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By Sean Ross (@RossOnRadio)

I’m looking at the Nielsen SoundScan sales charts for another week, and for another week I’m struck by how little the top selling singles and albums look like the radio landscape – at least if you define the radio landscape as mainstream top 40.

The top five albums this week include Mumford & Sons, Josh Grobin, Tech N9ne, and the Zac Brown Band. The only representation of mainstream top 40 hits in the top five are those on the compilation album “Now 54.” And in recent weeks, the list of albums not represented at top 40 has also included Drake and Alabama Shakes. Only scrolling down through the rest of the top 10 selling albums does one find radio mainstays Taylor Swift, Sam Smith, and Ed Sheeran.

There are often high-debuting albums without pop radio hits, but there’s a story in digital songs as well. In the top five, you will find only one song from mainstream top 40’s rhythmic pop center lane, Jason Derulo’s “Want To Want Me.” At the other end, there is T-Wayne’s “Nasty Freestyle,” and in recent weeks, there was Little Big Town’s equally unlikely “Girl Crush.” Rounding out the top five are three songs that did become mainstream pop hits—Wiz Khalifa, Fetty Wap, and Walk The Moon—but came from R&B/hip-hop and alternative.

There’s nothing particularly extreme about Wiz Khalifa or Walk The Moon sonically. “Shut Up And Dance” is almost of a piece with the Jason Derulo song. And yet, both come from places where mainstream top 40 rarely finds hits these days. Walk the Moon has an eight month journey from its initial alternative airplay last September to prove it. For a while, top 40 has made a point of growing its own alternative and hip-hop hits. In this case anyway, it had to send out for a pop song.

Meanwhile, as Memorial Day approaches with every major EDM act lined up to compete for the Song Of Summer 2015, there is little representation of EDM on the digital songs chart. The only EDM act in the top 10 is David Guetta, fronting Nicki Minaj’s “Hey Mama,” really hip-hop/pop, with title cribbed from the Black Eyed Peas to prove it. It’s the low teens/high 20 range before you start to see sales stories from DJ Snake, Skrillex & Diplo, etc.

For some observers, the lack of sales activity will mean little in an age where Spotify and Shazam have become the new currency. But willingness to pay for music should be taken seriously, especially now. And when mainstream top 40 was at its healthiest, the top-selling singles had their greatest overlap with top 40’s most-played songs in several decades.

Some readers now are probably jumping ahead to the oft-invoked notion of the format being headed into an “extreme cycle,” or moving past that into the “doldrums.” The cancellation of “American Idol,” and seeing Kelly Clarkson stall mid-chart at top 40, even when she’s not openly fighting with her label, will probably convince some that we’re coming to the end of pop music’s reign.

But top 40 hasn’t been that helpfully symmetrical for the last 10 years. Proponents of the cycle theory were looking for the doldrums two years ago, but CHR’s ratings were up only country had emerged as any kind of serious format competition. Doomsayers have been confounded again by a series of jumps for some CHR stations, (although there is speculation that processing, not programming is the cause.)

Still, even by the 2014 holidays, top 40 had become an odd mix. It didn’t play all the hits, but the ones it did play came from seemingly far-flung corners. CHR was dominated by dense, meandering mid-tempo pop, but also played EDM (increasingly a ‘90s-flavored version that recalled “Show Me Love” by Robin S.) and ‘60s-flavored retro soul ballads, which had become not a novelty but a category.

If top 40’s music didn’t all sound the same, it didn’t all sound like it went together, either. Only by playing “Six Degrees of Separation” could you get everybody in one format. Vance Joy goes with Hozier, who goes with Sam Smith, who fits with The Weeknd, who goes with Jeremih. Or you could go from The Weeknd to Ellie Goulding to Taylor Swift.

So with apologies not to Jerry Seinfeld but to the rapper Wale, another recent No. 1 album artist who wasn’t driven or acknowledged by CHR, one wonders if top 40 has become a format about nothing recently. “All the hits” will always work as a mission statement, but it has to be true, and they have to be hits The troubled early ‘90s CHR format rallied around “today’s best music,” but until the available music got better in the mid-‘90s, it was a hollow promise.

The early ‘90s were also defined by a gap between what mainstream top 40 played and what was selling, made obvious for the first time by the switch to verified SoundScan sales data. The problem was that acknowledging what was selling would have only exacerbated things. Playing a Josh Groban showtune at top 40 now wouldn’t solve everything. It now seems clear that throwing in Ice Cube’s “Wicked” between the Amy Grant and Michael Bolton records in 1992 wouldn’t have solved anything.

