What's the future of the music industry?

top 40 is consequently left to play to an audience that is barely interested in the music it's supposed to be playing

this was always the case though, yes? I mean at least for the last 30 years or so?

Yeah I agree - top 40 radio would've lost all their younger listeners whatever they did. Even if they played exactly what the kids want they're not listening. From what I can see it's all streaming - either the hits are made by blunt force marketing/payola (labels pay Spotify, Spotify pushes the song to passive listeners through "algorithmic suggestions", voila: high streaming numbers, which feeds into even more algorithmic streams), or hits emerge through viral social media driven trends (tiktok memes, gaming parody covers, curated playlists by influencers, instagram models with music careers on the side, etc). Either way, radio has no power over younger listeners.

good points dyl

now imagine if the gioia article that inspired this revive bothered to reckon with this for more than half a second

tl;dr: top 40 saw too many black/trap artists on the streaming charts in the mid '10s and decided that oh that can't be right, then lost all their younger listeners

The blog post you linked to also shows listening down at rhythmic contemporary (as well as way down at active rock etc.). What’s their excuse?

joint pain

(to put it another way – listeners who want to hear hip-hop etc. have always had other formats & sources than CHR, I don’t get why the availability of streaming would cause an existential crisis for the format?)

my only question is "when will the classic rock format die" cuz it can't come too soon for me

Classic Rock is basically the new Oldies format, and presumably isn't going anywhere soon, instead just adapting in a way that's dropping '60s stuff off playlists in favor of Nirvana and Stone Temple Pilots etc.

at least on my local classic rock station that's been around since the 70s when it was an old school stoner dr. johnny fever type place, the 60s stuff is barely there anymore, there are some exceptions, like Hendrix, a few others but not many...Beatles don't get played at all (except "Come Together" which I think is because it scans more 70s to than 60s, but for example MUCH more likely to hear "Jane" by Jefferson Airplane than "White Rabbit" now

now it's more mid/late-70s to mid-80s as the center of gravity, as opposed to late 60s/early 70s, lot of the 80s stuff like Ozzy, GnR, Def Leppard are now part of the canon. And, as Grisso said, starting to hear stuff like Pearl Jam a lot now

dyl's link seems to show big increase for Classic Rock in past decade

in a way i suppose at least for classic rock/oldies radio, there's always a path forward, there's always always new stuff that becomes old stuff

The blog post you linked to also shows listening down at rhythmic contemporary (as well as way down at active rock etc.). What’s their excuse?

(to put it another way – listeners who want to hear hip-hop etc. have always had other formats & sources than CHR, I don’t get why the availability of streaming would cause an existential crisis for the format?)

― Rockin’, and rollin’, and whatnot (morrisp), Monday, January 24, 2022 8:08 AM

this is an interesting question and i don't know that i have a good response to it. the rhythmic contemporary format has long pointed in the direction that pop music is headed in musically, as its programming tends to split the difference between the black and white mainstreams. this tends to be true even when the format itself is marginal the way it is now -- unlike in the '90s, when it was a huge success and was far more impactful in many markets than 'mainstream' chr.

today the rhythmic format, despite being programmed by few outlets, is ironically considered to be in a good place musically for the past several years, with a healthy turnover of many hits that work well for its audience (unsurprising, as it is well positioned to react to streaming stories). my city lost its rhythmic station in 2016, which was at the time splitting the difference between late-stage edm hits and mustard-wave r&b (w/ a corny 'party hits' branding). the rhythmic contemporary charts these days skew much closer to what's being played at hip-hop stations, and center-lane 'pop' product doesn't seem to make its way over as much.

i only hear these stations when i'm on vacation in much larger cities, often those with large latinx populations (some stations in the format do play quite a bit of urbano and other latin pop), so i suspect that these are the only markets where the format is thought to work nowadays. instead, in markets like mine you'll have your hip-hop stations and your pop stations (often owned by the same firm), but nothing on the air occupying the middle ground. i guess this reflects the extremely consolidated nature of the airwaves nowadays, + the sentiment that we've seen mentioned in other threads from some in the industry who feel that black music not crossing over is beneficial to black music (years later i would say it's evidently not helping black music radio very much!!)

classic rock unfortunately will never go away until all its listeners do

american radio is dead and the american industry is losing its ability to actually bring new hits to mass acceptance. at least this probably means its stranglehold over the industry in other regions of the world will loosen substantially + these places will be able to better develop and promote their own talent

the other part of the equation i haven't mentioned yet is the technological aspect, i.e. that younger folks have been quicker to adopt novel products that make listening to music through streaming as convenient as tuning into radio if not more

maybe this is a dumb question but do classic rock tracks qualify for airplay ratings, and how do they compare with pop songs? i.e. as a whole, across the country, are core Top 40 songs played more than core classic rock songs?

per track? probably top 40, since there are only 40 of them

Generous of you to imply that classic rock stations play more than 40 different songs

they play 40 different Eagles songs

Yeah idg that one. For their many faults, it seems fairly obvious that they have a wider repertoire than a top 40 station would at any given moment.

here's my local's recently played

https://www.92kqrs.com/recently-played/

you can see how it's evolving as i said to be more late 70s/early 80s focused - The Police who used to be new wave, and also hair metal in Poison and alt rock in Soul Asylum

Agree 100% about the shift, although I've been hearing the Police (and Cars and Cheap Trick) on classic rock radio my whole life.

xp - makes sense, it might "seem" like classic rock plays the same 50 songs over and over again but in reality it's an order of magnitude greater than the new pop stations.

Agree 100% about the shift, although I've been hearing the Police (and Cars and Cheap Trick) on classic rock radio my whole life.

