reason (corporate radio's perception of their average listener) is the real reason it isn't done. But I still argue -- I don't think I ever heard anybody say "I'm perfectly happy listening to my favorite 20 songs over and over again." I think corporate radio has it wrong; I think corporate radio is in serious trouble! Yes, computer memory is relatively inexpensive these days, so storage shouldn't be an issue. What likely would be a bigger problem is getting the licensing rights from all the labels/artists involved, and deciding what to do about music that is currently out-of-print, as well as handling the BMI/ASCAP royalties. Still, I agree with you that some kind of centralized radio station/server is a very plausible and probable option for the future. If done right, it could work very well. I don't buy the explanation that corporate radio uses either. I have never once heard anyone say, "such-and-such station's playlist is too big," but I have heard people complain many times about repetitiveness and narrow playlists. As you said, I can't imagine it being anyone's choice to have the same songs played over and over again, to the point they become stale. I think it's just an excuse corporate radio uses to justify their actions, and unfortunately has become the norm. |
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Post by H2IZCOOL on Sept 25, 2009 22:12:09 GMT -5
50+ years of music is certainly a lot, but in this computer age I don't think it would be difficult to generate a decent playlist. I think your other reason (corporate radio's perception of their average listener) is the real reason it isn't done. But I still argue -- I don't think I ever heard anybody say "I'm perfectly happy listening to my favorite 20 songs over and over again." I think corporate radio has it wrong; I think corporate radio is in serious trouble! Yes, computer memory is relatively inexpensive these days, so storage shouldn't be an issue. What likely would be a bigger problem is getting the licensing rights from all the labels/artists involved, and deciding what to do about music that is currently out-of-print, as well as handling the BMI/ASCAP royalties. Still, I agree with you that some kind of centralized radio station/server is a very plausible and probable option for the future. If done right, it could work very well. I don't buy the explanation that corporate radio uses either. I have never once heard anyone say, "such-and-such station's playlist is too big," but I have heard people complain many times about repetitiveness and narrow playlists. As you said, I can't imagine it being anyone's choice to have the same songs played over and over again, to the point they become stale. I think it's just an excuse corporate radio uses to justify their actions, and unfortunately has become the norm. I think, Dawn, you may have come up with the most logical answer - the legal one. It's got to be a lot cheaper with a tiny playlist. |
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Post by m c dornan on Sept 25, 2009 23:51:16 GMT -5
I don't even see the 80s stuff as oldies yet. But our local oldies stations are like this too. Someday we'll all be reminiiscing how innocent the 90s were? |
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Post by daniel on Dec 16, 2009 2:13:35 GMT -5
50+ years of music is certainly a lot, but in this computer age I don't think it would be difficult to generate a decent playlist. I think your other reason (corporate radio's perception of their average listener) is the real reason it isn't done. But I still argue -- I don't think I ever heard anybody say "I'm perfectly happy listening to my favorite 20 songs over and over again." I think corporate radio has it wrong; I think corporate radio is in serious trouble! Yes, computer memory is relatively inexpensive these days, so storage shouldn't be an issue. What likely would be a bigger problem is getting the licensing rights from all the labels/artists involved, and deciding what to do about music that is currently out-of-print, as well as handling the BMI/ASCAP royalties. Still, I agree with you that some kind of centralized radio station/server is a very plausible and probable option for the future. If done right, it could work very well. I don't buy the explanation that corporate radio uses either. I have never once heard anyone say, "such-and-such station's playlist is too big," but I have heard people complain many times about repetitiveness and narrow playlists. As you said, I can't imagine it being anyone's choice to have the same songs played over and over again, to the point they become stale. I think it's just an excuse corporate radio uses to justify their actions, and unfortunately has become the norm. I'm late to this thread, but I can elaborate on a few things. The centralized computer thing was already a reality when I worked for a Clear Channel station several years back. While the actual scheduling of the music was still done locally, some of the DJ's on the station came from other markets (The night guy was somewhere in Texas, as an example). The out of market talent could go to their station's automation system and log into one of our "production rooms", call up our playlist and record voicetracks of back announces, PSA's, even the weather. These would go into pre-determined spots on the log and unless you knew you would never know this guy was halfway across the country. The new music was also uploaded to our automation from a centralized office someplace, of course we could dub songs in manually if we added something that wasn't put in by the "main office" but that didn't happen