One also needs to consider how top 40 so dominates the musical agenda now that any hit heard on one station is heard on four others in the market. I don’t side with those in the record industry lobby who claim that airplay hurts artists, and the enthusiasm with which label promotion departments still pursue airplay makes them a liar every Tuesday anyway. But if saturation airplay is still eliciting a “no thanks,” that does say something. For now, anyway, top 40 gets to keep setting the agenda until today’s hit music becomes more compelling to buyers.

For the last five years of the PPM measurement era, increasing TSL has been believed to be a measure of increasing listening occasions. With an average listening span of 10 minutes, broadcasters became existential about longer individual stretches, and began teasing like crazy, in hopes of making their TSL up in smaller chunks.

While I have larger issues with that type of programming, it raises a more immediate question. What would your listeners hear if they did give you that extra occasion? So I decided to listen to a market for 10 minutes at a time (or thereabouts), specifically market No. 37: Columbus, Ohio. In doing so, I was adding an extra dimension, not just the broadcast radio itself, but the streaming experience.

I started at 10 a.m., listened to 11 different stations, and went roughly until noon with a couple of do-overs (more about that later). My listening was timed to avoid morning shows and lunchtime specials.

Unlike a local listener, my listening required three different streaming platforms. Once I was able to listen, however, it was a largely positive experience. I did encounter some of the typical pitfalls of streaming and “today’s radio,” but overall I was favorably impressed with my “time in the market” as every station and its advertisers geared up for Mother’s Day.

Here’s my listening log:

9:58 – WLVQ (QFM96) – The classic rock outlet was running a “00 ID for its jockless “shut up and rock block,” then stagers for the listener-driven “Q on Demand” (one of which instructs the audience to “pick some good [bleeped].” The 12 minutes I heard were all hits: “My Best Friend’s Girl,” “Welcome to the Jungle,” “Killer Queen” and “Legs.”

10:10 – WNCI – The top 40 went into spots at :15, but before it did, I heard “Can’t Hold Us” and Rachel Platten’s “Fight Song,” set up with the “No. 1 for New Music” stager, followed by a Ryan Seacrest bit about curing a Cinco de Mayo hangover. When the spot break came, I heard a jock endorsement spot, then several mostly local spots, an ad for the iHeart Radio Summer Pool Party and then (apparently as a fill song) “Grenade.” This took me up until 10:21, overlapping slightly with the next station.

10:18 – WSNY (Sunny 95) – When I tuned in, the heritage AC’s middayer Trisha Moore was reading the weather; she’d come back before I left at 10:30 to tease an upcoming remote at a local supermarket and the giveaway that went with it. I also heard two stagers: one usage (“pick you up”) and one attitude (“just like free cookies in the breakroom”) in between “As I Lay Me Down,” Maroon 5’s “Sugar,” Scandal’s “The Warrior” and “Safe and Sound.”

10:30 – WCOL – The country powerhouse went from David Nail’s “Let It Rain” to Brett Eldridge’s new “Lose My Mind,” then went into spots at :36. But the station’s Andy Clark both front- and back-sold the Brett Eldridge enthusiastically, before teasing a chance to go on-tour with Kenny Chesney and win $1,000. When the spots did come, there were at least four different jock testimonials, followed by an iHeart Country Fest promo.

10:38 – WCKX (Power 107.5) – The big story here was the station’s upcoming Stone Soul Picnic, but DJ Dimepiece also took a minute for the “Celebrity News Buzz” (Chris Brown, celebrating his birthday, falls off stage; Jamie Foxx explains why his version of the National Anthem sounded off). I heard Kanye West’s “All Day” and Jidina’s “Classic Man” before the station went into spots. So far, by the way, I hadn’t come across any typical spot filler — bad PSAs, the same GEICO spot three times — and that continued here. Some of my Power 107.5 listening overlapped with my next station.

10:40 – WCVO (The River) – The longtime Christian AC had various stagers commiserating with listeners who experienced stress at work and on the drive home, and promising “songs and stories” that would be “uplifting and encouraging.” Middayer Mary O’Brien punctuated the Newsboys’ “We Believe,” Phillips, Craig & Dean’s “Revelation Song,” and David Crowder’s “Come as You Are” with a relatable about Tom’s Shoes’ upcoming “One Day Without Shoes” campaign.

