Quick, name the number one reason you don’t listen to commercial radio. We don’t know for certain, but we’re going to wager a guess it has something to do with not wanting to hear the same three or four songs on repeat all day long.
It’s hardly a secret that the vast majority of dedicated music stations have a tendency to spin the same handful of tunes over and over again. They even admit to it, arguing that it’s the best way to retain listenership.
But who is the worst culprit in Australia and how often do they play repeats? One man who might know is Adelaide native Jason Millward. A couple of years ago, Jason decided to start a blog that tracks the songs played on Aussie radio stations.
“I wanted to find out how Nova in particular overplays its music, as I listen to it on the way to work,” Millward told News Corp. “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.”
Millward’s analytical scalpel focused on six stations based in Adelaide, including Nova, whose programming he found consisted of just 50 percent music, with half of their playlist found to be repeats. The station reportedly played only 63 unique songs in an average 24 hours.
Meanwhile, Triple M were even worse when it came to actually playing music (just 41 percent of their programming was music) but 100 percent of their playlist was unique. Triple J, on the other hand, played the most songs in a day (averaging 150+) with very few repeats (just 4.6 percent).
So, two years on, how does Australian radio in 2016 fare? Luckily, Jason is still maintaining his blog. In fact, he’s even expanded it and the site now tracks multiple stations in markets across Australia – even in the Northern Territory.
Overall, there’s not much happening in the way of variety. According to Jason’s blog, “Over the last 30 days a total of 58,389 songs have been tracked. But only 8,872 of those have been unique. Which means there is a total of 15% variety nation wide.”
Let’s take Victoria, for example. Country station The Range plays slightly more music than triple j (71.6 percent vs 71.1 percent), though the national youth broadcaster plays more unique songs (89.7 percent), however not as much as Triple M, whose playlist is almost totally made up of unique tracks.
However, one of course has to consider that Triple M Melbourne’s airtime is half music and half talk and adverts. It’s a similar story in pretty much every other market, with fluctuations in just how much of commercial radio’s airtime is made up of actual music.
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Not all commercial stations are created equal, either. For example, looking at New South Wales, less than half of KIIS 1065’s airtime is made up of songs, whilst just over 70 percent of Nova 96.9’s airtime is made up of music.
So what’s the most repetitive radio station in Australia? That title goes to Western Australia’s Nova 93.7, whose programming consists of mostly music (68.5 percent), but just 56.5 percent of that music is made up of unique songs.
Jason has even created a function where visitors to his blog can compare stations. For example, in the last 30 days triple j has played 1,186 unique songs, compared to Triple M Brisbane’s 1,346 unique songs. Both stations share 32 unique tracks.
Jason’s overview of the Australian radio landscape is based on metadata sourced from each station’s digital presence and as a result is fairly comprehensive. There’s just one more thing it needs: a breakdown of how many of the songs each station plays are Australian.
