M Score and New Options in Measuring Audience and Music

As programmers and software developers have been playing around more and more with the new PPM data and lining it up with services like Mediabase as well as actual station logs it's starting to produce scores for the songs.  Suddenly we can see patterns of listening if we build the ultimate formula and now it's producing a number for the music.  

But what does the number mean?  That is still to be determined.  Recently I talked with Rich Meyer who developed Media Base back in the 90s to track song airplay.  Rich has now moved on to a new world creating Airplay Intel which is designed to try and make sense from all these numbers.  A number of stations already use the service and must subscribe to Media Monitors, M Score and of course Arbitron PPM to access all the data.  Rich has been working a building a reliable index to measure the data so we can capture a real audience score.  

You can read more about Rich's latest adventure at in his All Access Interview.

While Rich's work is ground breaking and the whole system very fascinating I think it's safe to wonder if this is real music research or not.  Are we tipping the scale too much in favor of PPM behavior over the audience's real like or dislike of the song?  

The Big Event

This weekend we have 2 huge media events that are probably more about HYPE and the media making something huge out of an event.  

The first is the Royal Wedding which by most accounts has somehow become more important here in the U.S. than in England.  Really the 'royals' don't rule the English Empire anymore.  The empire was largely split up in the 50s and the British government is not about the rule of the King/Queen.  But, the fairy tale of the prince and princess and a lavish wedding with the whole world watching has the eyes of the media locked down.

Really the only place to dodge all the coverage is ESPN.  But ESPN is itself involved in another marathon event that is probably way overhyped - the NFL Draft.   They have nearly non-stop coverage for 4 days as teams pick from the college ranks.  Exactly how many of these rookies will even see much field time in the NFL next year?  Yet if you listen to the hype - this is the chance for the Panthers to win the Super Bowl.   Forget about the potential of a strike next season -- which team will land Cam Newton???  Last year ESPN estimates that over 28 million watched at least part of the first round.

How does this relate to your radio station?   Well we all have special events (or we should have).  It might be that festival concert you do every year, an annual contest, or a big street/fair community event that you go all out for.  

The key to making them into HUGE events is a consistent build.  Look at the Draft - it started out has a meeting between the teams to divide up the college players.  Year by year the coverage grew and grew - now it seems to start around Halloween and builds to fill the time after March Madness.

The Royal Wedding was built for centuries with the fairy tales, Disney, and the legend/scandals of the 90s.

While you probably won't be able to turn the Chili Cookoff into a Royal Wedding you can grow it every year.  Look for new fairy tales to build from the event, new angles on making more exciting, and also look for new ways to build it up on the air.  

The key is not just to run way too many promos and and just pound it down the audience's ears.  You also have to keep it honest and authentic.  While you can embellish the sell on the event you have to watch that you don't over cook it.  The key here is having a plan and reviewing it every year to make it bigger and better.

3 Kinds of PDs

Having had the opportunity to work with Programmers over the years it usually seems that they have 3 types of backgrounds or 'DNA' that lead to their career path.  Take a look and see which group you (or your PD) may fit in:

1. The Great Jock - This PD usually came from the air staff and was the best air talent (or one of the best) on the team when it came time for them to step up to the PD office.  They usually are pretty skilled at working with the air staff, often pretty creative with promotions, many are pretty good writers and they also have a great creative side.  They may find challenges with grasping research, working with the logs and music systems.  
2. The Technician - This group has a great grasp of computers and the technical side of the station.  They usually do very well with the logs and studio interfaces.  They grasp research quickly and often have a keen eye for analysis of the data.  Sometimes they are challenged with creativity on air and coaching the air staff.   
3. The Musician - Music is the main reason they got into radio.  They are fans and may have a great ear for the music.  Many are pretty strong on air performers and they usually grasp the music scheduling and promotion side of the job fairly well.  They can run into challenges with research, coaching the air staff, and keeping the station focused on a tighter list in a competitive battle.   

All of these skills are important to being a successful programmer.  Each background or approach has great advantages and challenges.  Over the years we have seen more technicians emerge as computers have taken over in the studio and the digital world has become more important.  Still it does not diminish the need for great on-air talent and a full appreciation of the music we play.  We've probably all seen PDs who have skill sets in a couple or even all 3 of these backgrounds - the great PDs find a way to cover all of these areas even if it means hiring great talent around them.   But, in today's world we often find that staffs are pretty small - finding budget and room for a Musician to fill out the staff or pushing a Great Jock into more of leadership role presents a challenge.  

Now more than ever it's very likely that the PD will have to adapt and pick up the skills that didn't come with their DNA.  

I Phone Now It Makes the Music

The world of the I Phone and the Apps continues to amaze.   This week David Bowie announces the release of a new App that will allow you to remix - Golden Years from the 16 track master.  Yes now you can play record producer - here are more details. 

There's also an amazing video of the band Atomic Tom doing their song Take Me Out with just I Phones and IPods on a subway in NYC.

Now if mixing or playing songs is not your game perhaps using your I Phone to fly your airplane would be more challenging:

What's next??  
How about this APP

Research Studies Move To Facebook?

Caught a very interesting article in Ad Age this week on the trend with a number of big name advertisers moving their survey research to social media (Facebook).  Proctor and Gamble (which spends 350 million on consumer research) and Coke both are looking to dive into exploring their brands and consumers through social media instead of spending all their efforts on random sample data and more formalized/structured research systems which we've all used for years.

The leaders of the trend cite the fact that in today's world we can have a lot more interaction with the consumer and vice versa.   Today we don't have to dial out and hope to catch someone at home, wait for a mail in survey to be returned, or have the respondents show up at a conference to find out what they feel about any product or brand.

