It’s no secret that radio stations tend to spin the same tunes over and over but just how often do they overplay their biggest songs? And who are the worst culprits?
An even more pertinent question however is not how many songs radio plays, but in fact how few.
A dedicated analysis of some of Australia’s more popular stations in Adelaide by a passionate listener offers some fascinating insight into these many queries, basically unveiling the curtain on how repetitive some radio station playlists really are.
Adelaide resident Jason Millward has used skills from his dayjob as an applications engineer to closely monitor and analyse the playlists of six major radio channels in the City of Churches since the start of July. After compiling his results, Millward has now published a series of neat infographics on his very own ‘Radio Statistics blog, telling the Adelaide Advertiser he constructed the webpage in just two hours.
“I wanted to find out how Nova in particular overplays its music, as I listen to it on the way to work,” Millward says of the inspiration for his work. “I wasn’t looking to get anything out of it, I just wanted to act on my curiosty. I just felt like sharing the graphs.”
[include_post id=”415245″]
So how did Adelaide’s Nova 919 FM fare? Not well, with only half of its programming being actual music during the course of day and half of that playlist again were found to be repeats – playing only around 63 unique songs in an average 24 hour cycle. Triple M were equally guilty of playing very few songs, just 41% in an average day. However, they do stay true to their ‘No Repeat’ policy – providing a 100% unique song strike rate.
By comparison, Triple J were found to play the most songs in a day, averaging over 150 in a day, with music making 64% of programming with very few repeats (just 4.6%), as the below graph reveals.
The statistics take a very different turn however when focussing exclusively on ‘Rush Hour’ playlists, Millward focussing exclusively on radio’s primetime Brekafast hours (6am – 9am) and Drive (4pm – 7pm) to provide further analysis.
All six stations show a drop in music on their playlists – nearly half in most cases – while bumping up the chatter/adverts/talkback and other non-music entertainment. Additionally, SAFM and Fresh FM show a marginal increase of repeat songs, but Nova proved Millward’s guesses correct, with 86.4% of their programming being the same Top 40 hits ad naseum.
Millward’s project even went one step further to find out exactly which songs were being played over and over and over again. His results showed that British crooner Sam Smith was the most overplayed artist, with his song ‘Stay With Me’ being hammered nearly 400 times across Nova, Triple J, SAFM, and Mix – averaging nearly eight spins a day.
The singer was closely followed by saturated playlisting of UK songwriter Ed Sheeran, Australia’s own platinum-selling popsters Justice Crew, as well as forthcoming Falls Festival act Milky Chance – each of which have been played over 300 times, as the table at bottom demonstrates.
[include_post id=”404143″]
There’s also a few Australian artists getting repeat airtime among the raft of international pop stars: including multiple plays of US-chart-topping Adelaide native Sia, record-breaking Sydney pop-punks 5 Seconds Of Summer, popular rap ex-pat Iggy Azalea, teenage Brisbane band Sheppard, plus new singles from Hilltop Hoods and Vance Joy.
You can view Millward’s full blog and interactive charts here.
While the results are limited to just one capital city, they do tell us a lot about the programming and playlist attitudes of Australia’s major broadcasters. And what’s the lesson Millward has learned from his deep radio scrutiny? “I think I’ll be listening to my Mp3 player [instead],” he jokes to Adelaide Advertiser. We’ve got our own approach…
