COLLEGE RADIO RECAP WEEK 13 CMJ ISSUE 1434

Happy Spring everyone! I was really looking forward to this week because of April fools day. I had so many good jokes planed out but I was told by my lawyers that they were not "funny" and were just "hurtful" So maybe next year?

Seems like we still are waiting for everyone to come back from Spring breaks and Easter vacations as we hover around the same number of reporting stations from the past few weeks. I hope we see an increase next week and I expect we will. Despite the number of reporters being lowish we had a great ADD battle this week between Andrew Bird and Tacocat!   BIRDS VS CATS!!!! I mean how can you not love that.  What made this a lot of fun for someone on the outside looking in is that we had 2 big records. Andrew Bird dominated last time around ( 2012 with 4 weeks at #1) and Tacocat had a great run their first time out.  So not only do both records have a track record and expectation that they might be #1 records. They both have 2 indies on them! So a pretty even playing field. I don't know but I assume both records got sent to a lot of people as well.
Throughout Monday and Tuesday it went back and forth. In the end though Andrew Bird came out on top with 131 ADDS to Tacocats 124 ADDS. I have a feeling we will see this battle play out over the next several weeks.  I will also note that Andrew Bird is already around 100 spots ahead of Tacocat on the charts. Something to pay attention to to see if it means anything.

Animal Collective continues to hold at #1. There really isn't anything on the level of Animal Collective out there right now we are seeing them hold rather than dominate. Early on they for sure were dominating at radio but now its just nothing else can knock it out.  We did see a switch in the #2 and #3 records with Thao and the Get down Stay down positioning itself to take the top spot next week. Santigold, last weeks #2 could still have a shot, as I mentioned before Animal Collective is no longer dominate so really it could be anyones game next week.

Of those three. There is a clear tier of the top 3 and then 4-11 are pretty much all grouped together. Dr. Dog could of easily been #6 as it was #11.  The contenders for #1 in the future ( this weeks ADDS) are a few weeks away but they might be able to crash the top 10. Should be fun to also watch that.

Thanks for reading lets talk more about April fools day jokes on twitter. 

CMJ ISSUE 1433 WEEK 12 COLLEGE RADIO RECAP

A lot of you took last week off, so I decided to as well. It seemed to be the peak spring break week with reporters dropping by over 30. This week we rebounded a bit up 18 in what hopefully will be a continued trend. April is always a crazy month. On the promoter side  there are a lot of big records that get pushed out before summertime. On the radio side its a month until graduation so some people stop working and some are too busy with exams or are  overwhelmed with school work.  It can make for a stressful time of year. Also a lot of fun as well. 

The last 2 weeks have seen Animal Collective hold strong at #1. We have also had 2 relatively weak add weeks with both #1 added records taking in under 100 adds.  There are some records getting closer to Animal Collective. Santigold and Thao and the Get Down Stay Down both are within striking distance. I think Animal Collective has a good chance of staying at #1 though. 

Right behind Santigold and Thao and the Get Down Stay Down is the new Charles Bradley record coming in hot at #4. I think he would need a lot to jump those two to get #1 but it is a very impressive showing. The one record I am having a hard time figuring out right now is the new M. Ward record. While it did get a less than impressive review on Pitchfork he has done very well in the past. I know the last record was a top 5 record and really just thought it would build off of that.  Of course it is hard to know when you are not working the record. Could be a lack of hard copies. Could a ton of other factors we don't know about.  I know the week it went for ADDS I really thought it would run away with #1 most added. It came in a strong second though and that perhaps should of been a sign. 

1	104	THAO AND THE GET DOWN STAY DOWN	A Man Alive	Ribbon
2	96	M. WARD	More Rain	Merge
3	65	LA SERA	Music For Listening To Music To	Polyvinyl
4	51	DAMIEN JURADO	Visions Of Us On The Land	Secretly Canadian
5	47	PRINCE RAMA	Xtreme Now	Carpark

There is still time of course for M. Ward to have a great run at radio just very interesting to see it sluggish out of the gate. 

I wanted to also take a quick look at the singles on the chart. I have seen a lot more singles charting lately and I am not sure if it is a real shift in station programing as college radio has always been an album based format or just people getting really excited about a select few records. So let's take a look. 

55

63

90

55

4

LAKE STREET DIVE

"Call Of Your Dogs" [Single]

Nonesuch

84

85

-

84

2

M83

"Do It, Try It" [Single]

Mute

139

-

-

139

1

YEASAYER

"Silly Me" B/w "I Am Chemistry" [Single]

Mute

161

-

-

161

1

SHEL

"You Could Be My Baby" [Single]

Moraine

176

-

-

176

1

THEE OH SEES

"Fortress" [Single]

Castle Face

90

182

162

162

5

ANDREW BIRD

"Capsized" [Single]

Loma Vista

So currently 6 singles charting at college radio. Looks like a preview of a few #1 records, or potential #1 records out there. Any single in the top 100 is pretty serious. What do we think of singles charting or what if there was a singles chart? I am not sure enough stations chart singles to warrant such a thing but interesting to think about. 