The ease of finding 'fans' of your product on your fan page or building panels from the large Facebook community gives any product manager lots of opportunity to easily do polls, review product comments, track marketing impressions, and catch the level of engagement.  You also can collect tons of rather open ended responses without dealing with as many group dynamics as you can have in focus groups or group studies.  The research mavens here claim that they get a lot more from the social network's two way communication.  The opportunity is there to easily get away from counting impressions to looking at the consumer's real 'expressions' on the brand - more feelings than just market shares.

The other side of the coin here - is this social network sample reflective of the total consumer picture?  In traditional sample research a lot of science and math goes into building a representative sample with measured margins of reliability.  In the social network world you are likely to be talking mostly to P1 fans in your sample and have less opportunity to see what the non fan is thinking.  But, when you look at most products it's more about building a fan base to a fever pitch and keeping it excited as the brand spreads from the early to late adapters.

We already have a new start up service that specializes in building panels and doing research off of social media samples.  It's called CrowdTap you can see how they approach the consumers on this site.  And also see how they approach marketing and research teams here.  It looks like they just launched at SXSW at the music fest just week or so ago.  I bet this will be a HOT company real soon.


How will this affect radio brand research?  This could be the next BIG trend in radio product research.  It will take a whole new system of interaction with the audience and a whole new world of analysis for all of us.  Extracting the real potential tools to building our brands from this new frontier of research will not come from using the same analysis angles we've been using since we started researching the audience.

You can read more in the Ad Age article here.   You should also take a look at the comments from many of the advertising industry people who had a lot of very interesting reactions to this development.  You almost learn more from their comments than the article.   

Is Pandora Radio?

While Pandora does clearly deliver music to the people who are logged on to the system are they using the service as a replacement for radio or as a replacement for their MP3/I Pod music player or playing CDs?

Radio has always had competition for music listening from LPs, 8 tracks, cassettes, and now MP3/IPods.  You could always get your music without listening to the radio.  Obviously now it's become a lot more compact and anyone can carry around thousands of songs in the palm of your hand.  Still radio's listening levels have not taken that big of a hit from the evolution of personal music listening.

While it seems that we in the industry, clients/advertisers, investors and industry pundits all seem to be looking at Pandora and other customizable music services we may be forgetting the real role that radio has developed with its audience.  That role has evolved beyond music to entertainment through the personalities and the imaging as well as the local information (traffic, news, weather), the infotainment, and the promotions/community events that we bring to the audience.  Really the music is not designed to be 'your personal favorite music' - it's a collection of the most popular songs in a given style (Rock, Pop, Country, Contemporary).  This is 'Broadcasting' and it is different from individual casting.  

Yes if the individual casters get their product to be more usable in the car and as easy to navigate as broadcast radio they can have more opportunities to take away time spent listening to music on the radio.  But, the Pandora's and Slackers of the world are computer program driven systems to build personal streams and libraries of music for individual listeners.

No doubt they serve a purpose, but it very well could be the ultimate replacement for the CD collection or even the MP3/IPod collection.  Why buy songs on ITunes or carry around your music and have to go through  the task of downloading and categorizing it when you can punch in some artists and create channels around them that you can sculpt to your taste.

Yes, radio should explore the new narrow casting - customizable media.  Clear Channel moving into the Thumb Play world is a good thing as is CBS with Last FM.  Just keep in mind that both CC and CBS will be gaining a lot more by developing the strengths of their long standing broadcast properties.  

The Complex World of Technology

We've all experienced it.  The cell phone that suddenly just shuts down, the computer that won't boot, the program that just died in the middle of an important task.  As we come up with more and more devices and more and more computer applications we may solve lots of problems or amaze ourselves but we also become more and more dependent on the ever increasing world of technology.  

Recently Steve Woznaik (the real inventor of the Apple computer) lamented that even he gets frustrated and concerned about the ever increasing role of computer driven technology in our lives.  His big concern - it all fails sooner or later.   Read more about his concerns here.

And if you want a few laughs (as if you needed any more from Steve after Dancing with the Stars) check out his recent cameo on Big Bang Theory.  




All hail to the Woz!

Grammys and Rock Music/Radio

There were a number of surprises in the Grammys from Arcade Fire winning LP of the year to Esperanza Spalding winning the best new artist, but the one resounding fact was the decline of Hard Rock and Active Rock music.   While the nominations and the results are not really a popular opinion poll in the Grammys (artists, producers and record company execs vote) there is a real message here and its not good for new rock music.

The musical spotlight from a sales, critics and Grammys reflection of this is clearly on 4 generes of music:

• Pop/CHR - And even here the lean is rhythmic. 
• Pop/Rap- When you have the Top Rap Artist (Eminem wins) placed in the prime time spot just before the top song and the top LP of the year you can see how important this genre has become.  
• Pop/Country - You can argue that Lady Antebellum is a pretty pop act - it was still in the Country arena.
• Indie Alt - Arcade Fire, Muse, and Mumford and Sons stole the show. 

Really the only 'traditional' rock moments came from Jagger singing a tribute to a Motown era artist and Bob Dylan with Mumford and Sons pretty much taking over his performance of Maggies Farm.  

Another 'blow' to guitar driven rock came this week from Guitar Hero where Activision announces that they are dropping the game.   The new hot game is Dance Central - a clearly pop and dance with the Kinect motion sensor. 

The message here is clear that Active Rock and traditional rock music in general is not even close to center stage.  If you look at the sales, downloads and other sources we can track the message isn't much different.  The library is still healthy, but the current Rock music scene is rather dark.   

The promised land for rock may lie in the Indie Rock world - not the Stadium Rock power cord world we often hear on today's rock stations.