MusicMaster Blog

How to Make 56,000 Oldies Sound Like a 590-Song Format

by Joe Knapp – Founder/President, MusicMaster

Listen to MusicMaster Oldies, streaming now on Live365, TuneIn, and iHeart, and you’ll hear something that sounds like a tight-formatted oldies format. But listen long enough and you will hear over 56,000 songs. How long do you have to listen to hear them all? Maybe ten years.

You can also hear it using the pop-out player on the MusicMaster Oldies Blog.

There are about 2,500 average listeners (and growing) and each of them listens for an average of one hour. The concept is based on a blend of philosophies. Terrestrial radio stations build cume by playing only the hits. Internet streams often go the “long tail” route and play everything under the sun. MusicMaster Oldies plays only the hits, but occasionally blends in one of those deeper cuts using imaging to turn them into special features.

Here’s how it works.

There are actually 591 songs in the active rotation, excluding songs by the Beatles and Elvis.

There are five songs in a Super Power category and you’ll hear one of them every hour. That’s five-hour rotation. These are specially selected “core” songs that are ultra-familiar and timeless music. Using Auto-Platooning, one of these songs is replaced every Sunday with the most rested song of the same type from the A-Power category. This keeps things tight, but fresh. It takes five weeks to replace all five songs, and just under two years to cycle all the “core” songs from A-Power into this SP-Super Power category.

The A-Power category has 173 cream-of-the-crop oldies from 1955-1973 and we play ten of them every hour. That’s a 17-hour turnover. 94 of these songs are marked as “core” and the other 83 are not. Every day, using Auto-Platooning, three of the non-core songs that have played the most are replaced with three from the AX – Resting A category that have rested the longest. Each non-core song rests for about three months before swinging back into action. The core songs never rest.

The B-Secondary category contains 274 songs and we play seven of them every hour. That’s a 1-day 15-hour turnover. Ten of the most played songs are swapped with ten from the BX – Resting B category that have been resting the longest. It takes about six months to cycle all these songs in and out of rest. You can barely notice these swaps because they happen very gradually!

The C-Spice category contains 134 songs, and we play one per hour. That’s a 5-day 14-hour turnover. Ten of these songs are also swapped with the most rested songs in the CX – Resting C category every day. It takes about six months for all of them to swap in and out of active rotation.

The three “rest” categories contain 237 (for A), 1324 (for B), and 1689 (for C) songs.

Here’s an example of songs you might hear in each category:

• A Core: Association – Along Comes Mary
• A Non-Core: Bee Gees – I’ve Gotta Get A Message To You
• B: Beach Boys – Good Vibrations
• C: Alice Cooper – Elected

The Beatles and Elvis have a ton of material and their familiarity and mass appeal make their songs somewhat interchangeable.

There are two Beatles and Elvis categories, Primary and Secondary, that alternate every hour. That’s a total of four categories. In each hour you’ll hear one from a Primary and one from a Secondary. There are 67 songs in the Beatles Primary (5-days 14-hours) and 274 songs in the Beatles Secondary (22-days 19-hours). There are 45 songs in the Elvis Primary (3-days 17-hours) and 239 songs in the Elvis Secondary (19-days 21-hours).

But where are the other 55,000 plus songs? Good question! They’re in separate categories that rotate with associated imaging in a Format List. Only one of these categories is called for every hour, and it takes 15 hours to hear just one song from each. Here are the names of these specialty categories and an example of what’s in them:

• Buried Treasure: Beach Boys – Wendy
• Undiscovered Gold: Bob Dylan – Highway 61 Revisited
• Euro-Gold: Adam Faith – Cheryl’s Going Home
• Doo-Wop: Herb Lance and the Classics – Blue Moon
• Garage Rock: Next Five – Little Black Egg
• Teeners: Ginny Arnell – I Wish I Knew What Dress To Wear
• West Coast-Surf: Lively Ones – Pipeline
• Rock Classics: Jimi Hendrix – Fire
• R&B Gold: Bobby Bland – Call On Me
• Motown: Marvin Gaye – Stubborn Kind Of Fellow
• Rockabilly: Carl Perkins – Pink Pedal Pushers
• Country Classics: George Jones – White Lightning
• Nice and Easy: Frank Sinatra – The Lady Is A Tramp
• Old Gold: Doris Day – A Bushel And A Peck
• Novelty Songs: Playmates – Beep Beep

There are only two Format Clocks that alternate every other hour, just to flip-flop those Beatles and Elvis categories. Here’s what one of them looks like:

• Station ID
• SP – Super Power
• B – Secondary
• A – Power
• C – Spice
• A – Power
• BS – Beatles Secondary (or Power)
• A – Power
• B – Secondary
• A – Power
• B – Secondary
• A – Power
• B – Secondary
• A – Power
• Format List: New Oldies Spice Categories (Two elements, imaging first, then rotating through:)
• BT – Buried Treasure
• AOR – Rock Classics
• CTY – Country Classics
• EG – Euro-Gold
• NOV – Novelty Songs
• RB – R&B Gold
• OG – Old Gold
• UG – Undiscovered Gold
• GR – Garage Rock
• DW – Doo-Wop
• TE – Teeners
• WC – West Coast / Surf
• RY – Rockabilly
• MOT – Motown
• NE – Nice and Easy
• A – Power
• B – Secondary
• A – Power
• EP – Elvis Primary (or Secondary)
• A – Power
• B – Secondary
• A – Power
• B – Secondary
• Hour Timing: 59:40 – 60:20

Each clock ends with an Hour Timing marker and an Hour Timing rule is applied to all categories. This keeps each hour within plus or minus 20 seconds of 60 minutes. I run Ready Check before exporting to make sure each day isn’t over or under scheduled. That never happens!

There are a few other tricks hidden under the hood. When I schedule music, I do one week at a time using ganged pass orders and scheduling just the SP-Super Power category first for the entire session. Then I run a second pass to schedule everything else, this time scheduling each hour before going on to the next hour. The A, B, and C categories are scheduled first, then all the others. There are never any unscheduled positions, and log editing is never required. It takes about an hour to schedule each week.

The rules are very simple because I lean on Optimum Goal Scheduling to do most of the heavy lifting.

Of course, this same concept should work for just about any gold-based format if you dare to try it!

If anyone has any suggestions for me that might improve things a bit, please let me know. Just don’t suggest that I play fewer songs! This is still a work in progress as I add even more songs to the specialty categories and remove songs that just weren’t very good (probably payola adds).