SSAR: What music sticks around on Oldies and Classic Rock stations?

In the previous installment I analyzed what I called contemporary radio: Top 40, Hot Adult Contemporary, and Modern Rock stations. Those stations play older songs with an exponentially decaying frequency, to the point where songs from just two years ago almost never get played. But now we look at the other end of the spectrum, stations that only play old songs: oldies and classic rock stations.

The three stations sampled were:

• K-EARTH 101 LA (oldies)
• WNCX (Cincinatti’s classic rock)
• K-Hits Chicago (classic hits)

As before, I recorded every song play during the year and when the record played (day and time), including repeats.

Below is shown how many song plays (counting repeats) that the stations play for each year.

Each station has a maximum at 1976-1978. Both the classic hits station (KHITS) and oldies station (K-EARTH) have another local maximum in 1983, a particularly good year in music. The top hits were Every Breath You Take, Billie Jean, Flashdance, Down Under, Beat It, Total Eclipse of the Heart, Maneater, Baby, Come to Me, Maniac, and Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This), all songs which are still played regularly and most of which are certified classics. By contrast, the hits of 1978 were mainly disco (the Bee Gees made 5 out of 10 of the top songs that year).

The classic rock station has a few songs in the 1990s, up until 1992. The other stations more or less stop short of the 1990s. This has certainly shifted since I was a kid. K-EARTH used to play songs going back to Elvis, with a maximum around the time of Motown, tailing into the 1970s. In the intervening 15 years, the mean moved roughly with the times. This means that songs from before 1960 are all but gone from the radio.

Encompassing a much larger time period, it’s logical that all these stations have a much more diverse playlist than a contemporary station, though it’s still not nearly as large as you’d think. 50% of airplays on KHITS are the same 174 songs. For K-Earth it’s 215 songs, and WNCX classic rock 193 songs. At the 90% level, the numbers range from 590 for oldies to 455 songs for classic hits. Again, I would suggest that many people have as many or more songs on their iPods than 90% of what a radio station plays during a year.

% of all plays	Oldies	Classic Hits	Classic Rock
50%	215	174	193
90%	590	455	556
100%	1352	1090	1716

Classic rock suffers from a phenomenon that, although they play a lot of good songs throughout the year, the songs they play the most often are just objectively terrible. The #1 song on WNCX was Electric Light Orchestra’s “Do Ya“, a song that haunts my nightmares, which is played basically every day. The same is true of Triumph’s “Lay It on the Line”, Boston’s “More than a Feeling”, Heart’s “Magic Man”, and Steve Miller Band’s “Take the Money and Run”.

Click here to see the Top played songs on Classic Rock

The classic hits station had similar issues, playing Manfred Mann’s “Blinded by the Light”, Supertramp’s Logical Song, and Toto’s “Hold the Line” more than once per day each.

Click here to see the Top played songs on Classic Hits

Finally, the oldies station plays Frankie Valli’s “Grease” more than any other song by a comfortable margin. “Play that Funky Music”, “Baby Hold On”, and “Give a Little Bit” all are played about once a day, as is, again, “Blinded by the Light”.

Click here to see the Top played songs on Oldies

The lists of top played artists is somewhat more respectable, if not exactly surprising. 10% of all music played on the oldies station K-EARTH was by the Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Wonder, Elton John, and Earth, Wind, and Fire. Half of all music on that oldies station was by the same 53 artists.

Click here to see the Top played artists on Oldies

On the classic hits station KHITS, The Beatles also reigned supreme, with 10% of all music played on that station by them, Billy Joel, Elton John, The Eagles, and the Rolling Stones. Half of all music was by just 43 artists.

Click here to see the Top played artists on Classic Hits

Finally, the classic rock station, WNCX: the top played band on that station was Led Zeppelin, followed by the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd, who make up 10% of all music played on the station. The Beatles rank only at #24 on this station, perhaps because they are considered too soft. 50% of all songs are by the same 24 artists, which isn’t all that much better than contemporary radio.

Click here to see the Top played artists on Classic Rock

Here is a summary of the number of artists that make up the songs played on these stations:

% of plays	Oldies	Class. Hits	Class. Rock
50%	53	43	24
90%	227	179	107
100%	625	464	329

So what distinguishes these stations? The sets of songs are represented in a Venn diagram below. You can hover over regions to see the most played songs in each segment. Note that the numbers and sizes in the diagram represent unique songs, not counting frequency of playing.

Oldies and Classic Hits are quite similar, but Classic Rock has a very large number of songs that aren’t played on either oldies or classic hits stations. However, this is diminished by the fact that they play Crocodile Rock every f**cking day.

This is far from the last word on this topic. For one, why are these the songs that endured? Every single year has a list of at least 100 songs that were extremely popular, but the number from any one year is a fraction of that. Why is The Police’s “Every Breath You Take” from 1983 played constantly but not “Shame on the Moon” by Bob Seger, which is never played? They were both huge hits in the same year, both by popular artists who have many other songs on the radio. But one endured while the other didn’t. How come?