Thank you for reading! 

find me on Twitter. 

CMJ ISSUE 1431 WEEK 10 COLLEGE RADIO RECAP

Oh hey there Spring Breakers. I see you. 

Spring breaks started this week and while there were no CMJ crashes the number of stations was down from the peak of two weeks ago. I imagine it will continue to stay in the 240-260 range throughout March.   Spring break +SXSW next week should give us a rather low reporting week. 

As expected Animal Collective ran away with the #1 spot this week.  Seeing as I was tracking Dr. Dog rather frequently I can tell you every time I checked the 2 records the gap grew. Early on it was 10-11 then it was 22-26  then it was 25-32.  It was a fun run but in the end we missed our window last week.  I will note we did beat Wild Nothing, the record that beat us on the ADDS.  You have to wonder if there was a missed opportunity with Wild Nothing and 2 indies but I can't pretend to know every indies motives for working a record.  

Animal Collective will be #1 for..... what do you think? 

lets talk about the ADDS this week. I thought going in that M. Ward would take #1 but Thao and the Get down stay down pulled off the upset. I think we may be seeing what happens when you have a lot of big records for adds and you split your focus. I would bet a dollar that M. Ward ends up being the higher charted record. 

Will either of those push for #1 or is Animal Collective a new David Bowie? 

What about Santigold? 

Could be exciting or it could just be really boring for the next 5 weeks until a real contender emerges. 

Now, its going to be 77 outside here in NYC today so get out side and lets talk about this on twitter when its cold again ..

www.twitter.com/theanimalarrg

CMJ ISSUE 1430 COLLEGE RADIO RECAP WEEK 9 *

This week gets an Asterix.

Around 1pm, maybe a bit earlier CMJ stopped working.  In one of the tightest races for #1 we have seen this year CMJ went down. As a result the number of reporters dropped by around 30.


The top five we ended up with is as follows

1	2	4	1	4	DIIV*	Is The Is Are*	Captured Tracks*
2	1	1	1	6	TY SEGALL	Emotional Mugger	Drag City
3	40	90	3	3	ANIMAL COLLECTIVE	Painting With	Domino
4	3	5	3	4	DR. DOG	The Psychedelic Swamp	Anti
5	7	9	5	4	WILD NOTHING	Life Of Pause	Captured Tracks

Looking at some of the numbers I could make a strong case for almost all of these records for #1. 

It seems like a foregone conclusion that Animal Collective will take the top spot next week but it gets a little more difficult for them because next week is the first batch of SPRING BREAKS!  Does Spring break slow down AC? Or does it it help a record Like Dr. Dog or Wild Nothing with lots of AAA support?  ( I doubt it but a guy can dream right?) 

Whereas the Charts might of been impacted by the CRASH I think ADDS largely went as predicted. 

Santigold took it pretty easily with Yuck about 10 behind and the Violent Femmes another 10 behind. 

As far as the crash goes, its a bummer when it happens. Sucks for everyone. My biggest complaint is the lack of communication. With the promoters and also the stations. I got at least 10 emails asking me what is going on / what do I do. Of course all stations should know they can send to radio@cmj.com when there is a crash.   There were a few ideas I had though that might make things better when this happens.  

1) Tell us, Maybe set up a Facebook group or an Industry twitter account to just say hey we expect this to take a while or this is very minor and it should take only 5 min. Sure people will complain if it happens to go longer than that but it would be better than hearing nothing. It would also be nice to tell the stations they can send in the charts via Email when this happens. If you talk to college students for a living like I do they forget things. They forget things I told them a day ago. They will not remember to send a report via email unless you remind them. 

2) Expand reporting. If CMJ goes down for an hour then have charts close at 3. If it goes down for a day then expand it by a day. There is no "print" deadline that forces the charts to be done at a certain time. There should be some sort of flexibility. 

Now I don't know why these crashes happen. I have a theory that it has to do with you adding the wrong records each week so don't do that. It could also be that you are charting Goldflinger so don't do that either. Lets try and help keep CMJ clean so it does not crash.  I do know that it frustrates those that work at CMJ as much as it does us. Hopefully it get's fixed and never happens again but if it doesn't I hope we can see some improvements on communication and policy. 

Thank  you for reading! 

see you on the internet