that often. Out of print titles could be bought from a service such as TM Century, they have a radio-only music library of Gold Discs for older songs and Hit Discs for new stuff. What my station did when they changed format was buy the whole set of Gold Discs to make up the "oldie" file, and they subscribed to the Hit Discs for a time until the record label mailing lists caught up with the format change. (This all happened prior to Clear Channel buying us up, though) Now, even TM Century sells hard drives pre-loaded with whatever songs you want from their song library in .wav format ready to go for your automation system. As far as music licensing goes, we paid a blanket fee to ASCAP and BMI (The fee was based on station billing and market size) that covered all music we played. Once a year they would call on randomly selected stations to submit logs of everything they played, and they would use these stations as examples of ALL stations in that format and calculate royalty payments from this data. I would imagine they can do all this stuff online nowadays and get more accurate information. Sadly, corporate programmers are honestly of the mindset that people DO want to hear a narrow playlist. To some extent they're right. On another board I read, someone involved with making a various artist CD was asked why they included (as an example since I can't remember the actual song) "My Guy" by Mary Wells, which is on thousands of comps, and not "Two Lovers" which was also a good hit single that hardly ever gets put on a compilation. Their reply was that sales have proven to them that since most CD buyers aren't hardcore collectors they'll buy a compilation that has a lot of familiar material instead of 1 or 2 well-known songs and a lot of stuff that while hits do not get much exposure today and are, therefore, unfamiliar. Since they often have to guarantee the label they license the masters from a minimum payment (say they're doing a Motown comp, Universal might want a guaranteed payment for sales of 50,000 discs if they give the rights to use certain songs. If the compilation producers agree to this, they HAVE to pay royalties for that amount, even if they only end up selling 10,000 units.) they will always go for the titles that are guaranteed to sell more discs even if they're already on dozens of other CD's Of course, my question is if these songs are never given exposure HOW are people who weren't around when these songs were current going to know if they like them or not??? And my question is who decided which songs were "good" enough to keep around? One example I can think of is how Oldies stations used to play Wilson Pickett's "In The Midnight Hour", which went to #21 and was on the chart for 6 weeks, and completely ignore "Funky Broadway" which was a #8 hit and was on the chart for three more weeks. It would seem that "Funky Broadway" was a more popular song when it came out and would potentially be remembered by more people, yet it was completely forgotten by Oldies radio. That I don't have any answer for! |
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Post by H2IZCOOL on Dec 16, 2009 8:51:17 GMT -5
Yes, computer memory is relatively inexpensive these days, so storage shouldn't be an issue. What likely would be a bigger problem is getting the licensing rights from all the labels/artists involved, and deciding what to do about music that is currently out-of-print, as well as handling the BMI/ASCAP royalties. Still, I agree with you that some kind of centralized radio station/server is a very plausible and probable option for the future. If done right, it could work very well. I don't buy the explanation that corporate radio uses either. I have never once heard anyone say, "such-and-such station's playlist is too big," but I have heard people complain many times about repetitiveness and narrow playlists. As you said, I can't imagine it being anyone's choice to have the same songs played over and over again, to the point they become stale. I think it's just an excuse corporate radio uses to justify their actions, and unfortunately has become the norm. I'm late to this thread, but I can elaborate on a few things. The centralized computer thing was already a reality when I worked for a Clear Channel station several years back. While the actual scheduling of the music was still done locally, some of the DJ's on the station came from other markets (The night guy was somewhere in Texas, as an example). The out of market talent could go to their station's automation system and log into one of our "production rooms", call up our playlist and record voicetracks of back announces, PSA's, even the weather. These would go into pre-determined spots on the log and unless you knew you would never know this guy was halfway across the country. The new music was also uploaded to our automation from a centralized office someplace, of course we could dub songs in manually if we added something that wasn't put in by the "main office" but that didn't happen that often. Out of print titles could be bought from a service such as TM Century, they have a radio-only music library of Gold Discs for older songs and Hit Discs for new stuff. What my station did when they changed format was buy the whole set of Gold Discs to make up the "oldie" file, and they subscribed to the Hit Discs for a time until the record label mailing lists caught up with the format change. (This all happened prior to Clear Channel buying us up, though) Now, even TM Century sells hard drives pre-loaded with whatever songs you want from their song library in .wav format ready to go for your automation