SSAR: Variety stations fill in for the average (white person’s) iPod

If the oldies stations don’t play music from the 1990s or early 2000s, and neither do contemporary stations, then why can you turn on a radio in any radio market and hear Train’s Meet Virginia?

This is where the rise of the variety station comes in. These stations started popping up near the turn of the century. In LA and other markets, the stations are referred to by a brand name “Jack”. In other places they show up as stations calling themselves something like “The 90s and now”, sometimes “with no rap” appended to the name to make sure you don’t accidentally hear any Kanye. I polled 4 such stations:

• 93.1 Jack FM (Los Angeles)
• 96.5 Jack FM (Seattle)
• Mix 104.1 (Boston) “Boston’s best variety”
• 104.7 (Charlotte) “More music, better variety”

Firstly, let’s take a look at what time periods are played. These stations fall into two categories according to their average time period. Jack stations skew much older:

These stations play songs with a tail into the 1970s, much different than the peaked distribution seen in classic rock stations. However, just like the classic hits station, they have a peak (in this case, the absolute maximum) in 1983. We’re starting to see that 1983 was a very special year in the opinion of a lot of listeners (or at least the station programmers). These stations play a fair amount from the 1990s, and almost nothing from the present year.

Although called “variety”, Jack LA doesn’t play a larger set of songs than oldies stations do, and barely plays more than classic rock stations do. 50% of airtime on oldies stations are the same 215 songs, and for Jack LA the number is still only 227 songs. 90% of Jack’s airtime are the same 580 songs, which is actually a bit less than an oldies station. The most played song on Jack (LA) was The Killers – Somebody Told Me, followed by Coldplay’s Viva La Vida and Yes – Owner of a Lonely Heart. For whatever reason, the station’s top 20 played songs includes three (3) songs by ZZ Top. If you’re my age, my guess is it’s a struggle to name even three such songs.

Click here to see the top played songs on Jack FM LA

However, all things aren’t quite equal with the Jack stations. In fact, the Seattle station played about a 30% larger variety of songs, with 50% of their airtime being 301 songs. The Seattle station gravitated to Santana’s Smooth, Lenny Kravitz’s Fly Away, and Jet’s Are You Gonna Be My Girl, so there are some regional differences between the stations.

Click here to see the top played songs on Jack FM Seattle

As far as artists, half of all airtime on Jack LA was the same 51 artists, no different than that of an oldies station, though much better than classic rock. The top played artists were Van Halen, Aerosmith, and Def Leppard.

Click here to see the top played artists on Jack FM LA

The Jack Seattle station was much the same, though U2 took the top spot, followed by Aerosmith and Van Halen.

Click here to see the top played artists on Jack FM Seattle

Apart from Jack, the other mix stations play stuff from 1985 to the present day, with a heavy slant toward more recent songs. They are basically an even blend of contemporary stations and the Jack style of variety mix. Below I show the distribution of years for the two stations. Note that the vertical scale is logarithmic, as otherwise it is hard to see the older songs.

These two stations track quite well above 1996. K104.7 (“more music, better variety”) also has a hump at, you guessed it, 1983. Aside from that, the stations play a song roughly half as much for every year in the past it was. So, 2010 songs account for only half as many as 2011 songs, and so on.

The most played song on 104.1 (the station that doesn’t play as much 1980s music) was Phillip Phillips’ Gone, Gone, Gone, followed by Little Talks by Of Monsters and Men, and I Will Wait by Mumford and Sons. Half of all airtime was dedicated to the same 37 songs.

Click here to see the top played songs on Mix 104.1

104.7’s top song was also by Phil Phillips, although this time it was “Home”. Following that up was Ho Hey by the Lumineers and Try by Pink. 50% of all airtime was 92 songs, more nearly triple that of Mix 104.1, but still less than half that of a Jack station.

Click here to see the top played songs on 104.7

Once we get into the artists is when things turn ugly for these stations. Mix 104.1 spends 50% of their airplay time on just 18 artists, Imagine Dragons and Bruno Mars being the top two (together accounting for almost 10% of the entirety of the year).

Click here to see the top played artists on Mix 104.1

K104.7, since it includes a wider time frame, has roughly twice as many artists making up half its total air time. The top 3 artists are Pink, Katy Perry, and Bruno Mars, but the top 20 also includes older artists like Journey and Michael Jackson.

Click here to see the top played artists on 104.7

Let’s summarize all this:

% of all plays (songs)	Jack LA	Jack Seattle	Mix 104.1	104.7 Charlotte
50%	227	301	37	91
90%	580	744	244	267
100%	1207	1468	775	456

One thing that’s notable about Variety radio, though, is that it’s clearly aimed at a white audience. This may be obvious, since many of these stations specifically say “no rap” in their taglines, but it’s borne out in the statistics as well. Below is a Venn diagram representing the songs played by Variety, Contemporary, and Urban stations. You can see that while Variety radio shares about 40% of Contemporary’s songs, neither Variety nor Contemporary stations share many songs in common with Urban stations at all. (Mouse over the regions to see prominent examples):

Contemporary stations have only 9% of their songs from the Urban playlist. Variety has only 2% of its playlist in common with Urban, whereas 20% (ten times as many) of Variety’s songs are Contemporary. So while Variety stations may be a broadcast substitute for a person’s iPod, it’s mostly white people’s iPods that they are shooting for.