Country music chart question

[Deleted]

This has been bothering me. In previous discussions we’ve talked about how in the 70s and 80s when a song hit #1, station PD’s would remove it from the reported playlist even though they were still playing it a lot. That explains the huge drops after spending 1 week at #1 then. It was a manual process of reporting. But what about now? Playlists are electrically tabulated. So, what accounts for what has been the case the last few years of crawling for months up the chart, spending usually a week at #1, and then in unison spin count dropping almost immediately? I could see it if this were gradual, but each week when I see the mediabase country listing, the #1 song is gaining spins and then the very next week it loses tons. Do PD’s in country music really pay this close attention to charts and program their stations the way ones in the 70s and 80s did just they really do remove the song?

The country chart is really a melding of everything I hate about charts all into one these days. Months to slowly go up, spend a week at #1 in what feels like it’s the “everybody gets a turn to be on top” era, fall rapidly, and whether you do or not you will be on the chart another two weeks whether you’ve fallen to 22 or still at 4 before you are removed.

Any insight would be appreciated.

[kcouch]

Here's my uneducated guess. When I started in Radio in 1980 the station I was at played about 70 (Yep-70) currents. The hottest songs were about 13-17 i think. Then your medium currents were about 27 or so and your new songs were the rest. So if you played a song in the hottest then it moved down to medium or recurrent it would get less plays and if everyone did it at the same time that would explain the country chart #1 to number 13 or 15 drop. the next station I was at in the fall of 81 we had a tighter playlist more like a Country CHR with maybe 7 hot records 11 mediums and maybe 9-11 new songs played less than the others (maybe more new songs i can't remember). and maybe 9 or so re-currents and 21 or so yearly re-currents. so if you dropped a song from hots to re-current you still played it about as much as a current so that's probably why around the late 80's to 90's most country stations were playing less songs and so the songs fell from 1 to maybe 2 or 3 then slowly left the chart.

Then again you look at the R&R chart's in the 80's which was airplay only and you got songs staying at #1 for more than 1 week usually and would fall to #2 or three before taking a nose dive. Also usually a song would hit #1 on RR almost a month before BB. so it could have been BB's mix of Radio & Sales. (Just A Guess) Or RR may have had more reporting stations?

Why things are now I have no clue since i am out of the scene. My guess is all the stations owned by the same company are playing the same playlist, so if they stop playing or move a song down at the same time then it gets less counts at the same time. that's just a guess. maybe someone that works in country radio now might know about today.

[lasvegaskid]

Mar 20, 2018 18:56:14 GMT -5 @paul said:

This has been bothering me. In previous discussions we’ve talked about how in the 70s and 80s when a song hit #1, station PD’s would remove it from the reported playlist even though they were still playing it a lot. That explains the huge drops after spending 1 week at #1 then. It was a manual process of reporting. But what about now? Playlists are electrically tabulated. So, what accounts for what has been the case the last few years of crawling for months up the chart, spending usually a week at #1, and then in unison spin count dropping almost immediately? I could see it if this were gradual, but each week when I see the mediabase country listing, the #1 song is gaining spins and then the very next week it loses tons. Do PD’s in country music really pay this close attention to charts and program their stations the way ones in the 70s and 80s did just they really do remove the song?

The country chart is really a melding of everything I hate about charts all into one these days. Months to slowly go up, spend a week at #1 in what feels like it’s the “everybody gets a turn to be on top” era, fall rapidly, and whether you do or not you will be on the chart another two weeks whether you’ve fallen to 22 or still at 4 before you are removed.

Any insight would be appreciated.

Another uneducated guess. Isn't everything tracked electronically today. I thought the reason songs make mysterious moves to #1 today and just as quickly fall off is the promo folks make it known they are aiming for a song to reach #1 on a certain date. So PDs in unison jump on it, then after that date, back off.

[woody]

I've noticed this too. I hate recurrent rules. However, if you put recurrents back in, Body Like A Back Road is still hanging out around #20 nearly a year later.

The Billboard Country chart is totally different as Meant to Be has been at the top for nearly 5 months now.