system. As far as music licensing goes, we paid a blanket fee to ASCAP and BMI (The fee was based on station billing and market size) that covered all music we played. Once a year they would call on randomly selected stations to submit logs of everything they played, and they would use these stations as examples of ALL stations in that format and calculate royalty payments from this data. I would imagine they can do all this stuff online nowadays and get more accurate information. Sadly, corporate programmers are honestly of the mindset that people DO want to hear a narrow playlist. To some extent they're right. On another board I read, someone involved with making a various artist CD was asked why they included (as an example since I can't remember the actual song) "My Guy" by Mary Wells, which is on thousands of comps, and not "Two Lovers" which was also a good hit single that hardly ever gets put on a compilation. Their reply was that sales have proven to them that since most CD buyers aren't hardcore collectors they'll buy a compilation that has a lot of familiar material instead of 1 or 2 well-known songs and a lot of stuff that while hits do not get much exposure today and are, therefore, unfamiliar. Since they often have to guarantee the label they license the masters from a minimum payment (say they're doing a Motown comp, Universal might want a guaranteed payment for sales of 50,000 discs if they give the rights to use certain songs. If the compilation producers agree to this, they HAVE to pay royalties for that amount, even if they only end up selling 10,000 units.) they will always go for the titles that are guaranteed to sell more discs even if they're already on dozens of other CD's Of course, my question is if these songs are never given exposure HOW are people who weren't around when these songs were current going to know if they like them or not??? And my question is who decided which songs were "good" enough to keep around? One example I can think of is how Oldies stations used to play Wilson Pickett's "In The Midnight Hour", which went to #21 and was on the chart for 6 weeks, and completely ignore "Funky Broadway" which was a #8 hit and was on the chart for three more weeks. It would seem that "Funky Broadway" was a more popular song when it came out and would potentially be remembered by more people, yet it was completely forgotten by Oldies radio. That I don't have any answer for! A lot of good info here, Daniel. Thanks! I think what you're saying here is that most people who buy oldies today are younger people who weren't around when the songs were new. That sounds reasonable. Most of us old timers already have the songs!  So it would make sense that the younger people would go for the oldies they are familiar with rather than trying to expand to a larger list, when they have nothing to link it to. Makes sense. One thing though. "In the Midnight Hour" actually was huge back in the '60s. I was dumbfounded by the fact that it peaked at #21 when I first realized it. Maybe it was one of those R&B crossovers that really didn't get the sales/airplay from the correct demographic to score more Hot 100 points. That sort of thing was rampant in the '50s during the first years of rock N roll, so maybe this was a carryover effect. Anyway the song (as well as Mustang Sally, which had the same sort of fate - I don't know why they were picking on Wilson Pickett!) are both on my first volume of Never Made the Top 20, which was first a cassette tape I made in the mid '90s. |
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Post by Dawn on Dec 16, 2009 12:33:22 GMT -5
Yes, computer memory is relatively inexpensive these days, so storage shouldn't be an issue. What likely would be a bigger problem is getting the licensing rights from all the labels/artists involved, and deciding what to do about music that is currently out-of-print, as well as handling the BMI/ASCAP royalties. Still, I agree with you that some kind of centralized radio station/server is a very plausible and probable option for the future. If done right, it could work very well. I don't buy the explanation that corporate radio uses either. I have never once heard anyone say, "such-and-such station's playlist is too big," but I have heard people complain many times about repetitiveness and narrow playlists. As you said, I can't imagine it being anyone's choice to have the same songs played over and over again, to the point they become stale. I think it's just an excuse corporate radio uses to justify their actions, and unfortunately has become the norm. I'm late to this thread, but I can elaborate on a few things. The centralized computer thing was already a reality when I worked for a Clear Channel station several years back. While the actual scheduling of the music was still done locally, some of the DJ's on the station came from other markets (The night guy was somewhere in Texas, as an example). The out of market talent could go to their station's automation system and log into one of our "production rooms", call up our playlist and record voicetracks of back announces, PSA's, even the weather. These would go into pre-determined spots on the log and unless you knew you would never know this guy was halfway across the country. The new music was also uploaded to our automation from a centralized office someplace, of course we could dub songs in manually if we added something that wasn't put in by the "main office" but that didn't happen that often. Out of print titles could be bought from a service such as TM Century, they have a radio-only music library of Gold Discs for older songs and Hit