Two of the most often asked questions that come up when someone you’ve just met finds out you’re in radio are:

1. Do you really play my request when I call?

2. Why do you guys play the same songs over and over again?

I’ll take those questions one at a time. First, about requests. Despite what your local DJ (if they even are still local) says, the only way your request will be played is if the song you asked for is coming up anyway. In markets bigger than a wide spot in the road, the music your favorite station plays is on a computer hard disk, and scheduled anywhere from a day to a month out into the future. The day of the DJ pulling records from a shelf in the back of the studio a few minutes before it plays is over. Gone. For the most part, the music comes from a digital system that plays not only the tunes, but the station commercials (called ‘promos’ and ‘imaging’) and advertiser commercials. A computer is used to schedule the music, and then send the data that tells the on-air digital system what to play and when to play it.

There are a number of different systems in use, with NexGen, from a company owned by Clear Channel probably the most successful. Other systems are from Scott Studios (owned by Google, by the way) and RCS. RCS (also owned by Clear Channel) is in the process of merging their Master Control system into NexGen. RCS produces the most popular music scheduling software, called Selector, that is used by programmers to rotate and program the music stations play. Selector, a very powerful and expensive (hundreds of dollars a month for a station to use) is the gold standard for music scheduling, and ironically, still DOS-based! RCS is developing a new program, called G-Selector that is not only Windows based, but a completely new generation of software for managing the music a station plays.

Are there exceptions to this top-down approach to playing music on the radio? Sure. There are request shows, and even some stations that allow DJs some control over the music they play. There’s not much of the latter however, since the stakes are pretty high and lead me into the answer to the second questions about playing the same songs over and over again.

In short, as I said, there’s a lot of money involved in the radio business. Stations live and die by their ratings and can’t afford not to be playing the music that will lead to the highest possible ratings. In fact, many stations spend big money on music research projects, where a group of people who demographically represent the station’s desired audience listen to small snippets of songs and rate them based on how much the listeners like the song, how familiar they are with it and whether they’re tired of hearing it on the radio. Because ratings are determined by both how many people listen and for how long they listen, a station can’t afford to be playing songs that the station’s target audience doesn’t like.

For the most part, a well-researched station will find somewhere between 200 and 400 songs that “test” well enough to play on a regular basis. That’s all. Other songs are either too “burned” (listeners are tired of hearing them) or too unfamiliar to play. For stations without enough money to conduct regular music research tests (which usually cost at least $25 – $30 THOUSAND dollars) there are national resources that aggregate music research and airplay from all over the country and make that information available.

Radio is a business, and the key to making money in Radio is attracting as many listeners as possible. And while it may seem sensible that playing a lot of music that hasn’t been heard on the radio very much would be attractive to a huge number of listeners, that’s not true. For music stations, ratings overwhelmingly favor the stations that play familiar music. Again, there’s just too much money at stake to turn the stations fortunes over to the individual tastes of listeners who call to request songs, or DJs who want to play their favorite songs.

Technorati : Broadcasting, DJ, Music, Radio, Requests