Is Jack FM the Long Tail of radio?

In an email, Anil Dash asks a good question:

I've been following the rise of Jack FM a lot lately... It's alleged to be the fastest growing new broadcast format in radio today (I think that honor might actually go to latin radio, but it's certainly one of the most popular), based on the idea of pulling the songs played from a much longer playlist and having no DJs. Thought this might be interesting as an attempt by the notoriously conservative radio industry  trying to adopt long tail-influenced techniques.

The flagship station for the format is here, but you can see that it's been adopted all over (here's the Wikipedia article)

The radio metrics groups classify the stations as Variety Hits, and they draw from 1000+ songs for the playlist, vs. the flagship Clear Channel stations (like New York's Z100), which I believe recently had a rotation playlist as short as 80  songs, their site lists fewer than 30!

My response: Jack does seem to be a nod in the Long Tail direction, but I can't imagine it will do more than slow the decline of music radio.

The main problem with radio is not the relatively small size of the playlists (although that doesn't help); it's that music is polarizing--people may like one song but hate the next, so they're prone to switch stations or switch off entirely. As MTV found out a decade ago, there simply is no single playlist that can keep enough people listening long enough to please the advertisers. MTV switched to reality shows because they're sticky. Radio is switching to talk for the same reason.

Compared to personalized playlists (iPods), a choice of hundreds of narrow-targeted playlists (satellite) and just talking to friends on the phone, even the stations with the most diverse playlists are chronically limited. It is the curse of broadcast: with just a few dozen stations in each city, most must aggregate audiences in the tens of thousands. In an era of infinite choice and narrowcasting, such mass-market broadcast distribution--the ultimate one-size-fits-all model--just can't compete.

So far the jury is out on Jack. Some stations are doing well with the format, others aren't showing as much improvement. Sean Ross at Edison Media Research gives a sample of the mixed results:

KCJK (Jack FM) Kansas City posted a good first book 12-plus, a flat second book, and bigger than ever third and fourth books. By now, KPKX (the Peak) Phoenix, WWJK (Jack FM) Jackson, Miss., and WPYA (Bob FM) Norfolk, Va., have all been up, down, and back up again. And we’ve also seen relatively late bloomers, such as WDRQ and KYCH (Charlie FM) Portland, Ore., although what that meant was taking four months to kick in, instead of two. Sometimes, the timing seems to have more to do with when the TV marketing starts than with how long a station has been on the air.

Meanwhile rock radio overall continues to lose share. This year an average of one rock radio station a week has been going out of business, usually replaced by talk or Latino). Most just can't get enough traction to strongly reverse their slide, regardless of the format. Music radio is fighting technological and generational change, not just taste.

I grew up in an era where radio largely determined music culture and was by far the strongest marketing vehicle for new artists, but I suspect that my kids won't think of radio as a music medium at all. Given the numbing effect of Casey Kasem and America's Top 40 on my adolescence and early music taste, this may be no bad thing.

Comments

[David]

Taking the DJ out of the picture is probably a good thing when the DJ is obnoxious (as so many personality jocks are), but it's no substitute for having people whose taste you trust acting as filters. There's a good college station here in LA (KCRW) that I listen to regularly. I'm always discovering new music there, and in addition there are frequent in-studio performances and interviews. Having an intelligent individual human managing the programming is a big advantage (for me, as a listener) over playlists generated by marketing groups or corporate strategists.

[Fred Hapgood]

I can't imagine how a long tail enthusiast could overlook internet radio. There might be ten thousand stations -- basically anybody with a serious record collection -- out there and all you need to do is find a broadcast by someone who matches your taste at better than 99 parts in a hundred and you're in heaven. There is a station out there (whalesongs.org) that plays nothing but songs from humpback whales vacationing in Maui. (When the whales actually arrive the station uses acoustic buoys to broadcast live!) (There is an attempt being made on the East Coast to do exactly this for Right Whales. Soon there will be a long tail -- and a long tale --for realtime whale music.) There are many stations (one being sacredsoundsradio.com) playing the sacred music of the East, which is a genre that not everyone is familiar with. There is a station playing music for dogs. When I listen to these I feel like I did in the late 60's -- at the threshhold of a moment when radio is redefining the culture.

[perfectlyGoodInk]

It is the curse of broadcast...

If somebody could do TiVo for radio right so that you could easily skip past songs you don't like, wouldn't that solve this as well? That's how I watch music videos.

[Emily]

This topic is pretty interesting! Write more as you learn more about the success of these stations!

[Vil Vodka]

As far as radio, I often considered LIVE365 as my personal long tail experience, even if there are not any retail ties to the experience
At home I use the special Live365 player, but at work I just play it through the pop-up window. The one advantage of the pop up window is that you can use your mouse wheel to play roulette through your presets.
if I hear a song that I don’t like, a spin of the wheel takes me to another station. Although at work I don’t have the time to scope every station until I find the write one ( I currently have 60 presets), I can take a few seconds for the station to cue up and see which band or song is currently playing, usually a few seconds before the stream hits my computer.
If it's something that I know and like, or if its a artist who I have been hearing alot about but have yet to hear, I will keep it at the station and presume my regular work. That right there is the filter. I say that no matter which station I am tuned to, atleast one unfamiliar song or artist per 20 minutes of listening will play. By sticking with that station through the programmers selected songs on their playlist through both familiar and unfamiliar music, I am hitting the long tail.

I realize that this is similar to being in a car with an fm stereo and dealing with that unit's preset function. However in that experience you are dealing with the audible experience as oppose to the visual text experience. You may click a station and like a song without knowing the title or who the artist is. Likewise, you may hate a 15 second sample song without realizing its a new song from one of your favorite artists and click to hear something else.
Therefore, the Live365 example is bit more discriminating, like a good filter should be.

In either experience, you have to be hooked by the head, in order to get to the tail.

Vil Vodka, Vodka Tonic Media

[Craig Nicol]

I would think that a radio station like www.last.fm or Yahoo! Launchcast would be a better example of long-tail radio, not because of the size of the playlist, but because the station streams music based on filtering from your ratings and similar listeners. Isn't the size of the playlist just the first part of the long-tail idea, because there's no point having everything available if you cannot find what you are looking for.

[Canadian Headhunter]

Starbucks seems to be having success with its music mixes so it's hard to say that people never like music packages pre-selected for them. But with iPods and stolen mp3's it's easy to see the threat to music radio.

[Donna's Daughter]

Saw your note in your left-hand sidebar regarding Forbes Publisher Rich Karlgaard. Bloggers and entrepreneurs do have a lot in common. If you want to hear Rich Karlgaard this weekend, he's a guest on StartupNation radio on Saturday, December 3. For a complete list of stations nationwide, visit www.startupnation.com. He'll take questions live too. If you miss it, StartupNation will have it available via podcast too.