Discs for new stuff. What my station did when they changed format was buy the whole set of Gold Discs to make up the "oldie" file, and they subscribed to the Hit Discs for a time until the record label mailing lists caught up with the format change. (This all happened prior to Clear Channel buying us up, though) Now, even TM Century sells hard drives pre-loaded with whatever songs you want from their song library in .wav format ready to go for your automation system. As far as music licensing goes, we paid a blanket fee to ASCAP and BMI (The fee was based on station billing and market size) that covered all music we played. Once a year they would call on randomly selected stations to submit logs of everything they played, and they would use these stations as examples of ALL stations in that format and calculate royalty payments from this data. I would imagine they can do all this stuff online nowadays and get more accurate information. Sadly, corporate programmers are honestly of the mindset that people DO want to hear a narrow playlist. To some extent they're right. On another board I read, someone involved with making a various artist CD was asked why they included (as an example since I can't remember the actual song) "My Guy" by Mary Wells, which is on thousands of comps, and not "Two Lovers" which was also a good hit single that hardly ever gets put on a compilation. Their reply was that sales have proven to them that since most CD buyers aren't hardcore collectors they'll buy a compilation that has a lot of familiar material instead of 1 or 2 well-known songs and a lot of stuff that while hits do not get much exposure today and are, therefore, unfamiliar. Since they often have to guarantee the label they license the masters from a minimum payment (say they're doing a Motown comp, Universal might want a guaranteed payment for sales of 50,000 discs if they give the rights to use certain songs. If the compilation producers agree to this, they HAVE to pay royalties for that amount, even if they only end up selling 10,000 units.) they will always go for the titles that are guaranteed to sell more discs even if they're already on dozens of other CD's Of course, my question is if these songs are never given exposure HOW are people who weren't around when these songs were current going to know if they like them or not??? And my question is who decided which songs were "good" enough to keep around? One example I can think of is how Oldies stations used to play Wilson Pickett's "In The Midnight Hour", which went to #21 and was on the chart for 6 weeks, and completely ignore "Funky Broadway" which was a #8 hit and was on the chart for three more weeks. It would seem that "Funky Broadway" was a more popular song when it came out and would potentially be remembered by more people, yet it was completely forgotten by Oldies radio. That I don't have any answer for! Great information, Daniel, thanks! I didn't know that about the guaranteed payments concerning licensing of songs, but that does explain why so many compilations tend to contain mostly very well-known songs, and are light on the lesser-remembered hits. The few compilations that do feature more seldom-heard tracks don't seem to stay in print very long (such as Rhino's Radio Daze series, or their Didn't I Blow Your Mind set) - which would make sense if sales weren't enough to justify the costs of continued licensure of the material. iTunes has filled some of the gap with regard to rarer, out-of-print songs, but even this is somewhat limited, and with younger buyers not remembering the songs when they were originally released or having wider access to them via radio, I wonder how long they will continue to be made available. As it turns out, KRTH, which I mentioned earlier in the thread, does have another station, KRTH Classics, that plays music from 1955-1964, but it's broadcast only in HD, which doesn't seem to have really caught on yet. Still, it's promising that they have the station at all. Listening to their internet stream just now, they just played Gene Pitney's It Hurts to Be in Love and are now playing Keith's 98.6, neither of which are featured on the "regular" KRTH anymore. |
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Post by daniel on Dec 16, 2009 16:30:31 GMT -5
H2: Oh, I'm with you, I think both of those are great records and we played the heck out of them when I worked in Oldies radio. (We did NOT, incidentally, play "Funky Broadway", a song I first heard a few months ago on WAKR here) It just seems interesting to me which songs get "forgotten" and which ones are "kept".
Dawn: A lot of those Rhino comps didn't seem to hang around that long, but I think the "Have A Nice Day" series did slightly better. And that's another part of the problem -- downloads have cut into CD sales so badly most independent labels don't bother doing comps anymore since it isn't worth their time anymore. Most of the comps I've seen lately have been put out by the labels themselves, especially Sony, since they now own just about every note that's been released by a major label since they bought up BMG's holdings.
WMJI also has a 50's and 60's subchannel, but I've never heard it as I don't own an HD radio. And the stuff I read seems to indicate that's destined to the same fate as AM Stereo, so unless I find a reciever for dirt cheap I won't be investing in THAT technology!
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So it would make sense that the younger people would go for the oldies they are familiar with rather than trying to expand to a larger list, when they have nothing to link it to. Makes sense.