“You need two formats to help break a song. “It’s so hard to break records at radio across the board today,” says Mitch Mills, an Adult format-focused SVP of Promotion for Warner Music Group’s Roadrunner Records. Today, a number of Top 40 hits require help from these stations - especially Hot AC stations, since they play more new music - to make a song a genuine smash. That audience is just one of the many benefits of getting into regular rotation on AC. “That’s a significant amount of audience that helps develop our artists and keep them in the game.” For comparison’s sake, “an Urban Top 5 reaches 25 to 30 million listeners, so it’s about the same or a little bit bigger on the Adult pop side.” That means the biggest hip-hop and R&B hits that don’t cross over to pop - and many don’t - are reaching roughly as many listeners as a big AC hit from, say, Jason Mraz. Size isn’t everything, but it’s important: “The Top 5 records at Adult are reaching anywhere between 30 and 45 million people a week,” says Pete Cosenza, Columbia Records’ SVP of Promotion for Adult Radio. “If you have to narrow it down a little tighter, it’s probably the 30-40 year old woman that we’re talking to on a daily basis.” (Most of the program directors are men, in this format as in every other.) “It’s the demographic that the Macys of the world all want: women 25 to 54,” says Rob Roberts, Vice President of Hot AC programming for WRQX. In contrast, Chuck Knight, Program Director for Philadelphia’s mainstream AC station WBEB, plays “just a few” currents, drawing largely from a pool of music released between 19.Įvery radio format was designed with a target audience in mind AC’s is adult women. Hot AC plays more new music and cuts off the oldies sometime this millennium - Star 99, for example, has 36 “currents” and doesn’t play music released before 2000. The adult space actually encompasses two formats, Hot AC and mainstream AC. Several artists historically associated with the format, like Michael Bolton, are the butt of jokes in popular films (Bolton famously in Office Space ) - the “cool factor” here is low.īut AC’s popularity remains undeniable, and its importance seems to be growing.
It doesn’t have 100 million listeners like Top 40, doesn’t respond to viral sensations like Urban, doesn’t make people dance like Rhythmic, doesn’t keep commercial rock’s hopes alive like Alternative, doesn’t have the liberal-arts cachet of Triple A. “It was great.”Īdult contemporary radio is easily the least-covered airwave format outside of radio trade publications. “ We hi-fived, we had a party, there was pizza,” Dakin quips. In July, Nielsen reported that, “in the 50 biggest markets by population, adult contemporary ranked as the most-listened-to music format overall.” It’s probably not a coincidence that Star 99.9 recently hit Number One in its market. How Big Boi's 'All Night' Became 2018's Most Improbable Hitįor nearly every pop artist of note, as well as alternative rock and country acts with mainstream hopes, the decisions made by Dakin and his fellow programmers are of crucial importance. On Imagine Dragons: “They’re the Foreigner of this decade.” On the ideal records promotions person: “If you’re just a normal whacko, that’s what I’m looking for.”
STAR99 TOP SONGS SERIES
He likes to describe a positive reception using the term “bananas,” as in, “if this were on Zooropa, people would be bananas for it.” He moves the meeting along with a series of wisecracks. On a warm, hazy Monday in August, tucked away in a nondescript office park in Milford, Connecticut, Keith Dakin, Kevin Begley and Allan Lamberti were deciding the sound of Star 99.9, a radio station that plays what’s known as “Hot Adult Contemporary.”Įach week, Dakin and his team examine what’s being streamed and Shazam’d in their town, neighboring towns and the whole country they also consult a custom-made panel of “nine Hot AC stations, all owned by different companies, five alternative stations that lean female, and five Top 40 stations that are successful.” The trio comb through this data in search of songs that are likely to resonate with their target audience: “ A mid-30s mom, a working mom that brings her kids to school, likes to listen to relevant music, doesn’t like sleepy-time songs,” Dakin explains.ĭakin is gregarious, emphatic, charismatic.
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