11:00 – WVMX (Mix 107.9) – I hit AC WSNY at the exact right time. I tuned into hot AC sister Mix in one of those unusual hours in which it staggered its ad breaks–stopping at :03 (after Magic!’s “No Way No”) and came back to music at :10 with the legal ID and “Love Me Like You Do.” I came back a few hours later and heard music from 2:50 to 2:58, then a five-minute break. (I also heard “Thinking Out Loud,” “Shut Up And Dance” and “Fight Song” again.) Mix did have a good Mother’s Day promotion – the “Mommy & Me” photo contest. I also heard a number of good quality spots on behalf of local advertisers.

11:11 – WODC – I also tuned in to this successful Classic Hits outlet in time to hear just one song (“Dancing With Myself”) before it went into a local break, which also had spots for local sponsors, before going into two fill songs (“Keep Your Hands to Yourself” and “The Rubberband Man”), then coming back with “Superstition.” There was a good relatable about the temperature at which the most crimes are committed (64 degrees, when the greatest number of people are out and about).

I also came back and gave WODC a second listen at the end of the hour. Between 11:58 and 12:10 was a different story. The former “Oldies 93.3” has evolved into more of a Classic Hits/Adult Hits hybrid, so I heard “The Joker,” Night Ranger’s “When You Close Your Eyes,” “Hungry Like the Wolf,” “Lights” by Journey, and “Cuts Like a Knife.” There was also a “From Columbus Zoo to Nationwide Arena” stager that opened with a trumpeting elephant sounder.

11:21 – WCLT (T100) – “T100 HD” and “100.3 HD,” as the station called itself, is an anomaly: locally owned and focused on a nearby county, but still a part of the larger market. It was cold-segueing from Jo Dee Messina’s “A Lesson in Leaving” to Luke Bryan’s “Roller Coaster,” the end of a “no talk triple-play” before a promo for an upcoming NASCAR event. T100 stopped from :26 to :31, the last ad of which was a promo for Sprint and NextRadio, before returning with Miranda Lambert’s “Little Red Wagon.” T100 was the first station where I heard any traditional spotset fodder — a PSA and two RegionalHelpWanted.com ads — not unlistenable (largely because they were RegionalHelpWanted.com spots), just notable.

11:32 – WXMG (Magic 106.3) – The longtime Urban AC was also promoting Radio One’s “Stone Soul Picnic” (a mix of current R&B acts and old-school hip-hop artists). The station’s Nia Noelle came out of Anita Baker’s “Same Ole Love (365 Days A Year)” to take a caller for its Mother’s Day promotion, played Bell Biv Devoe’s “Poison,” then “Uptown Funk,” and then played the winner. In between, there were teasers (tied to “Uptown Funk,” among others) for the upcoming ’90s at Noon request hour.

I had started listening just before 10 a.m. We now know that isn’t the real start of the workday, but it’s still best-foot-forward time for many stations, as I heard here. It was at 11:43, when I was done with Magic 106.3, that it was suddenly hard to find anybody left who wasn’t in spots. In fact, three stations that I tried to listen to were stopped around 11:45 and most of them were running more typical spotset filler. Finally, after punching around in a way that a typical listener might not, I tried the first station again.

11:47 – WRKZ (The Blitz) – I came back just in time to hear the active rock station’s Nuber play the top song of its “Top 10 All-Out Blitz” countdown: Slipknot’s “The Devil in I,” followed by Smashing Pumpkins’ “Rocket” and P.O.D.’s “Youth of the Nation.”

I ended my stretch of listening favorably impressed. On only one station, deliberately jockless, had I not come across an announcer. I heard mostly hits. I heard enough new music to stay interested (that this was a medium and not a major market guarantees nothing on that score these days). Mother’s Day gave both jocks and advertisers some extra topicality and kept things from sounding generic.

It’s worth noting that almost every station I heard was doing some teasing, recycling or cross-plugging of some sort — although none to the point of self-parody reached early in the PPM era. If the recent controversy about Voltair has made any broadcasters feel their success is driven by processing, not programming, nobody has thrown out the PPM-era’s perceived best-programming practices just yet.

I’m also happy to report that there was no time when the streaming experience became unbearable. That was a blessing, given the number of painful GEICO-related romantic breakups that I’ve been through in my other online listening recently. In one way, the experience showed me that no matter how stations place and stagger their stopsets, it’s still hard for even a five-minute break to not consume half of a station’s allotted time with a listener. Then again, by ratings law, if I had tuned out of every station at its first break, all but two would have earned the quarter-hour listening credit. My tuning around was unusually peripatetic, but it was also more generous than that of the average listener.

The two hours of listening were not without their frustrations, especially near the end. In large, though, it was a happy and energizing two hours. That’s not an experience I take for granted these days.

