There’s so many rumors and half-truths about music on the radio. The biggest ones which I like answer to are:
1.Does record labels really pay radio station to play their Artist songs?
2.Do radio only play what’s in the Top 40?
3.Do people really still request songs in these days? Because why request a song when I have so many disposable options to listen to said song whenever I want?
YOU MUST WORK OR PREVIOUSLY WORKED IN THE RADIO INDUSTRY TO ANSWER! EX. RADIO DJs PRODUCERS ETC …
Categorized | Affiliate Marketing 101
How Does Radio Station Decides What Music To Play?
Posted on June 10, 2013.
There remains the suspicion that stations and or DJs are paid to give some music big play. That was standard decades ago.
Radio plays whatever formula their research says will get the kind and size of audience they want. This is the result of hard scientific research and opinion research. The formula chosen dictates what will be played, what audience will be lured in, and which advertisers to sell time to… advertisers matched to the demographics of the intended audience.
Call in requests can still be a part of some station’s formula. Yahoo counts their incoming messages like your question and my answer, for example, to base charges for ads put on Yahoo. Call in radio talk shows continue, also, to be popular in niche markets.
The previous responder is quite right, according to my long-ago experience. (I once had a news show on a very small AM radio station.) That station had a play-list, and the DJs could play any song on it from the station’s record library. I know the technology is all different today, but the principle is the same. Pay-to-play went out some years ago — look up the “payola scandals.” But I’m sure today’s radio has its own share of shady characters and actions — they just don’t get listened to as much as the long-ago AM stations once did.