― The sensual shock (Sund4r), Tuesday, January 25, 2022 11:04 AM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

see it's weird because i agree on Cars - Cheap Trick is pretty classic rock canon imo, some crossover w/new wave but not new wave - but the Police for some reason is new at least here

I wonder how far it will creep forward? Like I can see the White Stripes and Coldplay and the Killers and Kings of Leon ending up on Classic Rock playlists, but does it just end at some point?

I mean I guess Greta Van Fleet would be an appropriate end point

Does KQRS still use the term "classic rock" btw? I have noticed that our CHEZ106 seems to have largely dropped the term in favour of "world class rock", I imagine because it's harder to apply it to Warrant and Stone Temple Pilots.

Stuff like Muse, Coheed & Cambria, Paramore etc will end up as Classic Rock for sure.

xpost - yep they are still "Minnesota's Classic Rock Station"

Stuff like Muse, Coheed & Cambria, Paramore etc will end up as Classic Rock for sure.

The base criterion generally seems to be that the artist was played on album-oriented rock/hard rock/mainstream rock/active rock radio at the time. (So ime e.g. they play Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains but not Smashing Pumpkins or Radiohead, who are still played on 'alternative'/'modern rock' stations.) I'm not sure that applies to any of those three. And, as discussed here, that format seems to be heavily in decline, so it seems a little hard to say what will last: ITT We Figure Out the Mainstream Rock Format . Seems like it will be harder to make a case that Shinedown and Five Finger Death Punch are classics in the same way as Aerosmith or Nirvana.

They are to people who didn't grow up with Aerosmith and Nirvana...

The classic rock rule is usually that the song had to have charted in the top 40, which is why they rarely play even the non-charting singles of classic rock artists. Most of these modern rock bands don't even make the Hot 100.

But as been mentioned in this thread, the top 40 aren't really a very good guideline anymore in the monoculture streaming age.

(isn't)

Sure, I just mean that once you get to like 2006, if you’re pulling songs off the rock charts you’re mostly talking about stuff that barely registered in mainstream culture

They are to people who didn't grow up with Aerosmith and Nirvana...

Even the members of Shinedown themselves would probably not say this.

Aerosmith and Nirvana were massive pop culture juggernauts.

They have 4-5x the number of monthly Spotify listeners now that Shinedown and FFDP do.

the number one song for the past three weeks on the mainstream rock airplay chart is "Dead Inside" by Nita Strauss and David Draiman. I can't go anywhere without hearing it!

I just watched (some of) the video for "Dead Inside" and it looks like it should be properly billed as "Nita Strauss ft. Jeff Bezos"

I see that Nita Strauss was Alice Cooper's guitarist, though she was born the year Constrictor came out

Yeah, session player, solo shredder, instructor. The Netflix documentary Hired Gun from a few years ago covered contemporary session players and included her. It was p interesting, esp in terms of the, uh, contrast to the lifestyles you saw in the documentary on the Wrecking Crew session players from the 60s.

Anyone have a ‘classic rock’ hip-hop station in their area? We briefly had two and they didn’t seem to be doing too badly but then died without fanfare within a couple of months of each other.

We've got a "Throwback" R&B station that mixes Silk Sonic and Daniel Cesar with Al B. Sure and Sade.

silk sonic is pretty retro

My assumption is that typically when a classic rock station does a Top 500 over a holiday weekend or a Top 1079 (if the station was 107.9FM or whatever), the tracks that place will make up the core of that station's canon for the next year.

I've probably told this story before on here somewhere, but it seems relevant here.

One of our local long-standing Pacifica DJs moonlit for about six months at our local and now long-defunct Clear Channel Classic Rock station about 20 years ago. During a later Pacifica funds drive (where among other things, this guy hosted a weekly "Deep Cut" CR show) he spilled some tea about his period in the Big Leagues.

First of all, the station had recently gone to a completely digital library, with a CD library kept on site in case the system failed or other special circumstances. Said digital library had about 2000-2500 tracks, which was the station's masterlist, utilized for pulling requests and a yearly "A to Z" airing. From that list they pulled a selection of 250 songs that were the regular rotation playlist, of which 50 Tracks were concrete heavy hitters ("Stairway", "Freebird", "Hotel California", "Bohemian Rhapsody" etc.) not be removed, and the other 200 tracks were slightly rotated in and out every few weeks, favor sometimes given to performers who were coming to town for shows, and also allowing to shift focus within certain artist's catalogues (so like, say they are playing 4 CCR songs, they can gradually pivot over a couple months to 4 other CCR songs). And that's how it worked, because Clear Channel had done their research, and that was the best way to sell ads, which was what they were really there for.

Now admittedly that was 20 years ago, but I don't really see any reason radio conglomerates would change that setup.

really weird if classic rock stations are playing pearl jam but NOT smashing pumpkins these days idk

Anyone have a ‘classic rock’ hip-hop station in their area? We briefly had two and they didn’t seem to be doing too badly but then died without fanfare within a couple of months of each other.

― papal hotwife (milo z), Tuesday, January 25, 2022 11:06 AM (nine hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah my city had a classic hip-hop station a few years ago for like a year but it transitioned to a mainstream/current hip-hop playlist (w/ occasional not-too-old throwbacks) after some other station in the area switched formats

from what i have read a lot of these stations signed on around the same time throughout the country, did well/drew some excitement for a while, then just kinda tapered off and mostly went away (w/ some notable exceptions that i'm not knowledgeable enough to recall)

the adult r&b stations in the area have worked classic hip-hop into the mix to varying degrees also

xp Good god, the math works out to playing each song a dozen times a week.

xp Here in L.A., we have 93.5 KDAY