By Sean Ross (@RossOnRadio)

Is “Rebel Yell” by Billy Idol a fun song?

It’s uptempo.

It’s energetic. If you were coding your library for energy, you would have to make it a five on a 1-5 scale.

It’s rousing. Fists are doubtlessly pumped or pounded on the dashboard whenever it plays.

But is it fun?

I recently did a traditional library review project for a station. Then, unbidden, I went back to code the library by which songs were fun to listen to, and which weren’t.

The results are probably highly subjective and I can’t guarantee that they’re more sophisticated than just “I personally enjoy hearing this song,” or “I don’t enjoy hearing it.” But most songs were easy judgment calls — not requiring a lot of sophisticated analysis. “Rebel Yell” and Idol’s “White Wedding” were two of the harder decisions.

The Idol version of “Mony Mony” is fun — even if you’re not in a bar full of people doing the R-rated call-and-response. “Dancing With Myself” is fun (and I’d like to emphasize that I’m referring to the song here). “White Wedding” and “Rebel Yell” were a little too sonically aggressive, a little too droning, a little too minor-chord. The lyrics of “White Wedding” are ominous (“there is nothing safe in this world”), but even with a less negative bent, “Rebel Yell,” after some thought, went in the “not fun” pile, too.

Conversely, what makes a song fun is a combination of factors, too: major-not-minor key; singalong-worthy; not just uptempo, but bouncy; positive lyrics. But a song can be fun without satisfying all of those criteria.

“Tainted Love,” despite its lyrical angst, is fun. Ed Sheeran’s “Don’t” is bouncy enough to go into the “fun” column for the same reason. Even “You Oughta Know,” which doubles the catharsis, might be.

“Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” and “Margaritaville” don’t have a lot of musical oomph. But both, because of the subject matter, have become eternal party songs. They would go in the fun column for most people.

“Party Up (Up in Here)” by DMX had one of the most aggressive lyrics of any hit from the late ‘90s crossover hip-hop boom. But there’s crowd noise and whistles are blowing. The punchlines are both funny and cringe-inducing, in the way that many Eminem hits would be, shortly thereafter. And, hey, it was called, “Party Up.” It was engineered to be fun, at least with an asterisk.

Then again, Ke$ha’s “Blow” was engineered to be fun, too: uptempo and another in her endless series of party-out-of-bounds lyrics. But I found it overbearing and entirely joyless. It got played like a hit at the time, but is down to a relative handful of spins now.

The fun factor, or lack thereof, is no indicator of the legitimacy or programming value of a song. There are a lot of long-forgotten novelties that would still bring a smile to many people, at least once. The most phenomenal record of the moment, Wiz Khalifa’s “See You Again,” is elegiac. It serves a different need for listeners.

But it’s all in the balance, and it’s possible to hear some textbook radio stations that are predominantly uptempo, well-balanced in other regards, and still not fun. I often have that feeling about top 40 at the moment, even though true ballads are still hard-fought outliers at the format at most times. Of this week’s top 10, perhaps five are “fun.” That doesn’t mean that “Earned It” or “Thinking Out Loud” aren’t important songs, just that they don’t do the same thing as “Uptown Funk” or “Somebody.”

In fact, there’s been a lot of CHR music in the “not fun” stack lately. Much is in that moody mid-tempo chillout-pop category that predominates these days, but not all: “Take Me to Church,” “I’m Not the Only One,” “Habits (Stay High),” “Love Me Like You Do,” “Chandelier,” both “Maps” and “Animals,” although I go back and forth on the latter. They’re not all downers; they’re just not fun, necessarily.

As summer approaches, all of EDM’s superstar DJs are lining up with new singles. But dance music hasn’t been any guarantee of a song’s fun factor, either, not since EDM got all serious and contemplative and Coldplay-esque, around the time of “Don’t You Worry Child” and “Without You.” There’s nothing fun about Calvin Harris’ “Blame” or “Outside.” Oddly enough, I actively enjoy his new “Pray to God,” the lyrics of which are offset by its bounciness and the “Edge of Seventeen” riff.

At this moment of radio’s PPM-era minimalism, there’s also little to increase the fun factor presentationally outside of morning drive. Many years ago, I heard a jock come out of David Ruffin’s self-explanatory “My Whole World Ended (The Moment You Left Me),” and break the mood by declaring, “That song makes me feel so good!” But in this era of no jingles, terse stagers, and offhand jocking, the music sets the tone unabated. So how, in their day-to-day scheduling and week-to-week music decisions, can programmers guide it?